jimmarchi1's Reviews

in the superfuzz camp

this is a mean sounding fuzz with a mellow octaving effect and upper mid-bump on a separate switch marked treble boost... it definitely adds a buzzy bee quality to the tone and I assume that's why they named it the bee-baa. The layout makes you think Foxx Tone Machine, but tonally its more like the univox superfuzz and Ibanez standard fuzz. Its an excellent pedal and if you run into one you should try it.

another tonebender mk3, I had a theme going

I tried this around the time I got my MJM britbender 3. I slightly preferred the britbender at the time but the soulbender was also excellent. Apples and apples between the 2, neither was as raspy or spitty as the buzzaround could get. All that is component selection. All 3 untis were the same tonebender mk3 circuit. If you must have a tone control on your fuzz the soulbender is an excellent option.

I had an early big, sivler box version

I loved this edal for some time. Same circuit as my buzzaround but with different model germanium transistors properly matched for the circuit so it had a soother character. it was also elss noisy due to the use of modern components. I recorded with this extensively. I eventually tired of the tone control's damping effect and wanted a more explosive sound so I tried a mk2 and stared exploring fuzz faces and vox tonebenders again. I have fond memories of this guy and my buzzaround but there's no sense keeping valuable stuff you never use. MJM makes a great product for a fair price and there's not a single fuzz clone in their line that doesn't impress me. The only faults of the 3 knob bender are faults with the 3 knobs design... if you must have a tone control on you fuzz but want that british, zeppelin fuzz? this is a great option.

this guy knows his muffs but I don't like muffs so...

during my muff quests I became friends with a guy on a forum I frequented whow as starting a company dedicated to the big muff. He wanted to out-skreddy skreddy! He was naming this company stomp under foot. Right when he got his paypal going and put up a website he made me a custom skreddy mayo with some personalized design tweaks based on my compaints about vintage untis. I know he cribbed ideas from the skreddy mayo and creamy dreamer. Whatever he did it was my favorite muff. I still didn't love it. If you like muffs, this custom unit was a fine one. I dock 2 stars because it's a big muff and it ahs shitty attack and even in this modded version, not enough mid to cut the band at the back of the room unless you have output approaching 10. Still he did a wonderful job on my pedal (which was in a plain white pwoedercoated bud box with only the text stomp under foot screen printed)… I sold this early unit for a lot of money at the same guitar show where I sold my original mosrite fuzzrite and some other very cool fuzzes and modulations… I then bought a few vintage pickups from a parts dealer and took my wife out to dinner LOL. If you like muffs tlak to somp udner foot... ask them about customs because the customized stuff beats on the straight ahead triangle and ram's head copies. This, along with a real skreddy, was one of the new muff copies that owned on old ram's heads.

baracuda

The AD/A flanger might be the first really good pedal flanger… it was famously used by howard leese on Heart's Baracuda. I had one. It was noisy and exhibit massive tone suck in bypass.... on the other hand it was an astonishlingly tweakable and musical flange effect. Totally different then a mistress or mutron. These are extremely valuable and I sued it so sparingly that I decided to keep the more common mistress and sell this for an enormous profit. I believe I bought an entire American made guitar with the proceeds.

a very nice, vitnage sounding wah tone

This wah sounded less throaty and grungy than my 847. Treadle action was better and the pot didn't crackle. More like a crybaby but with a little more mid-oomph. I am not sure why sold or traded this. I probably hadn't plugged it in for some time and since wahs are HUGE I decided to clear some drawer space for effects I would use more frequently. Maybe I swapped it for a microphone or a compressor, who knows?

great tone, shitty QC

This was the first wah pedal I ever owned in the 90s. Previously I had a morely on loan from the abssist in my highschool jazzband. I loved the sound of my vox but it had a scratchy pot from the factory. The treadle was really tight when I got it but I couldn't manage to loosen it to where I wanted it. It was always either to stiff or too loose. I never really became much of a wah payer because this pedal really bummed me out action-wise. The tone, when I ignored the scratchiness, was superb. Less porno, more pyro. Bypass was awful... I eventually had it true bypassed and had the pot replaced but I was so not into wah at that point and I traded it to my best friend for a 2nd gen small stone that I enjoyed a lot more and kept for a good 20 years. Love the modern vox wah sound. Hate the quality control. This pedal turned me off to wah as an every day effect and I don't even keep a wah on my board to this day.

modern univox superfuzz

the FZ-2 is a univox superfuzz copy... it differs in the last make-ups tage after all the fuzz and octave happens. Boss used an opamp instead of another transistor and they added a useful treble and bass tonestack there. It has the 2 settigns for flat and mid boost of the superfuzz and it also has a boost setting that disengages the discrete transistor section leaving only the makeup stage that has so much more gain than the univox's transistor stage that it makes an excellent boost/EQ. I enve ropened my hyperfuzz when I had it so I am unsure if it had Panasonic transistors for the fuzz like in the univox I owned, but they're unremarkable devices so it probably doesn't matter what's in this circuit. Because of the different output section this pedal plays well into wah and other effects whereas my superfuzz was finnicky. I owned this prior to the superfuzz and didn't even know it did octave when I bought it. I didn't bond with this type of fuzz at the time but I've since become a fan and wish I still had the FZ2. The Behringer superfuzz is a cheaply made copy.

this thing is so popular

many people love this pedal, but it wasn't for me... it sounds pretty good for a hard clipping, dual op-amp distortion, don't get me wrong, but its just okay. The voicing switch made it either anemic in the low end or woolly and un-crunchy, no inbetween. Mind you, this was mainly through Vox and Matchless amps. I liked it a lot more into fenders and other fixed bias amps with negative feedback loops. I actually prefer EHX's copy, the OD glove. I like the voicing better but YMMV. This circuit is cribbed from the discontinued Voodoo Lab Overdrive that sues a special clipping diode configuration to dynamically change the clipping threshold based on your playing dynamics. its an excellent idea but like all Fulltone pedals, it's not Mike Fuller's even though he would lead you to believe he came up with it.

Anyway, I usually recommend this pedal to fender amp players who don't like the SRV tubescreamer sound.

excellent octa-fuzz

I believe this pedal is a highly refined foxx tone machine octave fuzz. If you want Octavia look at fulltones smaller octave box. I enjoyed this pedal but prefer the more subtle, always-on univox/FZ-2/standard fuzz type of sound personally... all in all Mike Fuller did a great job with the ultimate octave tonally on both the fuzz and octave sections and it has a really low noise floor for this sort of effect.

fond memories

this was the second tonebender of any version I acquired. Very much the mk1.5/vox 2 transistor circuit that spawned the fuzzface thrown together with modern parts and random NOS transistors. It sounds like a slightly fuller vintage unit with more output. A very good and affordable tonebender on a budget for beatles tones. Not as bright as a real one so maybe not so good for sympathy with the devil covers unless you have a really piercing amp. This really started my love affair with the pre-fuzzface 2 transistor fuzz sound.

they came from the 80s

these were the first affordable surgical EQs I ever saw... I got one of these and a symmetrix compressor in the same 1/2ru form factor from my highschool. They didn't even know why they had them LOL. I later acquired another SX201 from a friend who had ne and never used it. I now use these sparingly but at one time took them out as part of my live sound rack along with an spx90, dbx graphic, ASR power amp, roland digital echo, lexicon alex and a slew of comps and gates. I could do any type of music anywhere with that rig into my boss' portable mixer, powered PA speaker and floor wedges... that is if someone would roadie for me. Whew that was heavy stuff to take out. But I made a lot of money doing outdoor shows and bars with shit PAs.

no one talks about these guys!

dbx's most underrated compressor... minimal control sets tickle me pink. I use this a lot when mixing to grab stuff that I want to sit in the background. When you print this guy on a mono source it pulls back in the mix in a magic way. Overeasy compression might not be as cool as vari-mu or opto stuff when it comes to 2 knob interfaces, but it has a place. Try one of these in parallel when the dbx attack and release constants are too grabby

bang for buck

sonically in the LA3/LA4 camp... way more fine control available. Just a great stereo comp/limiter. Real winner for live electronic music... maybe a bit heavy handed for buss duties when mixing rock n roll or pop, but worth a shot in parallel on sub groups. I love the guys at FMR

still the finest bang for buck mono comp going

the RNC is in fact REALLY NICE... its a VCA comp in the dbx/SSL camp with really fine control. If you're used to the E and G series channel comps you'll feel right at home. For guys doing one track at a time into a USB interface this is a must-have just for transparent peak limiting. This compressor would be a great buy at almost any price. If you don't know how to set up a compressor this is not really plug 'n play, but for anyone with experience and a decent set of ears? I own so many of these, they just get it done.

not a piece of dB-ass

it's a 3630 made to a higher standard with all of the bullshit removed at the factory so you don't have to mod it... can't go wrong. The budget dbx 1066. Replaced my modded 3630s

its not glamourous like a neve, api or tweaky boutique stuff but

the eureka is an affordable, well designed channel strip in that transformer balanced, all discrete, class A preamp style (ahem neve). The Eq is musical and hard to screw up although if you need surgical look elsewhere. The compressor is a FET style that's not slavishly devoted to the 1176 (for better or worse). You can swap the EQ and comp order and you can sue the different components individually. I use the preamp and EQ pretty regularly with an RNC in place of the channel comp set to peak limit transparently into the DAW whereas I use the compressor separately or the comp with the EQ while mixing. Sometimes I overload the preamp although it doesn't overload as nicely as higher end designs. Still, a fine piece and highly undervalued on the used market. At the very least it gives me a nice clean transformer balanced preamp with filters and a flavor of hardware compression not covered by my VCA units or the RNLA (although the LA and the eureka comp have some common ground at extreme settings).Real value for dollar here. My little stereo home rig gets a third channel if I use the A/d card into the optical in on my soundcard... I rarely need more than 1 channel at home though. More of an electronic music and mix studio in the rec room here.

another crazy ambient guitar pedal I should ahte

but I liked the transmisser so much on synths, electric piano and for use as a mono ethereal verb when mixing (break out your reamp gear kids) that I bought an afterneath without trying it first and was equally impressed. Again, not my thing on guitar, but a great tool with older synths and also during mix-down (especially on vocals where there's space). I could explain the control set and give my impressions of it, but the afterneath creates echoes so out of this world that it is better experienced than spoken about.

the genesis of celestion tone

I have some original vox branded G12 speakers from the 60s in blue and silver... I usually don't use them because of their extreme value, increasing rarity and the very real danger of frying them at stage volume... but they sound great when I jack them into my '62 AC30... I'm just scared I'll blow them up the whole time I'm recording. I can't hear a difference between vox branded blue and silvers although I believe marshall branded silvers are sometimes a different cone with a darker sound. Reconed blues and silvers are a joke… the big difference between these and the reissues is the paper in the cone. if your cones are shot you might as well save 500 or 600 bucks andhave a reissue. Ironically there is no such thing as a UK Vox bulldog speaker, blue or otherwise. Vox bulldog speakers were made in the USA by Utah speakers for Thomas Organ's line of solid state Vox amps. They have a big alnico cylinder but otherwise have American cones and hot-dog type baskets sprayed gold, not blue or silver. There's a big bulldog sticker on the back of the bell cover. When people talk about vox speakers they mean the celestion G12 though.

sort of a bastard son of FM and LA synthesis... or vector/wavetable synthesis?

this is an SY22 in a tabletop... shitty 12 bit DA conversion sounds great just like the first wave of DX synths but with the added joy of PCM stuff added in and a filter that may be an early digital affair. The big brother SY synths are DX72s with sample memory and the filter and they're great. I want an SY99 and maybe it'll replace my DX7IIFD...but man, the TG33 is the shit! Think of it as a TX81Z with the whole PCM kitchen sink and a passable internal filter… takes up less closet space then the SY22... its a bit arcane to program, but if you can handle a DX you can handle an SY. It's not quite what you get with a DX7 and its not quite what you get with a ProphetVS or Wavestation, but like eating brunch it is SO satisfying.