luxiu's Reviews

I wouldn't buy it again

They come with a nice case and some fancy accesories but it fails to deliver a nice sound or to fit comfortably in my ears. The sound is edgy, harsh, metallic, it has no depth, I even miss my old basic Samsung wired in-ears. The foams are ok but the piece of plastic that holds everthing together is very big, it feels uncomfortable.

Good platform

I like Dropbox and use it on my Mac through Maestral, an alternative client for the service which allows me to use it in numerous terminals for free.

Awesome utilitarian

It has a mic so I can use it to replace my MacBook's broken one, you can pair it with other one to achieve a stereo experience and has indeed an awesome bass response for its size, plus an aux input and a very useful hanging strap. These peculiar features placed it above from its price competitors.

Nice phone

Nice cameras, nice stereo sound (it sacrifices a little volume), nice design, good size and weight, good screen, I’m still thankful for having an audio output jack. It has NFC, it also misses wireless charge but it is awesome for what you are paying.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

My favorite volume pedal

I tried several volume and expression pedals and found some personal preferences along the way:

–I prefer bigger ones (I have a large foot) –I prefer passive ones (I like to have them aside from my pedalboard and is much more comfortable if they don’t require power) –I hate when they don’t stay in position (I’m looking at you, Boss) –I like when they have grippy surfaces both at the top and at the bottom to avoid slippery movements –I use passive instruments and put volume pedals first in the chain so high impedance is better for me

I found the Boss to work very bad with physics, even the newer models fail to stay in full position at top and/or bottom, by adjusting it you can fix one or another but never both. Ernie Ball feels a little haunted by its mechanism’s weakness and don’t have an aux output, then the DVP1 doesn’t have an aux output, the DVP3 is little, the DVP4 is very little, DOD seems like a tiny and weak option, Korg’s XVP-20 has low impedance, Korg’s, Korg VP-10 has a slippery surface… in the end I preferred the DVP1XL as it has all those features missing from the others.

The only thing I could ask for is a higher expression impedance and the minimum volume control to be on the outside but I don’t care that much about that.

It is obviously built like a tank and the weight is not excessive, it's just what it’s needed to firmly stay in its place.

Robust current doubler

I have an EHX B9 which is a tricky pedal to be connected to some power supplies, I use a Strymon Ojai to feed my pedals and this current doubler allows it to run the B9 without any problem.

Unique and flawless

It tracks amazingly well, I prefer using its octave mode rather than the old dedicated octave generators I had (Micro POG, Nano POG, EQD Organizer), we cannot choose the sub/up balance but it sounds better at its point, more realistic, immediate… organic!

Delicious little amp

I bought several AC4s (C1 and TV models) from Vox as I like their bigger brothers (AC15s and AC30s are my big amps of choice), those were always fine but never made me that happy so I kept looking for other options. I liked how the Fender Champ 600 sounded but always felt a little boxy. This one is very similar to the Champ but with a different chassis and therefore another resonance, it sounds more open, now I’m sticking with it. As any amp it takes some gain pedals better than others, I found that more advanced pedals are not that great through it (I have a Strymon Sunset and a Bogner La Grange) but it’s gorgeous with things like the Rat, Charlie Brown V4 and/or other Foxx’ based fuzzes I had.

Nice volume pedal, but the DVP1 feels nicer

This is a very stable volume pedal but it feels not as precise as the DVP1, both have adjustable tension but the DVP1 feels more gradual while this one a little more erratic when performing sensible movements. I bought this one because I wanted to have the optional expression feature but I had to sell it as it didn’t fell comfortable. Now I have the DVP1 and I am very happy with it!

Super volume pedal

I use passive guitar pickups so I always look for high impedance models when browsing for volume pedals. I have a big foot so I like big volume pedals as I feel more comfortable with them, this is larger than the DVP3 that I had before and feels indeed much better. Compared to other big high-impedance volume pedals I had: it’s much more stable than the Boss FV-300 and FV-500, it’s much more solid than the Ernie Balls, it’s much more comfortable than Korg's XVP-10.

The real thing

This is still a very peculiar tool to achieve peculiar expressiveness resources with our electric guitars. It requieres some initial training but then you can start mastering some basics.

Plenty of features and easy to use

Again from Dedalo: many advanced options to cover both traditional expectations and then some more unique controls to cleverly take it to another useful territories for those who want some more peculiar effects. It has two analog tremolo paths: at the beginning of the rate knob we operate with the “kill” mode as it has a truly deep cut for choppy tremolo effects, then we can increase the knob and find a more gradual effect which would relate to the wave shape knob next to it to choose from triangle, square or sine. The symmetry knob lets us customize the effect even more but then we find two other options in the wave shape knob: one to choose rhythmic patterns (customizable by the respective beats control) and other to choose the peculiar “fade” mode, which is like a “manual” setting for the effect as then we can cut our signal by pressing the second switch (that one that’s used to tap the tempo in the other modes) and can be tweaked by the two knobs at the right to choose the fade in and out options letting us then go from kill-switch-like operation to slow swells and everything in between as we set it. The regular modes doesn’t sound even as good as their previous incarnation, the TRS-4, so the strong selling point from the pedal would be the more peculiar options. For that I almost consider it as an advanced kill-switch and/or Slow Gear alternative with the more traditional tremolo options as a bonus!

The best one-knob drive

It sounds AMAZING, a very tasty hybrid between fuzz and distortion, it is inspiring. A master volume is missed as it sounds SCREAMS SO LOUD, but that’s kinda the point anyways. It’s a keeper brutal distortion, very peculiar and effective.

It has a problem with physics

You look at it and it is a very nice piece of gear: aluminum body, solid rubber to step on, minimum volume adjustment, top mounted jacks, everything seems to be so solid. But here we go: when you release the pedal from its top or bottom position it goes back a little, so you can't really set it to 0% or 100% and leave it alone, it will go up or down a little from its extremes. You can adjust the pedal feel from the back plate and this could compensate a little from one point or the other, the action is compromised. This happened similarly with the old Boss FV-300s too, it's uncomfortable to me, I prefer to go back to the classic Ernie Ball or the ones by Dunlop. There's another design flaw in the top mounted jacks apartment as you cannot put a 90º cable just like that because it will hit the borders and therefore unplug itself because of that unnecessary part. By now my favorite volume pedal is the Dunlop DVP1, it works perfectly, it doesn’t have an aux/expression jack and is bigger than the DVP3 but have both and the DVP1 feels better.

Amazing solution for tidy pedalboards

They fit anywhere, the plugs are so small and the cable is super strong but flexible at the same time.

Very peculiar booster

This is not a traditional booster. This is not the booster to get if you're looking for a transparent one or something to boost a lot of volume. No no. Luckily we can just guess just by its look that this is a unique booster pedal. It has two circuits: with the switch down your signal would mostly go from absolute silence to nearly unity gain by travelling the gain and volume controls, weird, huh? This is where we start to remember that it has an expression input that gives more familiar sense to this as a volume pedal, though it would anyways always add some extra flavor to our line. Then we can turn the switch up and that's when the gain starts to give a much more noticeable grit to our audio, now we could set our ground near to unity gain (or more) and then starting to shake things louder when we add more from its gain control (via knob or expression pedal, obviously). It might give you some subtle grit or blown your amp into a hot crunch mode according to its flavor, this pedal is made to organically travel through versatile levels of gain and texture and it has a lot of interaction with our amp, naturally. Many people tend to stack differente saturation pedals to achieve their different saturation nuances, I prefer this useful solution to do so.

Big pedal, horrible design

It is a very good volume pedal but it’s terrible that they just did this design with those senseless top sides avoiding us the possibility to comfortably use angled connectors.

Pandora box of modulation

Their classic algorithms do sound nice but the real reason why I keep it over other options that came after it is because of its more peculiar features, it’s a very interesting unit to conquer sounds beyond the more traditional modulation effects. Their rotary mode allows you to ramp between two different speeds and I think that they should have make this feature available for all the other modes.

Excellent straps

I bought this one for a bandmate to fit his Martin acoustic guitar. HipStrap always makes straps with very bold and solid leather ends so it feels very secure without even putting any special strap lock there. All their materials are indeed of very high quality and have a precious style.

Basic strap for light guitars

This a very affordable and reliable strap. The poly material is light so I bought for a friend to use it with an acoustic guitar one while I still choose straps with heavier materials for my electric guitars (nylon or leather).