seth_proctor's Reviews

Best use of $40

Amazing Boss FZ-2 copy, which is pretty much a Shin-Ei Super Fuzz with some tweaks, so save hundreds of dollars, and buy a few of these.

Preferred Settings + Usage:

Unique angular preamp distortion

Best dual gain pedal if you’re into saggy germanium and spiky sounds

Cheap Japanese strangeness

Straightforward guitar, build quality better than that of teisco and similar brands, thick u shaped steel reinforced neck. Bad stock tuning machines, plastic bridge, and poorly designed vibrato tailpiece, but it’s worth putting the work in to make it playable.

Range of soft/ harsh sounds

I really enjoy exploring the possibilities of using a bow on an electric guitar, because there isn't really a set correct way to do it, it's all experimentation. You will get rosin everywhere though.

It's a tuner

It works most of the time. Fairly accurate for 440hz tuning, keeps me in tune with the rest of my band. Can't really complain.

Noise

With the octave up there isn't much sustain to it, you have to play to the pedal, it doesn't handle somethings well, but that's the beauty of it. Works well for JMC type stuff, and has lots of volume on tap, I find it doesn't stack well with other distortions and works best going into an amp with lots of headroom for me.

I wanted to find a flaw in this bridge

But it's actually perfect. It's functional in every possible way and fits the aesthetic and purpose of the original jazzmaster/ jaguar bridge.

Well made vintage style Jaguar

I purchased mine used, a 90's Japanese domestic market model, and I have yet to play an American made Jaguar that functions better than mine. With a neck shim, raising the bridge a bit, and securing some things with teflon tape and bending the tremolo arm up, it works perfectly the way I want it to. I've found a guitar I will never part with. It stays in tune well with heavy tremolo use, it has those cool sound artifacts from the strings ringing behind the bridge, not a ton of sustain, just a perfect sound for me. A very comfortable short scale, and still an adequate amount of string tension with .12 gauge strings on it.

The sound of Johnny Marr for $200

These amps are hidden jems, they sound nearly identical to the Roland JC-120 for half the price, and have even more headroom. A true stereo crystal clean solid state amp with a beautiful lush chorus, and a spring reverb tank, who doesn't think that's worth $200? It functions very well as a pedal platform, it's all about finding the right dirt pedal that isn't dependent on pushing tubes to sound good. I could upgrade to a Roland JC-120, but why would I? I could buy a Fender Twin one day, but honestly this is probably a more reliable and road worthy amp that I can toss around and crank up. It does what I want.

It's a tube screamer

It's a tube screamer with a few more settings that blow out the low end and can get a nice fuzzy sound when stacked with another dirt pedal. I find it works best as a boost to a dirty tone, I'm not fond of the way it affects my clean signal. The various modes really don't add much gain so much as they fuzz out the low end I think.

There's a reason everyone has one

Crazy dark repeats, gets real crazy, nice modulation setting, yeah everyone knows it, everyone loves it. I usually have it set to go crazy for interjections of noisy chaos.

The most beautiful sound my ears have ever heard.

This pedal, it doesn't have tap tempo, it only has two settings, it feels a little flimsy, but in the echo mode with the repeats and the level up and the time down it will just sit on the edge of oscillating into chaos, but instead just sit behind your playing as an ambient wash, it's seriously the most beautiful sounding delay pedal ever made. For reference check out the live outro to Deerhunter's Desire Lines, that's definitely the sound Lockett is getting.

So much volume on tap

This pedal is the most versatile overdrive/distortion/fuzz I've come across, I think it can do all three convincingly. It has tons of volume on tap. I used to use a muff, but this just has a lot more bite and midrange, and very nice clarity to it while still able to achieve Kevin Shields tones when drenched in reverse reverb. It's the perfect sound for post-punk, shoegaze, or noise rock style music in my opinion.

Very average

The pickup is a 6 pole chinese strat pickup covered, so I replaced that, and it sounds infinitely better. I made some cosmetic mods adding a black pickguard and black knobs, and set it up well with heavy strings for more tension. The short scale is really fun to run around, it's nice and light, very good value for the price, around $150 new. It stays in tune enough for a 30 minute set, but changing the tuners out is a hassle due to their odd size, so the stock ones will do.

Portable, tweak-able, undeniably cool

I found this thing at the Goodwill for $8 bucks and was just beginning to toy around with the idea of running cassette loops and sampling through my amp and effects along with my guitar via a mixer. Little did I know when I bought it that I came across the holy grail of cassette players for a noise artist, it's infinitely tweak-able as it has a speed/pitch slider, a tone slider, volume slider, and you can play the opposite side of the tape in reverse. It's very portable and is easy to take along to shows. Turns out Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth has one of these things and they sell for a decent amount, who knew? Though I didn't pay market value for it, if you're committed to cassette sampling and making some noise, and live manipulating samples for your music, it is well worth the price.

Great shoegaze era reverb, delay, compression, and modulation effects

The possibilities with this effects unit are endless. The distortion settings are frankly terrible, it's equipped with flimsy plastic jacks, and there is a definite learning curve when programming it. It's also cumbersome to navigate even after you have programed presets without a midi footswitch, however this thing is worth it. They can be found for under $100 and offer some of the most lush modulation, reverb that dwells for 40 seconds, or crazy reverse sounds, and nice compression.