Monday, February 29, 2016

Ugly Truth About Way Huge Camel Toe

Wow, I never thought that I'd title a post that way, but there it is. I hope I don't confuse people looking for something other than talking about Guitar gear. BTW, this is a post about the Overdrive pedal called the Camel Toe by Way Huge and absolutly nothing else... let's move on.

Way Huge let us know today that there is a Camel Toe MKII to be released sometime, possibly, with the release uo this photo via their instagram.

Lately I noticed Shnobel, of YouTube fame, playing a Way Huge Camel Toe. I've never heard of this pedal, probably because it was only released in a very limited quantity and I've never been much of a follower of what Way Huge does. If you start Google-ing Way Huge Camel Toe, you might find something other than what you are looking for. There just isn't that much information out there about this rare pedal. However, if you plug that same search into eBay, you are likely to find auctions starting at thousands of dollars. Why? I honestly have no idea. Well, from what I've heard, the pedal sounds fantastic, but it doesn't spout rainbows, so whats with the price? The limited quantity might have something to do with it.

You see, in many ways, the Camel Toe was ahead of its time. It is a light-duty, 'transparent' overdrive. In a market that is flooded with Klones, the Camel Toe is a stand out. It is not a clone of anything that I can tell, in fact it came before many of the clones that, in the wake of the Klon becoming so mythical, because so privalent. That's the problem, it was a transparent overdrive before transparent overdrives were cool. So, in a way, it's the hipster of transparent overdrives...

Regardless, I like this pedal and I look forward to trying one out for myself. However It is highly unlikely that I ever have the chance to put the MKII and the original together for a comparison given its rarity. Hopeful Way Huge won't try to make a money grab with this reissue, but they have always been a little on the boutique side of the price range anyways.



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Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Ugly Truth: Buying Your First Guitar Effect Pedal (Distortion)

Congratulations. You have discovered guitar effect pedals. But what should your first one be? There are so many choices. If you go to Musician's Buddy web store and check out the first page of effect pedals you'll see over a thousand different products. That's not even all the options out there. Most boutique and custom pedals are available only from the builders directly. But lucky for us, there are some simply categories that we can break these down into. We'll talk about what typically is someones first pedal purchase:

Overdrive/Distortion/Fuzz

This group of pedals range from pedals that are designed to boost your amp into a naturally broken up (distorted) sound to those that are heavily saturated, over-the-top type sound. These pedals are used by nearly all guitarist. Some pedals are famously associated with iconic guitarist. Stevie Ray Vaughn famously used the Ibanez Tube Screamer, Jimi Hendrex used Fuzz Face pedals. Some pedals even include artist's editions with the guitarist name actually on the pedal. Distortions sit somewhere in the middle of Overdrive and Fuzz. They tend to add a distinct voice and ample gain to your signal. There are many of all these type of pedals. It is important to try many of these pedals and to find what suits you and helps you find the sound you want to make.

What you should try first:

EHX Soul Food, Ibanez TS9, MXR Super Badass, Proco Rat, EHX Big Muff, Dunlop Fuzz Face





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Monday, February 22, 2016

Ugly Truth: Tom's Line Engineering Bluesy Vintage Overdrive

Weeks ago, I decided to splurge on some music gear. I've always seen the cheap pedals from china, but I hate buying something and waiting weeks for it to show up (if it shows up at all). Not to mention the poor customer service and quality control. I decided to roll the dice on these guys, I was able to put together an order for four pedals, all drives (go figure...) When they showed up, they were in a box very similar to the Outlaw Effect's. Included was a somewhat helpful foldout user manual and a piece of Velcro. Overall, it was polished and professional looking. So the packaging exceeded my expectations...(woopty-doo). We don't care about boxes, (unless you're like me and keep all the boxes your pedals come in) what does it sound like?

Using a P-90 equipped Telecaster, I put this pedal through a Vox Pathfinder 10 combo. My bedroom setup is modest, but it sounds great for it's size. Putting this pedal inline was a joy. I really liked the sounds that this pedal put out. There isn't a ton of gain in this pedal, but that should not be a surprise since it's described as a blues overdrive. There is a range of tones that please just about anyone (looking for a light overdrive). After testing out this pedal, I was able to run it into a Vox AC15 with both a Standard Tele and Deluxe Telecaster. These combos resulted in please sounds. The 'normal' and 'bright' settings came in handy, One to tame the spanky single coils and the other to brighten the split-coils in the deluxe. Whether you are finding a bluesy voice for you solid state amp or your looking for something to boost your tube amp into sweet breakup, this pedal can serve up some nice sounds. Listen to Shnobel:

But were aren't here to talk about the pretty things, Let's get ugly:

Let's Get The Obvious Out Of The Way

It's Chinese, It's Cheap, It's Tiny. All these things are scary. The last time I ordered a pedal from China, it was DOA. Thankfully, all these pedal came in working condition. The price I paid is not my concern. In fact, I thought that the price I paid was great. But it's the fact that I was able to buy a pedal for so little that makes me wonder about the quality of the guts. Ignorant of the insides, I do like the sounds. However, I hate tiny pedals. Why did I buy so many of them... They're cheap, that's why. I will say, it was smart to put the bar to protect the knobs. I've always thought they were in danger from people with heavy feet.

And That's It

I know this seems very favorable, but I really can't come up with anything more to complain about. It's a light overdrive that is flexible. It's cheap enough to bought with the change from your couch. It's not the fanciest pedal. It's a simple pedal that could fit on nearly any pedal board. If you watch that video above and scroll down so that you can't see the pedal and just listen, then you might just fool yourself into digging the tones that Mr. Shnobel is putting out.

Conclusion

Having said all those nice things, I probably won't be putting this on my board. My dislike for this tiny pedals and the wide range of low-medium gain pedal that I already have make it hard to find use for yet another. What I might do is put together a small 'travel size' pedal board. It could be fun to go through these little cheap pedals and put the good ones together on a board. Then putting that board against my main board. Not so much to see which one is 'better', but if you can put together tiny pedal to do most of the job of a typical-size board fill with 'full-sized' pedals.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Ugly Truth About Tone City King of Blues



If you suffer from GAS as I do, then you are probably aware of the influx of pedals from china. I'm not talking about BOSS, or Digitech, or Mooer, or Mod Tone or any of the other pedal brands that manufacture overseas. As I remember, it started with Joyo. They made a brand for themselves by mostly copying other pedals and rebranding them, all at discount prices. There has been several others to come about. These pedals have a bit of a stigma already. The first time I ordered a Joyo pedal, the wrong pedal came, and customer service was so bad that I opted to sell the pedal outright instead of returning it. There has been several brands to come about since, and service and quality seem to be improving as well. However Tone City don't seem to be turning out the 'same old stuff' as these other brands. When I first saw their pedals, I did think they were just shined up Chinese copies. To start, you can find lists of the pedals that most of their micro-pedal like is emulating. What caught my attention was their release of their larger, seemingly more original, pedals. I learned of these when I saw my favorite two Brits fool around with them:

Chappers and The Captain are amusing to watch and their production quality is nearly unmatched on YouTube. Something that you have to remember is that they are representing a store. This store sells the products that they are demonstrating. Bare in mind that it would not be beneficial for them to complain about or criticize these pedals. They are going to speak favorably about them, but one thing that Lee 'The Captain' Anderton said made my ears perk up. Most of these dual button Tone City pedals are voiced like very particular amps. All except one, one is just called, "King of Blues". Lee mentioned that he thought that it could be a aNaLoG MaN King of Tone clone. I decided to find out for myself.

I Haven't Played A King of Tone

So this first one is telling on myself. I haven't had a chance to play through one of the more iconic boutique pedals. I have listened to many high quality demonstrations, but I know that there is a lot missing from these. There is no way of sensing the attack sensitivity or feeling how the pedal reacts with the amp. I will say that I've heard a wide range of tone from this one pedal. Obviously the amp these pedal being played through are very important, also the guitar and anything else that is in-line with the pedal. So everything taken with a grain of salt, the KOT is a full sounding flexible overdrive. It is capable of clean-ish 'transparent' boost and thick saturated overdrive. So I may not have played one of these pedals, but I've spent a lot of time researching just what makes this pedal so sought after.

The Pedal Has A Mix Message

Several descriptions of this pedal include that the first stage of this pedal is a straight Klon copy. Stating the the second stage is an 'original' design. I find this a little over simplified. I also think that this description is a little lazy. However, you can't dismiss it entirely. Tone City makes a spot on Klon copy in the 'Bad Horse' pedal. The famous circuit shrunk down just like the Tumnus from Wampler. This is completely likely, however, the KOT and the Klon have similar features as it stands, so the comparisons between each of these pedals may not be totally baseless. I've recently put the King of Blues pedal against every Klon circuit I could get my hands on, and my verdict is that it may share characteristics, I can't say that its a direct copy of the Klon. For one, the Tone knob works like a tone knob (low pass filter) rather than a treble boost. The amounts of gain are similar but the output from the pedal is notably less. The King of Blues of much warmer than any Klon or Klone that I've ever played. From what I've heard of the Tone City 'Bad Horse' (klone) these are not the same circuits.

If It Is A KOT Clone, Then I Have Bad News

Let's say that this is a KOT copy. The real deal goes for north of $300. That's three times the price I paid for this pedal. That's KTR money. Sure, there are other pedals that fetch that kind of money, but what is really striking is that the pedal is only so-so. I do like the pedal. It is capable of several good sounds, and it is really flexible. Two 'channels' make it a great option to handle your overdrive tones. But, if this is a actuate copy of the famous pedal, then I don't see what is so great about it. I'm able to do everything this pedal does with a couple of other overdrives already on my board. This might have had the appeal at the beginning of the boutique boom, but now it's just riding the way of hype from its glory days.

Conclusion

This is a fine pedal. If you are looking for a multi-stage low/medium gain overdrive then this might be the thing for you. I'd put it above a Fulltone Fulldrive (a pedal that I don't really care for all that much), but I'm probably not going to replace what I already have on my board with this. There might be certain situations that I'd prefer this pedal to others, like if I wanted to run a small-ish board for some running around, but it fall short of the litany of pedals that occupy my board. Its good, but it's not "sell all your pedals now and get one of these" good.



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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Boss VO-1 Vocorder

Probably my favorite thing from NAMM 2016 is the Boss Vocoder. A Vocoder is one of my favorite weird effects. Also, thing that make my singing sound cool/unrecognizable is awesome. BOSS had a great showing at the last NAMM. The DD-500 and RV-6 were homeruns. So this year BOSS had a lot to live up to. What they brought to the table, was... interesting. The promotional video that BOSS released was really impressive.

However, there was a lot other than this pedal going on in this that video. Without the backing track, this pedal would sound a little two dimensional. There were several videos from NAMM showing off the pedal in a live situation. It still seems a little lacking. The effect sounded like a quality effect, but the filter was very overpowering. The voice was drowned out in the mix. This is probably defeatable, but the balance seems hard to strike. Also the control instrument is just that, a controller. So unless you are splitting your signal and blending back together, then you lose all your guitar sound when you engage this pedal.

Conclusion

This is a very particular pedal. It does what it does well, but it might be out-matched elsewhere. BOSS has started to develop vocal effects and this seems to be a blend of guitar and vocal effects, but it may be best to keep the two separate. At least, for now.



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Monday, February 8, 2016

Boss BC-1X Bass Compressor

This year at NAMM we saw two of the biggest pedal makers, BOSS and EHX, put out Bass Compressors. If that seems a little strange to you, you are not alone. The bass player is often forgotten in the effect conversation. I've known many bass players to play with nothing other than a tuner on the 'pedal board'. So we now have practical tone tools debuting from two highly respected manufactures. The boss pedal seems to be the more sophisticated, but it is the hands down winner?

It's Shiny

Yes, it's pretty. Pearl British racing green is a nice color, and the chrome plate and knob make it standout among the other BOSS pedals. It also has a LED clipping indicator. This is all fun stuff, and makes it look... special. But there isn't really a big difference between this pedal and other BOSS pedals. It's still the same old BOSS box. Last year BOSS blew us away with the DD-500. The pedal seemed to be a new direction for box. But it looks like they are still getting more mileage out of that old 'soft touch' box.

Boss Has A Track-Record

So, I have really tried to like BOSS compressors. They were the first ones I've tried. I've tried the CS-3 and a Japan made CS-2. Both where underwhelming. They were very similar except that the CS-3 had some more flexibility. The Vintage mojo really wasn't there for me. Others swear by them... whatever. The Bass Comp might be head and shoulders above the other blue comps, who knows. As for me, I will have to give this a thorough run-through before fully embracing this fancy box.

It's High Dollar

Like I mentioned earlier. There were two Bass comps that were paraded around at NAMM this year. This one and the EHX Bass Preacher. The biggest difference between the two is the price. The Boss is twice the price of the EHX. Is it Twice as nice? I don't know, but it is sparklier.

Conclusion

Given our options with Bass Comps, it would take a lot for me to endorse this option. I am a Ross/Dyna comp guy. The Compressors that Boss have in their line have done less than impress me. The Soul Preacher is more my speed. The cost is another factor. It would have to beat the cheaper option hands-down to warrant such a cost. Yes, this pedal has some sparkle, but is that worth the extra cost? No... no it's not.



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Saturday, February 6, 2016

Ugly Truth: Electro Harmonix Bass Preacher

This year at NAMM we saw a lot of new products. One standout pedal came from Electro Harmonix. They've taken their regular Soul Preacher compressor/sustainer and tweaked it to work with a bass rig. Hearing the samples form EHX, this pedal seems to help quite a bit. Being a part-time bass play, I see the need to have some compression in your rig. Sometimes a 'guitar' compressor doesn't compliment your tone. This pedal seems to well though out. At least it seems that way.

It's Simple

Two knobs and a switch. It borrows a lot from the Soul Preacher in this respect. This is one of those pedals that you use like a tool. It doesn't make a flashy difference that you use to make yourself standout. It just help reign in those frequencies that either get lost or overpower others. It may be a little too simple though. The Attack switch could have been a knob. This would allow for a varying degree of attack rather than the three presets that EHX have elected to include.

It's A Bit Of A Yawn

Compressors are not as sexy as your dirt or other effects. This is why many people don't start with or even get around to buying one until they play in a context (a band) where one can be extremely helpful. I'm not saying that you don't need a comp, I'm just saying that you might not notice everything one does until you start mixing it up with a group. Ever start playing with your friends and you can hear yourself, but if you turn up, then you're 'too loud'. A comp can be your friend, but it's your studious non-partying friend.

It Might Just Be A Re-Vamp Of The Soul Preacher

We've seen this before with the Soul Food. (lots of soul in these pedals...) The Soul Food is the very popular 'Klon' clone. EHX brought out the Bass Soul Food after selling tons of the standard Soul Food. There is a good bit of difference in the Bass Soul Food and the original, but not enough to warrant everyone dropping the original for the Bass Soul Food. This might be the case with the Bass Soul Preacher. Then again it might not. The Bass SF didn't have as much gain on tap and includes a -10db cut for active pickups. This is pretty useless for guitar (unless you run active pickups, I guess...) The Mix knob isn't 'the bee's knees' either. So unless you just get too much gain out of your SF and like the idea of a blending option, or you run active pickups, then just stick the the standard issue SF. Likewise, if you have a Soul Preacher and dig it, maybe you don't need to run out and replace it with the Bass Soul Preacher just yet.

Conclusion 

So if you are a bass player in need of a Comp, then you should check this one out. Everything I've heard from this pedal has been good stuff. Even if you are a guitar player checking out a Compressor Sustainer, then you should put this one in your 'maybe' pile. Of course this one isn't the only Bass Compressor to come out at NAMM this year.



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