Ugly Truth: Boss Waza Craft CE-2W Chorus

Boss announced that they are issuing a new Waza pedal. This time it is the Boss CE-2 that is getting the Waza treatment. The CE-2 is probably the most iconic chorus pedal. Many of the pedals that we have now are based off the CE-2. As with most (if not all) Waza pedals, it features a switch. In this case, it switches between CE-2 and CE-1 settings. There are added features as well. Original CE-1 did not have depth. This pedal adds that function to the CE-1 circuit. Also added is the stereo out puts. A function that is highly sought after by chorus enthusiasts.

Waza's main flaw has been that they are a little too impressed with themselves. I've only seen what I'm guessing is the MSRP of this pedal. At 180 British Pounds Sterling it's a little steep. I'm guessing that it will be somewhere north of $200 in the states, but street price probably settling down the an average $149.99 street. When you find decent CE-2 clones by Mod Tone and BBE (not to mention the boutique clones and kits out there) for less money, it makes it hard to justify this pedal. Vintage Boss fan may be waiting with bated breath, but the average user probably won't be wanting to pay more for a pedal that has less features.

I all honesty, this is probably a great pedal. There are plenty of more expensive choruses out there. I've owned a cheap Lyon chorus for ten years that does 90 of what this pedal does and I can't give it away. This may not be the best selling pedal, but it will have it's fans. 

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Ugly Truth: Digitech Nautila Chorus/Flanger

Digitech has announced a new pedal in the expanding line of compact effects. The Nautila is a chorus and flanger. One at a time that is. Their are You add 8 chorus voices or 4 flange voice and blend the waveforms to your hearts content. Stereo I/O and foot-controllable speed feature are packed into this slim package. Not only that, but this pedal leaves nothing to be desired as far as looks either. Like most of the pedals in this like, it has a 'boutique' vibe and solid feel.

This pedal has impressive features for such a compact pedal. Boasting "never before heard Tidal Swirls", this pedal seems to pretty proud of its self. With controls for Mix, Drift, Voice, Emphasis, Speed and Depth, it is anything buy simple. There is a clear nautical theme with this pedal. This leads me to believe that they had wet, oceanic sounds in mind when designing it. If that sounds exiting to you, then you might want to give this pedal a try. However, with all the combination capable of this pedal, you might want to give it some considerable time.

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Ugly Truth: Evolution Guitars; Modular Guitars

There have been a lot of people that seek to improve the guitar. Many attempts have been embraced by small groups of people. Some like the 'silent' guitars that are composed of just the bare essentials to qualify as a guitar. Then you have headless guitars like the Steinberg. These designs have their fans, but they don't have the following that traditional guitar have. So Where does Evolution guitar fall? Will they be embraced by the masses, or will they find the niche and nothing more. Let's look at what we know.

The video shows us several examples of their guitar. The guitars appear to be your regular fair. Most if not all of these guitars look to be chambered, and for the most part, equipped with humbuckers. So their biggest innovating feature is the faceplate system. The neck and the body stay put and the faceplate can be swapped out. This allows you to change pickups, wiring, finish just as fast as you can unscrew and rescrew the 15 or so exposed pieces hardware. The face plates are made from laminate, so you can fuss about how "solid wood is better", but lets be honest, when your guitar is held together by a bunch of screws it's not going to make much of a difference.

I think these guitar look cool. I actually like the idea. But the final nail in the coffin is the pricing. Small guitar builder usually have larger prices. Unless they take manufacturing over seas, then you looking around a grand to get set up and a few hundred to swap faceplates. I'm a firm believer that your pickups are the largest contribution to the way your guitar sounds. I also think how your guitar is put together has a lot to do with it as well. While I think what these guys are doing is neat, I also think it's rather novel. Cool Idea guys.

Ugly Truth: Boss TU-3W Waza Tuner

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn...

This whole post could be a rant about how boring tuner reviews are, but I'll try to stay on point here. Boss has put out a new series of tuners. The chief among these is the Waza Tuner. If you aren't familiar with Boss and/or their Waza line, just know that Waza means you're going to pay more. As with the other Waza pedals, you really aren't getting a whole lot more for your money. Basically, Waza pedals give you two things: final quality control in Japan and a switch that lets you select from stock or mod. In this case, the mod is true bypass. That's it. You can turn your TU-3 to true bypass. That and they painted it black, so watch out, this pedal had an attitude...

And Then you Have The All New TU-3S (see the pattern here).



It's almost as small as it is not-exciting. I don't know about you, but one of the important features of the Boss pedal tuners was the fact they could mute your signal. This let you tune silently, and doubled as a panic button for when you rig has a ghost and starts to make all sorts of horrible noise. But don't worry, this tuner did away with all that functionality. And it can be yours for only the exact price of the actual pedal (the one with all the features still intact). I wish I was kidding. It is rather smaller, but not any slimmer. Last time I checked, the width of the pedal had more effect on pedal board real estate. I guess someone thought this was a good idea...




A Clip On Tuner

All kidding aside, this one is actually pretty solid. I've gone through the list with clip-on tuners. Some are better than others, but most are just barely passable. Boss have a pretty great track record when it come to tuners, so when they put their name on one, that carries some weight. This one comes in at less than $20, so it is still affordable and I wont cry to much when I eventually lose it.

Going Old-School



The last new tuner from Boss is the TU-30. Its a little more old school, and it gear toward more than guitarist. It come with a metronome and loads of extra features. If you want to read the full list of the features visit Boss. This one is probably the least excite of the four. However it does remind me of the days when I first learned the guitar and when I used a Korg tuner. That thing never stayed put and made tuning a bit of a hassle. I also lost probable a hundred dollars worth of then before switching to floor based models. I'm sure that the tuning and metronome feature are solid and that these would make great classroom and practice aids.




Conclusion:




sooooooo boring........

Artwood Vintage Guitars From Ibanez At Summer NAMM 2016

 For the first time in my memory, Ibanez has product distressed folk sizes acoustics. I'm not sure how I feel about a oversea company making 'aged' folk instruments. But when I look at these guitars, I want to play them. They might have everything you'd want, but I am digging the finishes.

 The Line up is pretty solid with a '000', '0' and dreadnaught. The prices on these are sub 800 making it appealing to the serious cowboy acoustic playing. No electronic that I know of, and Ibanez doesn't have the greatest reputation with acoustics, so I wouldn't expect these selling like hotcakes. I'll keep an eye out when they show up on the used market in a couple years though...

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Ugly Truth: TC Electronic Wiretap Riff Recorder

Have you ever wrote a riff that you were really excited about, then got distracted (by a shiny object or whatever) and then go back to your guitar to only realize that you can remember exactly what you play? TC Electronic has got your back. Building a recorder that fits on a pedal board is legit. I was pretty excited about the iRig, but quickly realized that its not exactly conducive for everyday use.


This pedal is smart. With the Wiretap app on your phone, you can connect via Bluetooth to trim, transfer, or share riffs. Your phone can also act as a remote if you don't feel like actually messing with the pedals controls.


The Ugly Part


For the most part this pedal is pretty solid. It has a street price of $99, but its not giving you much more than a go between for your guitar and your phone. Not exactly sure how much internal storage the pedal actually has, but it does record in 24-bit audio. The similarities with the Dito pedal are there. I'm not sure if this couldn't have been rolled into a 'Dito with extra features' type pedal, thus giving it more functionality and practicality. The hardware alone might be a little underwhelming, but the success of the pedal is going to come from the quality of the app and if it can transition into a live-tool rather than home-only type deal.

Pretty Basses From Ibanez At Summer NAMM 2016

Ibanez has done a great job at making a instrument that uses tried and true feature with unique looks and finishes that standout next to their more mainstream counter parts. What stood out to me was not their use of a P/J configuration or the offset body. It wasn't the coral color and stylish appointments that peaked my interest. It was that you wouldn't look at this instrument and assume it was under 3 bills.

 The next Bass that caught my eye was this hollow body with a distressed vintage finish. It's just pretty. Can I say that I'd play a bass like this? Probably not. But I would have one in my studio to show off.

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Ugly Truth About TC Electronic Sub N Up

TC Electronic has come out with a new pedal right before NAMM. The crazy pedal gurus at TC have developed an octave pedal that might replace all other octaves. Why might this effect replace whatever octave your are currently using? Because it can probably do whatever it is that you are doing with yours. How can I make such a blanket statement as that? Because, TC Electronic has equipped this pedal with their Toneprint tech. This makes it one of the most versatile octaves on the market. What's more is that it is affordable. $129 for the last Octave pedal you'll ever need to buy (probably).


So Here's The Ugly Truth


The ugliest thing about this pedal is the color scheme and design. In a cage full of pedals, this one sticks out like a sore thumb. Most pedals are slick and color coded. This one is a little bit of an eye sore. The only other thing that could be said is how this pedal functions. The analog purist with not enjoy the tech under the hood, but anyone who plays an octave knows that they hate chords. Playing through a three-knob Boss Octave is almost like fighting a bear. Overload it and you get nasty noise. If you are looking for that, then you know what you need, but there is nothing I want out of a Octave that I can't get from the pedal.


Even without hooking up this pedal to a computer to unleash the full power of this Toneprinting-beast, then you still have a superior sound octave. You may want to consider a paint job though...

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Update On The Way Huge Camel Toe MKII

A sight that Way Huge fans have been waiting for: In the picture above is what seems like the first from a production run of the Way Huge Camel Toe MKII. Way Huge has been teasing us with pictures of the pedal for months. This is the same pedal that 'goes for' $5000 on eBay. Will it be a wide release or a small run? Will it debut at Summer NAMM in a few days? Not much has been said about the pedal's reissue, but there are plenty that are excited to get their hands on it despite the knowledge that it is basically two pedals (Green Rhino and Red Llama). I'm excited to try one out and see if the rabid Camel Toe fans are right with all the hype.

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Ugly Truth: Outlaw Effects New Pedals

With Summer NAMM coming around the corner, we have some new products coming out of the woodwork. As I was running through my Twitter feed, I noticed that Outlaw Effects has four new products coming out. Outlaw makes effects that competes with the more inexpensive effects, but hold their own with the most established pedals on the market. So what's new with Outlaw Effects? Well, for the most part, it's not effects.

More Power!

 

 

Two of the new products that Outlaw have out are power related. This is a little surprising, but not a bad idea. This helps to round out their line and helps the Outlaw faithful to fully equip their boards with more Outlaw. The first is the Kerosene power supply($69). It's dressed up, so it can be on top of your board if you like. It features eight 300 milliamp 9 volt power. This is plenty to power most if not all of Outlaw's effects (not sure of the power consumption on their reverb or delay). What isn't here is something to power the more hungry effects. Most digital delays and reverbs are going to want around 500 milliamps, so you may have to look elsewhere to power those. But fear not. Elsewhere is only as far as the Iron Horse tuner/power supply($75). Instead of 8-300 milliamp spots, we get 2-500 milliamp and 6-100 milliamp outs. This makes these two a pretty sweet package. No word on whether these are isolated outs, but my money is on not. If it was, then I would expect that would be highly publicized.

Solid Choices

Outlaw are also adding the Lasso Looper($79) and updated Six Shooter tuner($39) to their fold. The tuner sounds like it was sorely needed. Some reviews reveal that the functionality of tuner 1.0 may have been less than some of the competition. Personally, if it doesn't perform at least as well as my trusted TU-2, then it doesn't work well enough. I owned Fender's pedal tuner for a short time. It was awful and probably never actually tuned a guitar. I returned it and bought my TU-2 and it has been faithful ever since (considering the TU-2 was replaced with the TU-3 several years ago, that says quite a bit). Hopefully they have improved whatever may been wrong with the original. The looper seems like a faithful clone of TC Electronic Dito. One knob, one switch, hardly could mess that up.

Conclusion

These guys know what they are doing. I think they have rounded out their collection of pedal quite well. The truth of the matter is that these are affordable, tiny pedals. I've been impressed with everything that I've used from them. The best thing is that they are very customer service oriented. I have connected with them over social media and some direct messaging. They are friendly, polite and located in Canada (not France). There aren't a sponsor, they just make some decent stuff. I'm excited to see things in action.

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