Ugly Guitar Truth: TC Electronic Crescendo Auto Swell

If you think like me, and let's be honest who wouldn't., then you think that volume swells in guitar-based music is just the bee's knees. No better way to make you guitar sound spooky, seductive, and whale-ish (welsh?) than to add some volume swells. In fact, volume swells are so prevalent in you guitar work that you don't have time to work a knob, and a volume pedal doesn't fit on your board because you added yet another transparent overdrive that you absolutely need for "that" tone. (That last klone totally makes your amp sound just like a modded Fender Dumble.)

Hot Take

This pedal is just a reheat BOSS SG-1. Behringer made a clone and this is that in a TC electronic box. All these things are probably true and that is complete fine. I'm ok with TC electronic doing this. I mean, it's not like this is the first straight copy of the Slow Gear. There have been clones and DIY kits for ages. My Line6 M5 has an auto swell effect among the five thousand other ones. Did I buy it for that one effect? No. Do I use it consistently? Also, no. I mean, I do have a volume pedal...


Same Old Problem


So, I have story about how the SG-1 came about. Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is in any way true. It's just something that I heard once. It sounds like a think that might be kinda true. As it goes, The guys at BOSS were putting out pedals left and right and making a ton of money because pedal just love the guitar pedal things. There was only one problem. The line of BOSS pedals had been pretty fleshed out and there wasn't a huge outcry for anything more. BOSS had to come up with a new idea. You see, BOSS wasn't always a huge company that followed trends only five years too late. They were once a young, innovating company with ideas. At this particular time, they were having a lot of trouble coming up with anything. That is until someone had the idea to make a pedal that was basically the inverse of a Noise Suppressor which they already made. So, the SG-1 Slow Gear was born. It worked, but it's a little crude. VFE make a similar pedal that fine tunes the idea. The Slow Gear was never supposed to be the end-all be-all of swell pedals, but the limited run made it rare and so it can fetch a high price. This, incorrectly, gives some the impression that it somehow superior to other auto swell pedals. So, if this is a faithful copy of the original, then we are getting a pedal that someone at BOSS pulled out of their butts when they couldn't think of anything better.


Conclusion


I'm only human. Even though I explained that the Slow Gear is nothing special, and despite the fact that I own Two pedals that can reproduce this effect, I still want one. I wouldn't mind owning an actual SG-1, but I probably wouldn't put the Behringer pedal on my board because I'm vain like that. So yeah, this is a compromise that spares my ego and lets me not spend $500 on vintage pedal I'd hate to take out of the house.