Artec opinion? Anyone?

[hoffmann]

Hey guys!!

I was looking through the web these days to find good and not expensive phaser and delay pedals and I came across the Artec ones.

Anyone experienced them before? I had a look on youtube, it looks and sounds good to me but some sellers told me they sounded cheap, although they had none...

[Jimbob Jones]

At that price, it's worth a try! I've tried a couple of old, old Artec pedals and they were good, considering how cheap they were. You're never going to get mindblowingly good sounds from a new pedal that cheap, but you may just find a setting you like, which makes it worth the cash IMO.

[RCCollins]

i've owned their parametric eq pedal a couple times. there's nothing noticeably cheap about it.

one thing to keep in mind about the artec "analog delay" though - it isn't an analog delay at all, but an analog modeling delay. i guess the difference doesn't translate well in korean

[DerHoggz]

I have the 8-band bass eq and it does what it is supposed to. Sturdy construction, but the battery door seems a bit loose. Also, though it is advertised as true-bypass it is actually buffered.

[FilterFunk]

I had the phaser; it sounds pretty good. Digital, but good. Just wasn't warm enough for me.

[hoffmann]

thanks for the replies guys, I think I am going to check these!

[Meddle]

I have two Artec pedals, the deluxe analogue delay and the parametric bass EQ/tuner.

The bass eq is pretty good, and the tuner function is also a good mute for swapping instruments quietly.

I would say neither pedal was exactly what I was expecting. The delay is very idiosyncratic and prone to oscillation once the repeats knob gets past 2 o'clock. On lower settings hard playing can cause oscillation to happen. The balance between repeats and oscillation is difficult to dial in at times. The 'tone' control seems passive, and only applies to the repeats. This is good for getting a nice maestro echoplex tone, and with the tone right down the echoes will drive any overdrive quite hard.

I use the delay before overdrive as a basic noise source, or for really grungy delays. I usually run a clean digital delay after the overdrive, so I can balance oldschool oscillation delays with clean digital to make a 3D sound.

One thing to watch out for is the bypass. It said true bypass on the delay, and I have found that if you are running a lot of pedals in a long chain the artec can experience volume drops when switched off. All the high frequencies get lost as well, which sucks. Switch on the pedal and BOOM your volume hikes and your trebles are back again. Strange.

[DerHoggz]

The bypass is a buffered one.

[hoffmann]

Sorry English is not my mothertong, what do you mean by "buffered"??

[tony_clifton]

A buffer changes impedance, which makes the signal less prone to signal loss. A little bit like what a DI does - it changes impedance so it can safely go trough the long cable to the mixing desk.

But in (cheap) pedals - it might as well lose some of the highs.

[DerHoggz]

Actually, I was wrong. It is a crappy bypass, for some reason it didn't pass signal without power the first time, but then it did later.

[tony_clifton]

About the bypass - the AB box pops every now and then when you hit the button.

[RCCollins]

Originally Posted by tony_clifton

A buffer changes impedance, which makes the signal less prone to signal loss. A little bit like what a DI does - it changes impedance so it can safely go trough the long cable to the mixing desk.

But in (cheap) pedals - it might as well lose some of the highs.

uhhhhh... actually, a buffer prevents signal loss that would degrade your highs. if anything, i find that a buffer (in, ay, a Boss pedal) PRESERVES the highs in my signal more than my liking... but this is perhaps an issue for another thread.

Originally Posted by tony_clifton

About the bypass - the AB box pops every now and then when you hit the button.

hmmm... sounds like it might be true bypass after all!

[Meddle]

My Artec delay pedal does not preserve the highs.

[RCCollins]

Originally Posted by Meddle

My Artec delay pedal does not preserve the highs.

are you talking about the dry sound, or the repeats? the repeats on that delay SHOULD be dark, because it's supposed to sound like an analog delay (most of which are quite dark sounding)

[DerHoggz]

The switch is only a dpdt, so unless they are working some kind of dark magic like Voodoo Labs (hehe, punny) with an optoisolator it isn't going to disconnect both sides of the circuit.

I'll have to trace it out to determine if it is true bypass.