here is the mad man pedal!
first off, i have to say that this pedal is for the patient! this isn't a simple mxr carbon copy, ad-9, guyatone md2, or practically anything else! this is a delay unit that if fell onto any of your feet and you pressed it on youd be like
. it's a very unique pedal. for instance, with the feedback all the way up, the decay all the way down, and the coarse all the way up i can get a great great great distortion! i really mean it! it sounds killer! with these settings you would have never thought it's a delay! at times i'm like grrrrr (scratching head) and i want to achieve a certain echo and it's tough to dial in but once i do it's just pure pure echo delayish heaven.
here's an email i received from pete describing the controls:
> Hey Chris,
> no problem. I'm happy to answer your questions. It is getting late
> though :-) so I'm going to sleep soon. I can answer your questions in
> more detail tomorrow.
>
> The drone lab is a lot of fun. I'm gonna try to design a model I can
> sell for $350.. I'm not sure if I can, but I'm gonna try. If I can
> keep the price down I think they'll sell pretty well. it's a lot of
> sound crammed in one little box.
>
> The bender is not a clone. It's a very analog style/sounding echo in
> a digital package. meaning it sounds warm like an analog echo, but it
> does some really crazy digital wierdness when you turn the pitch
> wayyyy down. I'm basically exploiting the limitations of the
> circuitry and pushing it beyond. The distortion/feedback feature
> along with the crazy pitch tweaking is where the bender really strays
> from all other echos. The distortion is a pretty extreme effect. it
> goes from clean to distorted to a deep ring mod style effect. So the
> bender is an echo, a really rich distortion pedal, a feedback ringmod-
> esque effect pedal and a weird pulsing tone generator (when you turn
> the pitch way down). It can hold it's own as a stand alone sound
> generator as well as a clean, classy echo.
>
> The controls are coarse and fine tune pitch, decay, wet volume, dry
> volume, and feedback/distortion.
> The fine tune knob gives you a standard echo range between a few
> milliseconds and about 1 second. The coarse tune lets you turn the
> pitch way down to several seconds... but what is most interesting
> about this is that when you turn the pitch down, the sound breaks up
> into digital blips and noise. The circuit is being pushed outside of
> it's intended range.
>
> Decay can be adjusted from one repeat to endless repeats and past
> that to progressively louder repeats.
>
> Wet and Dry are pretty self explanatory. Lots of echos have just a
> wet level.. I find it really useful with the bender to have both
> since it can function as a sound generator on it's own by using the
> feedback and low pitch settings. There are lots of times when I fade
> out the clean input signal and just play with the self generated > sounds.
>
> The mA draw is really low, although it doesn't run off batteries so
> it's sort of a non issue. Id be happy to make you a 9volt battery
> plug adaptor if you like. It's just a standard snap on battery clip
> with a few inches of lead wire and a power plug on the end so you can
> plug it into the power jack on the back of the Echo Bender.
>
> I can't really compare it to another echo. I think that's the point
> though. I wouldn't want to build an echo that sounded like other
> echos. It may not stand up to an echo plex or some other high end
> guys on some levels... but it does do things that those guys will
> never do.
I'd definitely say Peter described it perfectly. It's not for everyone....especially those who want simple effects. This is a real tester of a pedal and requires lots of time and patience. I just need to find some time
As for availability: These things are rare. I got the last one in his V1 batch. Someone bailed out and I was next in line. Peter says he's going to make a V2 with the plan to mass produce them in a smaller enclosure without hand applied graphics (Talking about graphics, the vinyl job on this pedal is sickkkkkk - Peter is a great artist...I believe he's done some murals at Urban Outfitters out by NY where he is stationed). Anyways, Pete's a nice guy, his creations cost big $, and his effects are not for everyone, but for those who are interested you should definitely give it a shot.
Dools: I'm still getting used to the decay knob....with it cranked i get endless repeats...but in a weird reverse echo at times. when its a bit low thats where I can get some really nice usable echo sounds especially when the coarse is cranked, feedback is low, and wet/dry are set up accordingly. It's a tough unit to explain....it's more of a test, hear, and understand type of pedal
