CHEAP Pedals that sound great!? Links!?

[sleepy_monkey]

So i am going through one of my cable bins yesterday and find this small chorus pedal that I didn't even know I ever had...(must have been left in there when I bought the cables!)...so I hook it up and it sounds great...it was a mini pedal....and it sounded better than my Boss Chorus used too....pretty crazy.

Anyway, so it got me thinking....what other pedals that are CHEAP...that you think sound great? I have never been big on many pedals...so just curious.

Post 'em!

[The Lurker]

The Guyatone TZ-2..... wonderfully bassy, wild, and obnoxious fuzz pedal.

[sleepy_monkey]

Too funny..that is the same company that made the chorus I was talking about.

[syciprider]

DE Cool Cat

[bigchiefbc]

I love the Behringer BDI21, it is an always on for me. I think the Danelectro french toast sounds awesome. Devi Ever BIT and Aenima were bargains in my book at $60 each

[GreggBummer]

I am a lot like you, I don't really play with effects too often. That being said, my main gig is with a cover band and it is nice to be able to tweak your sound to fit what you are playing.

The Zoom B1x is a great pedal for my needs. It does a lot stuff well. However, it isn't spectacular at anything. For the $40 I paid for it used it has been quite a good buy.

The B1x is basically a small effect rack in a pedal. Again, this is not a pro-quality bit of kit, but it does get me by. It is made of durable plastic and it get kicked around quite a bit. It stands up to the abuse. It has a digital readout on it that is woefully inadequate, but it does get the job done if you have the little decoder card handy while you are programming it. After a few weeks of messing with it you become familiar with all the codes and you don't need the card anymore. The B1x comes with an expression pedal. It is pretty handy, I use it a volume control mostly.

Patches: The unit comes loaded with 40 preset patches that all promise to make you sound like Jaco, Victor, Flea, or whoever. After you get past the BS, you can use those as a starting point make your own patches. In all, it holds 80 patches- 40 preset and 40 user made.

Effects: The B1x comes loaded with a dozen amp modeling effects. This does NOT make my cheap Behringer practice amp sound like $2000 Trace Elliot rig- but it does shape your sound ( notice SOUND not TONE: Tone is in your fingers.... in your soul). Other effects include Chorus, Phaser, Echo, Delay,Flanger, Synth, and so on. You can mix the amp modeling and effects together in the same patch.

Other goodies: The pedal has a rudimentary noise reduction feature that works pretty well. I have a noisy J Bass that has a hum- I have a patch on the B1X that only has the noise reduction programmed in it. This really helps the buzz when I am plugged into my stage rig. Also included is a three band EQ (70Hz through 3kHz).

Drum Machine: Honestly, I didn't even care about it until my metronome died last year. I always practice with a metronome, and after it died I used the drum machine on the pedal as a stop gap. Then I found that the drum machine has a metronome function in it. It give you a pleasant click track at 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4 times between 40BPM and 250 BPM. One day I will pick up a nice metronome- but I am not in any hurry.

It also has a tuner (which I use on stage).

It can also be used as a "mini-amp". I have plugged my bass in once side and headphones in the other for quiet practice when the wife is sleeping.

I use the included power cord so I have no idea what battery life is like. It uses four AA batteries.

The pedal specs are as follows:
46 effect types sampled at 96 kHz. A/D and D/A converters are 24 bit, 128 oversampling. (the sample rate here is not very high, but this is not a very expensive pedal).


THE BOTTOM LINE: This is a good pedal for what I need it to do. It was a good buy used, although I would have never bought it new because it looks cheesy. I have seen it retail for around $90. If you are a pro musician, than you would NOT want this unit. However, I wish I had had this unit when I was a younger man playing bars and starting to learn the instrument.

Sorry for the long post- I didn't mean to give a review!

[sleepy_monkey]

Originally Posted by bigchiefbc

I love the Behringer BDI21, it is an always on for me. I think the Danelectro french toast sounds awesome. Devi Ever BIT and Aenima were bargains in my book at $60 each

Yeah, I guess I should have bought a bunch of the Behringer's when they were $20...then they raised the prices $10...haha.

I have been impressed with a lot of Behringer stuff actually....thinking about one of their power amps for my PA. I think it's the A500...

[speak_onion]

Cheap pedals

[bongomania]

Lots of the little Guyatones sound really great. Of course the construction is crappy, but the tone is nice!

The oldest DOD pedals are often fantastic sounding, although they have terrible bypass and certain models command "collector" prices.

[origami]

i own a cheap pedal(s).

although in my rock gigs i try to always use my DI of my GK1001rbII, for church gigs, i don't feel like hauling my rig, so i go direct from my EBMM stingray V to a DI box.

but if they are using a soundguy that i might not know (or might not know what he is doing), I often use the behringer DI (sansamp clone) pedal. if i think he's killing me with too much or too little bass, treble or gain in the house, i have the eq/volume right there to send a boost or cut to the board.

its not a grooves tube brick DI or anything, but it works really well. i think it cost under $30. money well spent! I always keep it in my bag for emergencies too.

i do prefer single pedals, but for fun I bought a zoom B2 (i think i was $80). now, i use it for all effects but tuner (boss) and distortion (i use a digitech bass xtortion) . it seems to work well, and saves me a ton of set up time i had dealing with a lot of pedals/cables. now its just: bass--> tuner -->distortion ---> B2 --->amp.

what i do is have every other bank blank (but every bank has the same slight EQ and compression), so if i shift up or down the effects turns off.

for instance: A1 (blank), A2 (octave), A3 (blank), A4 (flange), A5 (blank). if works like a charm. and i always know i am one step away from turning an effect off (helpful when you've had one to many band beers). i use the B2 for octave, flange, tremolo, chorus, synthy sounds, delay, etc. -as stated I add a slight limit and EQ to every patch to smothe things out consistantly between my on and off sounds.

i wish i would of gotten the B2usb/pedal one, but this does fine for now. i highly recommend. the switches between patches are really fast!

[Rota]

Build your own:

http://olcircuits.com/

[GreggBummer]

Rota,
Do you own any of these kit pedals? If so let me know how well the project turned out...

Sounds like a lot of fun.... although I don't play with distortion it might be fun to start


G

[Jester85]

Danelectro pedal (classic steel pedals), DOD pedals.

[jumbosilverette]

DOD FX25B and DOD overdrive/preamp 250

[Swimming Bird]

DOD Bass Grunge -- original green, got it in a bargain bin for $15.

MXR Flanger. Dunno exactly what it is, but it's small, plastic and sounds great. Another $15 bargain.

Also, I got an original DOD Grunge that I circuit bent into an absolute monster, $20.

[Zappstorius]

I got a Boss BF-2 for $35, Digitech BSW for $50, Morley Dual Bass Wah for $25...ebay can be a great thing

[plastik-bass[?]]

Originally Posted by Swimming Bird

MXR Flanger. Dunno exactly what it is, but it's small, plastic and sounds great. Another $15 bargain.

i wanna know where you got that..

[Basshappi]

Originally Posted by syciprider

DE Cool Cat

+1 in fact all the original Danelectro pedals are good sounding.

[Sean S]

Danelectro Fab Echo

Danelectro Fab Distortion with the tone dimed and the distortion rolled all the way off sounds sweet. Anything other than that and the pedal doesn't sound great, but that one setting is worth at least triple the price of the pedal IMHO.