Well today I finally got to visit this vintage guitar/boutique effects store I found online. Unfortunately now I have a bad case of GAS
but I thought I would share a few of my thoughts with you.
I only tried fuzz and a Qtron but here are the pedals I tried (in order):
Russian Big Muff
Zvex Woolly Mammoth
Red Witch Fuzz god II
Some pedal with Sadowsky style knobs
Effector 13 Soda-meiser plus.
Big Muff:
I started off with this more as a baseline type pedal. I won't go in to its sounds because everyone knows it but it do it for me. It lost too much low end for my liking and the top end wasn't as bright as I like.
Zvex Woolly Mammoth:
Let me just say this is one cool pedal. Maybe its just me but I was expecting a much larger enclosure than the MXR sized (I think) one it came in. It had great low end retention and might have boosted the lows. The sound was grumbly/synthy the pinch seemed to control the level of the gatedness (for lack of a better word) which was cool. Turning up the pinch choked too much of the sound for my liking. And like many other people have said you can get a very good Time Is Running Out tone from it. However I think the cost was $400+ which is a lot for a pedal with killer tone yet not too many applications.
Red Witch Fuzz God II:
I think this would make a great guitar fuzz... however I was using bass. The first thing that struck me was the lack of explanation of the controls/switches (one switch just had some squigly lines next to it and the knobs were labeled stuff like "wrath"
). Anyway, I found the pedal to once again suck the lows out quite a bit, while the fuzz itself wasn't all that versatile sounding. Stepping on the other switch turned on some kind of oscillator from what I could make out (think fuzz factory) which when you weren't playing would oscillate at frequency determined by the "Wrath" knob and some other knob. It made some really cool sounds but I think we be quit useless in a band/song situation.
Some pedal with Sadowsky style knobs:
I guess you can tell by the title of this I wasn't too impressed by it... well not impressed enough to remember its name. I will tell you what I do remember. It was a blue box with 5 sadowsky style knobs I think they were, Volume, Bias, Ω, Range and something else. This thing could do a lot of different sounds unfortunately not too many sounded any good. I found to get a decent tone from it you had to have Bias > 1 o'clock, Range down to min and Ω anywhere but I liked it more towards full on. The sound was useable but not all that inspiring (I would probably take a Bass Big Muff over this thing based on Gygryxs reviews not to mention it would be cheaper). Now if only I could remember its name.
Effector 13 Soda-Meister Plus:
This one was given to me as a recommendation from the guy in the store (he put about 8 pedals on top of the counter and told me to try them as like, but specially handed me this one). Of all the pedals this one looked the best. From what I can tell this is an older Soda-Meister in a larger housing that doesn't look like a coke can. The guy instore told me I had to try the chaos and that it was "well umm you will find out soon enough". Looking at the pedal it only had a volume knob and texture knob which I found strange. But turning it on it had a fantastic fuzz tone, big muffish yet with no bass loss (to my ears) and great sounding top end. Turning the texture knob gives a surprising amount of tones... and then I stepped on the CHAOS switch. WOW chaos is right it became an unpredictable synthy/fuzzy/oscillating monster which only intensified with how hard I dug in. Yet I really could see it as something that would be useful in band context (ie NIN style, even Muse)
So yeah now I have uberGAS for a Soda-Meiser.... anyone have a spare $250?
LOL I don't know if anyone actually found that interesting.
Edit: Didn't mention but the store was
www.tymguitars.com.au its in Ann St for anyone from Brisbane. I'm pretty sure they had Mutron in there too.
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