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Looking for small-ish Multi-Mod (chorus, flange, phase, vibe)

#61
I just about threw the Source Audio Mercury out the window one day shortly after writing my last post on this thread. The thing would randomly decide to stay on one factory preset no matter where the toggle was or whether it was in the default or preset mode. I'd have to disconnect the power, power it back up, then it would remember all my presets. Drove me nuts and pissed my band off more than a couple of times.

So I put it in the closet and grabbed a MD-200 on a whim. I LOVE my DD-200 and the price was great. At first I was really impressed. Super easy to use. Most of the effects sounded pretty good. The more I got into it though, the more it annoyed me. I found that I really wanted to tweak things that I couldn't and that there were a lot of things added in that I really hated (WHY is that god awful fuzz taking up two parameter knobs on the script phaser?!)

And then the entire small format multi-mod picture snapped into clear focus: the designers have to make choices/compromises in order to fit the form and I can't live with them. So far it's been no presets (BitQuest); putting the effort into software over hardware (SA Mercury); or having a limited set of adjustable parameters (MD-200.)

I threw in the towel and got the MD-500. It had a steep learning curve...partly because you can do SO MUCH and partly thanks to Boss's Through the Looking Glass approach to controls and manuals ("Oh! You wanted to decrease the envelope sensitivity? You need to INCREASE the Input Sensitivity Value.") ("Waveform 1-10 selects different waveforms." "OK...and?" "What?...you need more info than that? You want us to draw you a picture?" "Kinda.")

I was able to do away with my midi controller and clock. I was only using it when I had change two or more midi pedals at one time and to sync their clocks. If I'm just using a single midi pedal for a song, I won't go through the controller. I can now use the clock/tap on the MD-500 to sync the DD-200 and my Dr. Scientist Dusk. I should be able to send PC and CC messages too, but I haven't set any up or put an aux switch on the board yet.

AND TWO PATCHES AT ONCE!! Phaser into tremolo? Yep! Vibrato into a cocked wah? Sure! Rotary into Dimension? NO!! Run those in parallel.

And I'd forgotten just how dumb fun a Slicer is. Who needs a band or a family or the company of friends when you have that thing?

So until Dr. Scientist releases a version of the BitQuest with presets and a The-Atmosphere-style screen interface... big format multi-mod is sticking around.
 
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#63
Deleted member 334481 said:
I just about threw the Source Audio Mercury out the window one day shortly after writing my last post on this thread. The thing would randomly decide to stay on one factory preset no matter where the toggle was or whether it was in the default or preset mode. I'd have to disconnect the power, power it back up, then it would remember all my presets. Drove me nuts and pissed my band off more than a couple of times.

So I put it in the closet and grabbed a MD-200 on a whim. I LOVE my DD-200 and the price was great. At first I was really impressed. Super easy to use. Most of the effects sounded pretty good. The more I got into it though, the more it annoyed me. I found that I really wanted to tweak things that I couldn't and that there were a lot of things added in that I really hated (WHY is that god awful fuzz taking up two parameter knobs on the script phaser?!)

And then the entire small format multi-mod picture snapped into clear focus: the designers have to make choices/compromises in order to fit the form and I can't live with them. So far it's been no presets (BitQuest); putting the effort into software over hardware (SA Mercury); or having a limited set of adjustable parameters (MD-200.)

I threw in the towel and got the MD-500. It had a steep learning curve...partly because you can do SO MUCH and partly thanks to Boss's Through the Looking Glass approach to controls and manuals ("Oh! You wanted to decrease the envelope sensitivity? You need to INCREASE the Input Sensitivity Value.") ("Waveform 1-10 selects different waveforms." "OK...and?" "What?...you need more info than that? You want us to draw you a picture?" "Kinda.")

I was able to do away with my midi controller and clock. I was only using it when I had change two or more midi pedals at one time and to sync their clocks. If I'm just using a single midi pedal for a song, I won't go through the controller. I can now use the clock/tap on the MD-500 to sync the DD-200 and my Dr. Scientist Dusk. I should be able to send PC and CC messages too, but I haven't set any up or put an aux switch on the board yet.

AND TWO PATCHES AT ONCE!! Phaser into tremolo? Yep! Vibrato into a cocked wah? Sure! Rotary into Dimension? NO!! Run those in parallel.

And I'd forgotten just how dumb fun a Slicer is. Who needs a band or a family or the company of friends when you have that thing?

So until Dr. Scientist releases a version of the BitQuest with presets and a The-Atmosphere-style screen interface... big format multi-mod is sticking around.
Click to expand...
That thing's pretty huge, but it does look like you'd get a whole lot out of it.
 
#71
Very interesting Wavelength vs Terraform comparison. I'll try to bullet point it:

  • CHORUS. I can get the TF and the WL to sound very similar in their chorus sound. The main difference is that the TF has a "guitar" voicing to my ears, which emphasizes upper midrange notes and harmonics, and on bass, can make that range easy to hear, but can also be a little unpleasant in amount of pokiness. The WL on the other hand, will never be accused of losing bass when you turn it on. It's got LOADS. Maybe too much. While making it very bass-friendly, it sacrifices a little clarity in the midrange on the chorus patch in the form of "lost" harmonics, for example. Regardless, I genuinely like both of these and could get down with either. Oh, and the Tweak knob on Wavelength does a very passable "Wherever I Lay My Head" Pino kind of double-track effect. Love it.
  • PHASER. This and Chorus are my two main requirements, with everything else being gravy. The TF's phaser is a very creamy, very 1970's kind of Rhodes-y, "Murph and the Magic Tones" phaser. To achieve some kind of sonic goal (so they told me a while back), on the TF's phaser, the dry signal has a LPF on it, so it is "vintage"-sounding no matter what you do. The WL's phaser sounds good. It doesn't get as deep and it doesn't sound as "effecty" but you have the full bandwidth, which I like. If the TF's chorus is artificially midrangy, its phaser has more low-end beef than other patches, despite not having any treble. The WL, in contrast, is oddly bass-shy on its phaser, unlike every other sound it makes. I'm not satisfied with either to be honest.
  • FLANGER. TF's flanger is a very pleasant-sounding, almost chorus-like flanger until you start dialing in the feedback/regeneration and crank the depth. WL's flanger is similarly pleasant, but can get more flanging artifacts, you know, the real metallic-sounding stuff.
  • UNIVIBE. WL's Univibe just doesn't have enough of the lumpy quality that I look for in a Univibe. Terraform's vibe is better, but in my opinion not a patch on something like the Fulltone DejaVibe, which totally rings the bell for me.
  • FILTER. Terraform has an envelope filter, which does a good, if basic EF. Nothing special in my opinion, as I used to have a 70's MXR that was dynamite and fun, but it totally works. I actually much prefer my C4's envelope filtering to Terraform. The filter on Wavelength is one of those ones that oscillate, and changing the SHAPE control to the random/S&H is cool. We like that. But it's not a staple effect for me.
  • TREMOLO. There is a pretty good trem on the WL and using the TWEAK knob, you can blend between regular trem and harmonic trem. Overall, I feel the Terraform wins both the trem wars. The midrange voicing of the TF makes the Harmonic Trem a little more fun and univibe/phaser-like, whereas the regular trem is cleaner in the TF. Wavelength's trem has a noisy artifact, a kind of mild distortion on your notes when the volume rises. WL's harmonic trem is good, too, but not as fun as the TF.
  • GENERAL USE. TF is a WYSIWYG kind of thing, except for the Variable knob which does whatever they deemed the "special" function is. WL works the same way with its Tweak knob. I'm cool with either, but Wavelength has more hidden stuff to access, like all the wave shapes. I told myself I could get along with the hidden features in Wavelength, and I could, but it's not ideal.
  • GRIPES. One annoying thing is that when you power up the Wavelength, two things revert to a default that makes no sense: The overall volume of the pedal is set to ABOVE unity gain, so it's loud out of the gate and you have to set this every time. The other is that there is a Rate multiplier for the tap tempo (1x, 2x, 3x, 4x) which defaults to 2x. Maybe there's a way to change this in firmware or whatever, but in the two hours I've been playing with it, these were irritating. Terraform does this thing that you either love or hate: when you move its effect selector knob, it's absolute (not relative) so if you're on the effect at 12 o'clock, and you want to move one effect to clockwise, it doesn't just move you there. It moves you to wherever the knob physically wants to be, and just because you cycled through some presets, doesn't make the knob follow along. Terraform's other thing is when you move to another effect, the default settings for each knob override the position of the knobs in their current state. Again, this is either a great thing or a dumb thing, depending on your outlook. Wavelength doesn't do that.
  • SAVING PRESETS. TF couldn't be easier. It's just like any Source Audio pedal: you hold down the preset button, cycle to find the slot, hold the button again and you're saved. WL works with the bypass stomp switch, but you have to hold the select button, too. No biggie. I'll never get into the MIDI stuff in either pedal so no comment.
  • NOISE. Both of these pedals exhibit some curious noise tendencies. Terraform has a bright self-noise—EVEN IN BYPASS—when you have a passive instrument plugged into it. Plug in an active bass or turn on a pedal upstream, and it either goes away or improves somewhat. The Wavelength is very quiet in bypass (the way it should be), but the effect noise itself is louder than most of Terraform's equivalent. I mean, look; all modulation generates noise, I'm not complaining about that, just comparing the two. Weirdly, the WL, when the mix is set all the way dry, still has some mod noise (like oscillation noise) that leaks into the dry signal.
  • SOUND QUALITY. This is as subjective as it ever was, but my basic impressions are this: In the Terraform, you get a pedal that sounds purposely voiced for guitars more than for basses (though a bass can benefit some of the time) and it sounds generally terrific. There is a little bit of the "sound of a plug-in" about the Terraform, which isn't necessarily negative, but it manifests in a cleanliness in its tone. The Wavelength, which unfortunately I didn't think hit it out of the park, did nevertheless give me the feeling of "I'm using an old piece of gear from the 70s-80s, not an all-digital pedal" a lot of the time. I can't explain it, but there was this quality about it that I really enjoyed it for that reason. It's because of that feeling that I was disappointed by its hesitation to sometimes give up a deeper or more interesting effect.
What now? Well, I'm pretty convinced the Wavelength is going back. Since I did the regrettable thing and bought a board 6 inches wider than my current board, I may just put a preferred chorus (I haven't found anything I like on bass more than Neunaber's Inspire) and a mini Phase 90 on and call it a day. The other effects are just not as important to me.

The other option would be to actually try a Mobius now that I can fit one. I have a couple Strymon pedals on a little guitar board I made and those guys really do seem to nail the experience. I do not love the form factor of the bigger Strymons (like the Big Sky and the Timeline) but if the Mobius is really well-judged, it may be worth it.

I also get this horrible feeling that Source Audio are working on a multi-modulation pedal in the Nemesis/Collider form factor. Just a hunch, but I have zero doubts how bitchin that would be.
 
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#72
TheLopp said:
I’m kinda late in but would this be interesting for you? Universal Audio is releasing 3 new pedals, 1 of them is modulation. It’s called Astra and have bucket brigade chorus/vibrato, studio flanger/doubler and tube amp tremolo with sine and square mode.

Effects Pedals - UAFX
Click to expand...
Wow, I hadn't seen these. Too made that Astra doesn't do a phaser. I would trust UA to do a good job with these, it's just a shame you don't get more effects.
 
#73
600 Ohms said:
Very interesting Wavelength vs Terraform comparison. I'll try to bullet point it:

  • CHORUS. I can get the TF and the WL to sound very similar in their chorus sound. The main difference is that the TF has a "guitar" voicing to my ears, which emphasizes upper midrange notes and harmonics, and on bass, can make that range easy to hear, but can also be a little unpleasant in amount of pokiness. The WL on the other hand, will never be accused of losing bass when you turn it on. It's got LOADS. Maybe too much. While making it very bass-friendly, it sacrifices a little clarity in the midrange on the chorus patch in the form of "lost" harmonics, for example. Regardless, I genuinely like both of these and could get down with either. Oh, and the Tweak knob on Wavelength does a very passable "Wherever I Lay My Head" Pino kind of double-track effect. Love it.
  • PHASER. This and Chorus are my two main requirements, with everything else being gravy. The TF's phaser is a very creamy, very 1970's kind of Rhodes-y, "Murph and the Magic Tones" phaser. To achieve some kind of sonic goal (so they told me a while back), on the TF's phaser, the dry signal has a LPF on it, so it is "vintage"-sounding no matter what you do. The WL's phaser sounds good. It doesn't get as deep and it doesn't sound as "effecty" but you have the full bandwidth, which I like. If the TF's chorus is artificially midrangy, its phaser has more low-end beef than other patches, despite not having any treble. The WL, in contrast, is oddly bass-shy on its phaser, unlike every other sound it makes. I'm not satisfied with either to be honest.
  • FLANGER. TF's flanger is a very pleasant-sounding, almost chorus-like flanger until you start dialing in the feedback/regeneration and crank the depth. WL's flanger is similarly pleasant, but can get more flanging artifacts, you know, the real metallic-sounding stuff.
  • UNIVIBE. WL's Univibe just doesn't have enough of the lumpy quality that I look for in a Univibe. Terraform's vibe is better, but in my opinion not a patch on something like the Fulltone DejaVibe, which totally rings the bell for me.
  • FILTER. Terraform has an envelope filter, which does a good, if basic EF. Nothing special in my opinion, as I used to have a 70's MXR that was dynamite and fun, but it totally works. I actually much prefer my C4's envelope filtering to Terraform. The filter on Wavelength is one of those ones that oscillate, and changing the SHAPE control to the random/S&H is cool. We like that. But it's not a staple effect for me.
  • TREMOLO. There is a pretty good trem on the WL and using the TWEAK knob, you can blend between regular trem and harmonic trem. Overall, I feel the Terraform wins both the trem wars. The midrange voicing of the TF makes the Harmonic Trem a little more fun and univibe/phaser-like, whereas the regular trem is cleaner in the TF. Wavelength's trem has a noisy artifact, a kind of mild distortion on your notes when the volume rises. WL's harmonic trem is good, too, but not as fun as the TF.
  • GENERAL USE. TF is a WYSIWYG kind of thing, except for the Variable knob which does whatever they deemed the "special" function is. WL works the same way with its Tweak knob. I'm cool with either, but Wavelength has more hidden stuff to access, like all the wave shapes. I told myself I could get along with the hidden features in Wavelength, and I could, but it's not ideal.
  • GRIPES. One annoying thing is that when you power up the Wavelength, two things revert to a default that makes no sense: The overall volume of the pedal is set to ABOVE unity gain, so it's loud out of the gate and you have to set this every time. The other is that there is a Rate multiplier for the tap tempo (1x, 2x, 3x, 4x) which defaults to 2x. Maybe there's a way to change this in firmware or whatever, but in the two hours I've been playing with it, these were irritating. Terraform does this thing that you either love or hate: when you move its effect selector knob, it's absolute (not relative) so if you're on the effect at 12 o'clock, and you want to move one effect to clockwise, it doesn't just move you there. It moves you to wherever the knob physically wants to be, and just because you cycled through some presets, doesn't make the knob follow along. Terraform's other thing is when you move to another effect, the default settings for each knob override the position of the knobs in their current state. Again, this is either a great thing or a dumb thing, depending on your outlook. Wavelength doesn't do that.
  • SAVING PRESETS. TF couldn't be easier. It's just like any Source Audio pedal: you hold down the preset button, cycle to find the slot, hold the button again and you're saved. WL works with the bypass stomp switch, but you have to hold the select button, too. No biggie. I'll never get into the MIDI stuff in either pedal so no comment.
  • NOISE. Both of these pedals exhibit some curious noise tendencies. Terraform has a bright self-noise—EVEN IN BYPASS—when you have a passive instrument plugged into it. Plug in an active bass or turn on a pedal upstream, and it either goes away or improves somewhat. The Wavelength is very quiet in bypass (the way it should be), but the effect noise itself is louder than most of Terraform's equivalent. I mean, look; all modulation generates noise, I'm not complaining about that, just comparing the two. Weirdly, the WL, when the mix is set all the way dry, still has some mod noise (like oscillation noise) that leaks into the dry signal.
  • SOUND QUALITY. This is as subjective as it ever was, but my basic impressions are this: In the Terraform, you get a pedal that sounds purposely voiced for guitars more than for basses (though a bass can benefit some of the time) and it sounds generally terrific. There is a little bit of the "sound of a plug-in" about the Terraform, which isn't necessarily negative, but it manifests in a cleanliness in its tone. The Wavelength, which unfortunately I didn't think hit it out of the park, did nevertheless give me the feeling of "I'm using an old piece of gear from the 70s-80s, not an all-digital pedal" a lot of the time. I can't explain it, but there was this quality about it that I really enjoyed it for that reason. It's because of that feeling that I was disappointed by its hesitation to sometimes give up a deeper or more interesting effect.
What now? Well, I'm pretty convinced the Wavelength is going back. Since I did the regrettable thing and bought a board 6 inches wider than my current board, I may just put a preferred chorus (I haven't found anything I like on bass more than Neunaber's Inspire) and a mini Phase 90 on and call it a day. The other effects are just not as important to me.

The other option would be to actually try a Mobius now that I can fit one. I have a couple Strymon pedals on a little guitar board I made and those guys really do seem to nail the experience. I do not love the form factor of the bigger Strymons (like the Big Sky and the Timeline) but if the Mobius is really well-judged, it may be worth it.

I also get this horrible feeling that Source Audio are working on a multi-modulation pedal in the Nemesis/Collider form factor. Just a hunch, but I have zero doubts how bitchin that would be.
Click to expand...
Excellent writeup!

Thank you!
 
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#74
As much as I want to support the boys over at Southampton Pedals, The Utility Knife still has no mix knob (or similar), and despite others saying that it doesn't matter, I have reasons for wanting to blend mod effects. This may be a move away from an all-in-one. If I only really use 2-3 sounds, it might be better to specialize on effects that are always ready to go, with no presets to fiddle with.

Last night I went on a bit of a deep dive and I think the ultimate phaser for my taste and requirements is the Earthquaker Grand Orbiter. That's a cool box, and as great as something like the Utility Knife or the Mobius undoubtedly is, I doubt they could rival the character or features of something like the GO.

Neunaber Inspire is a great chorus pedal (with a bad name), but it may be better suited to guitars in terms of retention of low end, so looking further. I ordered to try:

1. Walrus Julia
2. Keeley Seafoam Plus
3. MXR Bass Chorus Deluxe
4. MXR Analog Chorus (Gets a lot of love here)
5. Jam Waterfall Bass

I need some serious professional help. I'll make a separate comparison thread maybe.
 
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#75

Man, I feel your pain. I've been through at least 4 phasers (EQD Grand Orbiter was the last stand alone.) That's the primary modulation I use and one of the reasons I wanted something with presets: I could never settle on one phaser sound... deep and throbbing, fast and shallow and ring mod-like, Phase 90 but with the bass frequencies unaffected.

The Grand Orbiter was great. I had v2 so your mileage may vary if you have a different version. I had a hard time dialing in a rate I liked. There was a fine line between too fast and too slow. Same with the resonance/frequency. I'm not a fan of "vocal" phasers. A slight bump of the knob meant no presence or a person doing a siren impression. A lot of that had to do with what frequencies/gain was being pushed into it, but I didn't and don't seem to have that issue with other phasers...as much.

If you none of the individual options work out and you decide to go the Mobius route, take a look at the MD-500. I looked into the Mobius and went the Boss route (mostly because of the comparison below) and I'm really thrilled.

Guitar Pedal X - GPX Blog - Boss MD-500 vs Strymon Mobius - including full list of MD-500 Presets

The article is guitar specific, but the pedal is made for guitar and bass so you don't need to worry about that.

I'm not going into depth on the effects... there are just too many and I'm reticent because sometimes my word hole and my ear hole don't sync up when trying to describe something as taste specific as an effect.

If you're interested down the road and have questions, I'll happily answer any. If you want specific sound clips, I can probably swing that too (skill limitations will apply.)
 
Last edited:
#76
Deleted member 334481 said:
Man, I feel your pain. I've been through at least 4 phasers (EQD Grand Orbiter was the last stand alone.) That's the primary modulation I use and one of the reasons I wanted something with presets: I could never settle on one phaser sound... deep and throbbing, fast and shallow and ring mod-like, Phase 90 but with the bass frequencies unaffected.

The Grand Orbiter was great. I had v2 so your mileage may vary if you have a different version. I had a hard time dialing in a rate I liked. There was a fine line between too fast and too slow. Same with the resonance/frequency. I'm not a fan of "vocal" phasers. A slight bump of the knob meant no presence or a person doing a siren impression. A lot of that had to do with what frequencies/gain was being pushed into it, but I didn't and don't seem to have that issue with other phasers...as much.

If you none of the individual options work out and you decide to go the Mobius route, take a look at the MD-500. I looked into the Mobius and went the Boss route (mostly because of the comparison below) and I'm really thrilled.

Guitar Pedal X - GPX Blog - Boss MD-500 vs Strymon Mobius - including full list of MD-500 Presets

The article is guitar specific, but the pedal is made for guitar and bass so you don't need to worry about that.

I'm not going into depth on the effects... there are just too many and I'm reticent because sometimes my word hole and my ear hole don't sync up when trying to describe something as taste specific as an effect.

If you're interested down the road and have questions, I'll happily answer any. If you want specific sound clips, I can probably swing that too (skill limitations will apply.)
Click to expand...
Much appreciated insight. yeah, we'll see how the ED GO thing works out. And, yes, I would consider the Boss. I have never heard anyone say much negative about it (other than the interface, like all things of that kind).
 
#77
Okay, I finally understand why people have been recommending the Lunar. I'm gonna try one. It really could be the simple, small multi that I need, with a limited knob-set (and more under the hood if I want). I don't think I quite "got it" before. There was something inelegant about the fact SA put out 4 or so mods that could all use each other's patches, but were different cosmetically. Idk.
 
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#78
I'm beginning a individual Chorus and Phaser comparison here. I thought I'd take it out of this thread since it's about separates. The exception is the Lunar, which could very well become the combo Chorus/Phaser/Flanger I always wanted.
 
#79
600 Ohms said:
Wow, I hadn't seen these. Too made that Astra doesn't do a phaser. I would trust UA to do a good job with these, it's just a shame you don't get more effects.
Click to expand...

I just watched the Anderton’s demo of the 3 UAFX pedals and if you register your pedal you’ll get an extra effect, or actually 2 on the Astra, and it’s a phaser and something else.

They all sound really, really good. Check it out!

 
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#80
600 Ohms said:
The other option would be to actually try a Mobius now that I can fit one. I have a couple Strymon pedals on a little guitar board I made and those guys really do seem to nail the experience. I do not love the form factor of the bigger Strymons (like the Big Sky and the Timeline) but if the Mobius is really well-judged, it may be worth it.

I also get this horrible feeling that Source Audio are working on a multi-modulation pedal in the Nemesis/Collider form factor. Just a hunch, but I have zero doubts how bitchin that would be.
Click to expand...

The Strymon Mobius is a great modulator on bass. However, it's chorus sounds aren't the best of the breed. They take a bit of time to tweek to get the right amount of wetness and the tone control frequency doesn't do much for bass. The only way of adding some extra bass / low end is a wet / dry parallel bend and that's not so great either. When it really needs is a simple bass boost option or a low retain option on the mix control.
The phaser, flanger, trem, univibe and filters are all top drawer and best of breed. It's just a pity there wasn't / isn't any bass consideration in the functions of this pedal.

Yep....a Source Audio multi mod would be amazing. Even a One series Lunar - refresh would be great. In the mean time, I'm using a SA lunar and it's a great pedal. Via the hub I get most of the patches I need. It's a pity there isn't better Midi map integration. I have my most used patches loaded in to the 6 switchable patches. However, It's half the size of a Mobius and drinks 1/3 of the power too. Do I miss the Mobius...some of it yes. Do I like the SA Lunar...yep. It's got a lot more Chorus options and they sound better on bass...plus it's got a bass control AND a low retain. In fact it's got a 4 band semi parametric EQ and adjustable HPF, although these features are only accessible via the Neuro desktop. But hey...edit the patch...set and forget.
 

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