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Pedals that (far) exceeded your expectations...

#121
Spent said:
I went compressor crazy a few years back, spending more time on ovnilab.com than TB. I was gigging regularly and the pay wasn’t bad, so money was no option. I probably went through more than a dozen compressors. Despite the mixed reviews, I grabbed one of these and was also presently surprised. I ended up keeping it and do use it on occasion in my home rehearsal space.
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Yeah it seems like a lot of the mixed reviews are from when they were more expensive, since there are a lot of comments saying stuff like the RNC is more worth it for a bit higher price. But even used the RNC is like 4x the price now.

I've been pretty much using it as an always on limiter for recording, but set nice and subtle to where it's only noticeable with louder peaks. So damn useful, wish I had bought one years ago. Hard to find a good budget stereo comp.
 
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#124
el murdoque said:
The Sansamp PBDDI. I bought this to have sound options when playing direct on sessions. It made it to my pedalboard on day 1 and has never left. I use it for a light drive on occasion, but it's also my always on preamp.
My only pedalboard without this has a Sansamp BDDIv2.
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I'm going to agree. The PBDDI is a great piece of kit. Some have difficulty getting used to the way the controls are set, but once set this is a great pedal. I used mine for 'clean' (pretty much flat/unadorned), 'SVT', and 'SVT with a little dirt.' I was a BDDIv1 user for many years. I kept that one on the board for tubey 'oomph.'
 
#126
My 3 would be my 3 dirt pedals...

Cog mini 66, wanted to use it in a few songs where I had blended overdrive and love that you can take the high end and boost low mids was so awesome it became pretty much always on

Mbd1 where I wanted to get a distortion that would actually work properly with my b tuned 5 string... a lot of pedals didn’t like my bass and did that “overloaded attack followed by weird bloom decay” no matter my volume / eq..followed the threads on the prototype and this pedal is just amazing for that “clear grind” sound in my setup and is so articulate

Bead fuzz - always looking for octave up fuzz that was high gain yet still controllable.. had the you’re doom fuzz before this and it just wasn’t cutting enough...the bead has blend and a mids boost and can do the synth compressed upper overtone thing or it can go full on brassy blast wall of fuzz... far exceeded my expectations for sure!
 
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#130
MarcGreenwood said:
TC Corona Chorus, Boss OC-2, EHX Green Russian Big Muff and the VT-Bass Deluxe, I have been done years of ampless with that thing, always sounding perfect...
Now thinking to switch to Helix...
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I had been doing ampless for a year with a couple of pedals and a scrambler DI. When I got the Helix it was a big improvement over what I was already happy with. You won’t regret it if you’re already running direct.
 
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#131
There is only one pedal in the 50ish I have and probably just as many more that I've tried that blew away my lofty expectations...

Southampton Pedals Ictineo

I knew it was a preamp that people liked and said nice things about but honestly, there are tons of pedals that fit the bill. It wasnt until I got ahold of one and exoerienced both the versatility and the impossibility of getting a bad tone that I was sold. It REALLY is the secret sauce that makes things just sound better.

There are a slew of Broughton preamps worthy of mention here as well but my expectations are high for those and he just hits it out of the park (as I understand it, he's a player in the Ictineo as well). I'd be remiss to not mention the Studio One which surpassed my ridoculously high expectations.

There are many other loves from montreal assembly, red panda, pladask elektrisk, and others that have opened my mind to new sonic possibilities but with many of those I didnt have expectations, just curiosities.

I will admit that this thread has firthered my GAS on a Barber Linden.
 
#134
I don't know if this is fair, and not exactly what you're looking for, but I'm going to say the EHX 720. I started using a looper for one very specific application and have found it snowballing into a major part of lots of things that I do.

The reason I'm not sure if it is a fair response or not is that any looping pedal would probably have had the same impact on my playing, that just happens to be the one I have, so it's not so much the paddle as it is the category of pedal.
 
#137
For me, had tons of pedals over the years but right now, it's the Boss GT-1B. Picked it up on a whim. It's pretty much replaced everything else I was toting around.

That said, EVERY TIME I say I won't ever get rid of a pedal, I get rid of that pedal. {shrugs}
 
#139
I'll stick to the premise, excluding booteeq, highly-praised pedals (thus neatly giving the impression that I might have the wallet/ability for such things).

Back in the 90s I got a used Boss BE5B for £90. It became automatically plugged in for pub gigs, rehearsals and even jam/songmaking sessions with the guitarist. Beautifully simple step-on/off analogue chorus/flanger/delay, OD (did lose some bottom end, but that accusation could be leveled at many units then), a 10band EQ that I personally had little call for and a limiter that I definitely never used.

At the time, £100 wouldn't get anything much in multi-FX and no-one wants to watch me twiddling my knob mid-song so each patch was really on or off and it was built like a plastic pizza box, but it never let me down and gave me the sounds I wanted, when I wanted them. Years later, I actually gave it to a "got bored of bass, lost the PSU" kid because I'd bought some Peavey digital thing that turned out horrible and I was supposed to jump from F5 to G7 mid-song somehow.

This thread made me look for the BE5B on ebay just now. There are two, still asking £90. For old electronics, that zero depreciation level suggests it did a good job.
 
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#140
Nighttrain1127 said:
I will agree that every Iron Ether Pedal I got was Much better than what it replaced.
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For overall sound quality, Iron Ether really makes beautiful stuff. I'm a bit sad that I'm heading towards more MIDI and things like my Nimbus were removed for a Dr. Scientist Atmosphere, which sounds good but not quite as good, but has MIDI connectivity as well as pre-sets and verb options.

In terms of features, the C4 is at the top of the list for me. When I first looked into one it was as a 'synth' then I realized it is a envelope filter design machine, phaser, swell, trem, and wah AND has 4-voice synth.

In cool stuff that exceeds what I expected, my Cali-76CB, and my Xerograph Deluxe are at the top of that list. Pretty much anything that remains on my board 'exceeds expectations' because I have limited board room, so it's survival of the fittest.
 
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