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Source Audio Aftershock alternatives.

#41
Nicholas Smith said:
Well, I’ve been looking about for the cheapest deal I can find, but as I’ve been unsuccessful so far, I’ve started looking at different pedals.
One doesn’t have to have any pedals really as Logic can do it all, but I come from a live band culture so it’s nice to tweak dials etc. still think I might get rid of the Nemesis. Just too much going on. Don’t want the same mess to manage with the Aftershock…
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Based on your needs I couldn't possibly recommend the Aftershock less. I owned on for several months and spent hours attempting to dial in a usable sound...so much time that it made me not want to play. And even after finding what seemed like workable settings, trying to then make adjustments in a rehearsal/gig setting (which is inevitable) was a nightmare. The sounds just weren't that impressive to justify the effort and frustration.


There are literally hundreds of pedals you can choose from that can give you a great sound and dead simple to operate and adjust.
 
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#42
Hamrlik said:
Based on your needs I couldn't possibly recommend the Aftershock less. I owned on for several months and spent hours attempting to dial in a usable sound...so much time that it made me not want to play. And even after finding what seemed like workable settings, trying to then make adjustments in a rehearsal/gig setting (which is inevitable) was a nightmare.

There are literally hundreds of pedals you can choose from that can give you a great sound and dead simple to operate and adjust.
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Yes! Thing is there’s soooooo many out there and even the lesser known brands have loads of slight variants including Walrus Audio.
 
#43
I've found all the SA products to be a breeze to adjust, even in a rehearsal setting. There are some minor quirks with the pedals and with Neuro, but nothing nightmarish. On the contrary, it's pretty easy, and dare I say, fun. Different strokes, I guess.

That you weren't able to find the sound you are after is understandable, though. The Dirty Trinity (aftershock, et al) all have only 49 different distortion engines, so probably they just didn't nail the one(s) you're after.

I just saw a fun review of an older Digitech pedal called DF-7 Distortion Factory, that was kind of fascinating. 3 Band EQ with sweepable mid right on the pedal. 7 distortion emulations. Might just be good for guitar though.
 
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#46
I think the Aftershock is the way to go. I haven't found a better bang-for-buck OD/distortion/fuzz pedal, with the possible exception of Fender's The Pelt (for guitar).

If nothing else, the Aftershock is a great sampler, as in "try out different pedals". You can zero in on the models you like, then try the "real" versions of them. That said, the Source Audio original, the Foldover, is one of my faves.

re: using the app. I used it exclusively when I first got the pedal. You have to, to access all the capabilities of it. But once I settled on my faves, I stored them in the pedal, and now I don't use the app nearly as much.

It sounds like money is tight. Just keep it in good condition, and you can always flip it and get at least most of your money back. Think of any money you lose as a rental fee. That's what I do. It's well worth "losing" 20-30 duckets to get to play with an Aftershock for a while, imo.

At the bare minimum, it's guaranteed to point you in the right dirty directions, just based on the models in it you gravitate towards.

Good luck!
 
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#47
DwarfyStyl said:
I think the Aftershock is the way to go. I haven't found a better bang-for-buck OD/distortion/fuzz pedal, with the possible exception of Fender's The Pelt (for guitar).

If nothing else, the Aftershock is a great sampler, as in "try out different pedals". You can zero in on the models you like, then try the "real" versions of them. That said, the Source Audio original, the Foldover, is one of my faves.

re: using the app. I used it exclusively when I first got the pedal. You have to, to access all the capabilities of it. But once I settled on my faves, I stored them in the pedal, and now I don't use the app nearly as much.

It sounds like money is tight. Just keep it in good condition, and you can always flip it and get at least most of your money back. Think of any money you lose as a rental fee. That's what I do. It's well worth "losing" 20-30 duckets to get to play with an Aftershock for a while, imo.

At the bare minimum, it's guaranteed to point you in the right dirty directions, just based on the models in it you gravitate towards.

Good luck!
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Wish I could find a cheap deal on one with the original box and contents.

The slighter cheaper ones are all overseas where shipping is horrible.
 
#48
Nicholas Smith said:
Wish I could find a cheap deal on one with the original box and contents.

The slighter cheaper ones are all overseas where shipping is horrible.
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Things come around. Give it time. And be on the lookout for the Kingmaker and L.A. Lady, as has been mentioned, they all have the same functionality, except for the knob assignments.

That triples your chances of finding a deal.

Good luck!
 
#50
DwarfyStyl said:
And be on the lookout for the Kingmaker and L.A. Lady, as has been mentioned, they all have the same functionality, except for the knob assignments.
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It's important to understand that you ABSOLUTELY CAN change the knob assigns with these three pedals-- per preset. So you can choose what the knobs do. What you are really choosing with the Aftershock is what label you want to see painted above the knob. If you really wanted to change it, you could put a sticker over it.

Nicholas Smith said:
What confuses about these 3 pedals is Source Audio's use of BASS on the Aftershock....
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Yea, BASS on all three and in the app is pretty confusing.

Bass Shelf Frequency sets the cutoff point from 23 Hz to 375 Hz. Bass Cut Filter Type (High Cut, or Shelving)-- it's always a shelf when boosting, when cutting it can be either, which is what you're selecting here. Bass Shelf Slope is "angle" of the transition slope. Bass Boost Roll Off rolls off the very lows when boosting the low shelf--making it sort of a hybrid between shelf and peaking filter. And those settings affect both channels.
 
#51
stubbsonic said:
It's important to understand that you ABSOLUTELY CAN change the knob assigns with these three pedals-- per preset. So you can choose what the knobs do. What you are really choosing with the Aftershock is what label you want to see painted above the knob. If you really wanted to change it, you could put a sticker over it.



Yea, BASS on all three and in the app is pretty confusing.

Bass Shelf Frequency sets the cutoff point from 23 Hz to 375 Hz. Bass Cut Filter Type (High Cut, or Shelving)-- it's always a shelf when boosting, when cutting it can be either, which is what you're selecting here. Bass Shelf Slope is "angle" of the transition slope. Bass Boost Roll Off rolls off the very lows when boosting the low shelf--making it sort of a hybrid between shelf and peaking filter. And those settings affect both channels.
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Surely it was a business decision to release 3 pedals with identical potential, giving them different names and colours. It’s a bit disturbing to be honest.
 
#52
Nicholas Smith said:
Surely it was a business decision to release 3 pedals with identical potential, giving them different names and colours. It’s a bit disturbing to be honest.
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If it makes you feel any better, and by now I can tell that nothing will please you or meet your needs, given your constraints and demands expressed;

Think of it as three cans that can hold only 128 presets each, are easy to identify by color and don't experience cross contamination when placing the contents of one can into either of the other two cans if your lil heart desires?

Or, if your purple one gets stolen and you only have the orange one at hand you can put the sounds from the lite yellow one into it for a track just by jumping on the Nuero app in the recording studio because they probably have it already set up and love working with these type of flexible sounds?

Or, perhaps consider selling your Nemesis (no pun intended) to get the £\€ together and get one without the need of finding it laying on the park bench?

These are just thoughts to consider to help ease the discomfort of an otherwise successful product that causes feelings of abuse. :woot:
 
#54
Nicholas Smith said:
Surely it was a business decision to release 3 pedals with identical potential, giving them different names and colours. It’s a bit disturbing to be honest.
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You are looking at it backwards. We wanted to release 3 distortions products:
1) Overdrive
2) Fuzz
3) Aftershock

It then occurred to us that it would not take much effort to let the owner of one have access to the sounds of all. So, that is what we did. Most companies would try to extract more money for something like this, but we are engineers who think that would annoy our customers..... :)
 
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#58
SA released three overdrives with different "flavors" right-out-of-the-box. The amount of sonic options is dizzying-49 different distortions with voicing control, insanely flexible EQ, useful routing options on and on-- oh, and also you can load presets from one of the other flavors-- with only a few extra steps. Disturbing!! :)

SA also released three different modulation pedals, again-- right out of the box. But inside 12 different modulation types plus an always available tremolo. So a person who mostly needs a chorus, but would use a flanger on one song-- doesn't have to buy two or three different pedals. Outrageous! :)
 
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#60
Nicholas Smith said:
So, that the Aftershock was originally designed for bass is now a misnomer if one owns one of the other 2?
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Not sure I understand the question. If you bought an Aftershock for bass, you just use it. It's good. If you want to go deeper, you can open the Neuro editor and tweak it to your liking. It just so happens that you CAN load some presets from either of the other pedals, but you don't have to.

If you own one of the other two, you can use them as is, or you can load any or all Aftershock stock presets.

Also, if you were looking for an Aftershock pedal, and you saw an amazing deal on a Kingmaker or LA Lady you could just get one of those and either use it as is, or edit it, or set it up exactly like an Aftershock and you'd be all set.
 
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