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Worst pedal you have played?
- Thread starter mitchellprice
- Start date
i disliked behringer ble100 after a while, before that i didnt notice or care about it and was glad having some pedal! 
Agreed - Boss should quarantine that thing and put it out of it's misery.
Quickest turn around also. Bought, tried, sold in less than 48hrs.
Not technically a pedal, but the Behringer Bass V-amp was a total waste of money for me. It sounded ok at best (Terrible overdrive and fuzz sounds), had terrible latency issues when changing patches, was inconvenient to use and ended up freaking out and garbling all my presets every few minutes.
- Sep 16, 2008
- 874
- 7
- Disclosures
- Master Luthier: Ironclad Bass Guitars
Comes to a three way tie:
Boss SYB-3 Bass Synthesizer, tracking was a nightmare, didn't really have any 'usable' effects
Digitech Bass Squeeze, As much as I love most Digitech pedals, this is the one exception. Sucked away all my tone and volume, turned me off to pedalboard compressors
Behringer VT911 Vintage Tube Overdrive, Pretty much just a blurry mess of noise and not-so-pleasant tube breakup. Sure it may have a tube in it, but either way, it just sounds bad
Boss SYB-3 Bass Synthesizer, tracking was a nightmare, didn't really have any 'usable' effects
Digitech Bass Squeeze, As much as I love most Digitech pedals, this is the one exception. Sucked away all my tone and volume, turned me off to pedalboard compressors
Behringer VT911 Vintage Tube Overdrive, Pretty much just a blurry mess of noise and not-so-pleasant tube breakup. Sure it may have a tube in it, but either way, it just sounds bad
Its hard to tell which one, so i will make top:
1. Odb3. Was my first dirt, and even then, when i didnt had anything to compare it to, i didnt liked it. Used it as feedback pedal, then gave to my friend, he likes it...
2. EH Tube LPB. It is not preamp or booster and actually it barelly can be called overdrive. All it did, was compressing the tone till it started to "simulate blown speaker overdrive". At least on bass, never tried it on guitar. Does the transistor LPB does the same?
3. Dunlop 105q bass wah. Ok, i am big fan of envelope filters, always liked how sounds wah on bass, but this pedal was total "***???" when i tried it. Actually it sounded pretty good, q control gave good impression of versatility, but the pedal itself killed all my gas for it. Sweep was so small, that you barely can get any sound in-between. I couldnt get anything out of pedal in about 15 minutes, though i have had experience with wah pedals previosly, and actually good experience. Oh, and that switching system for sure is hi-tech, but lame.
Well, these are worst 3 pedals i have tried/had. Funny thing is, ODB-3 sounds very good on guitar, i guess tube LPB also would sound good on guitar, well, at least for fans of D. Gilmour
And 105Q has potential, but it needs rehousing into better pedal and normal switch. Yes, i like to rest my feet on expression/volume pedals sometimes
1. Odb3. Was my first dirt, and even then, when i didnt had anything to compare it to, i didnt liked it. Used it as feedback pedal, then gave to my friend, he likes it...
2. EH Tube LPB. It is not preamp or booster and actually it barelly can be called overdrive. All it did, was compressing the tone till it started to "simulate blown speaker overdrive". At least on bass, never tried it on guitar. Does the transistor LPB does the same?
3. Dunlop 105q bass wah. Ok, i am big fan of envelope filters, always liked how sounds wah on bass, but this pedal was total "***???" when i tried it. Actually it sounded pretty good, q control gave good impression of versatility, but the pedal itself killed all my gas for it. Sweep was so small, that you barely can get any sound in-between. I couldnt get anything out of pedal in about 15 minutes, though i have had experience with wah pedals previosly, and actually good experience. Oh, and that switching system for sure is hi-tech, but lame.
Well, these are worst 3 pedals i have tried/had. Funny thing is, ODB-3 sounds very good on guitar, i guess tube LPB also would sound good on guitar, well, at least for fans of D. Gilmour
And 105Q has potential, but it needs rehousing into better pedal and normal switch. Yes, i like to rest my feet on expression/volume pedals sometimes
The Arion is really bad. No madder what you put in there, out comes a weak transistor-radio-like noise. The worst pedal ive tried so far.
Oh, how could i forget Boss SYB3/5 and Ibanez synth wah. Terrible tracking, poor quality sounds and many questions about the use. Got the BMS this monday, it is almost all i could ever need from synth pedal.
Another vote for the ODB3, just awful, It was the first pedal I had so I didn't really appreciate it at the time, but I bought a russian muff a few months later and was in relative heaven, then ODB3 then became a sacrifical lamb for soldering practice and experimenting with modding
Haven't had any other really bad ones, I was underwhelmed with the FM-4, but definitley not the worst pedal ever, really didn't like the phase 90 eitheir, one knob pedals aren't for me
Haven't had any other really bad ones, I was underwhelmed with the FM-4, but definitley not the worst pedal ever, really didn't like the phase 90 eitheir, one knob pedals aren't for me
Granted, it's a guitar pedal but the MXR Double Shot od/distortion pedal was completely unusable. The Dimebag pedal was just as bad. Muddy low end and the high end was like sticking a needle in your eardrum. 
Akai Unibass for me, the "guitar simulation" sounded super artificial and cheesy, I guess it might've sounded better if I'd routed the "wet" signal through a guitar amp but that was way more effort than I'd liked. Sold it on ebay -- and the highest bidder decided to plunk down more cash than I'd paid for it, which was nice.
DOD Overdrive 250: supposed to work well with bass, but it turned out to be totally unusable to me as the low end loss was extremely noticeable, even at really low distortion levels. Gave the thing to my guitarist, I think he doesn't like it either.
I like my Zoom B2, by the way, but then again I use none of the presets, all my patches are custom-made so they fit in with my band's music.
DOD Overdrive 250: supposed to work well with bass, but it turned out to be totally unusable to me as the low end loss was extremely noticeable, even at really low distortion levels. Gave the thing to my guitarist, I think he doesn't like it either.
I like my Zoom B2, by the way, but then again I use none of the presets, all my patches are custom-made so they fit in with my band's music.
I have this pedal, It realy does sound like waves crashing down following every note.
I also had the comptortion that I used for bass, this one sounds like a typhon following every note.
the worst? darn because i have a big list of pedals that i do not like or did not work for me.
i have a three way tie for the worst. ODB-3(oh you saw that coming), the gonkulator and dan armstrong ring modulator.
all those who hate octave or synth pedals might be suffering from not having a compressor and/or buffer before them. even with those tricks i have not found "any" octave pedal that i am satisfied with. going thru the list and buying/selling pitch shifters recently.
i have a three way tie for the worst. ODB-3(oh you saw that coming), the gonkulator and dan armstrong ring modulator.
all those who hate octave or synth pedals might be suffering from not having a compressor and/or buffer before them. even with those tricks i have not found "any" octave pedal that i am satisfied with. going thru the list and buying/selling pitch shifters recently.
The USA Bassballs mod is simple. Open up the pedal. On the bottom left and right of the circuit board, there are 2 internal trim pots that control the sweep of the filters.
Desolder them, and replace them with full-sized pots. Drill 2 holes in the casing, and there you have it.
It turns a useless pedal into something funky and musical.
Desolder them, and replace them with full-sized pots. Drill 2 holes in the casing, and there you have it.
It turns a useless pedal into something funky and musical.
Probably worst I've used was a guitar research wah, that sounds horrible on guitar too. EHX double muff was a pretty close second though.
Digitech mult-effects suck cause they are algorithm based. The really bad thing about them is the gain and volume of each patch can vary so much that you can go deaf just invoking a patch that hasn't been tempered to match the one you were using previously.
The single worst sounding stand-alone pedal I've had the displeasure to own was the Z-Vez Johnny Octave. It literally sounded like a sawtooth wet fart generator...
The single worst sounding stand-alone pedal I've had the displeasure to own was the Z-Vez Johnny Octave. It literally sounded like a sawtooth wet fart generator...
I bought a Zoom BFX pedal once. It was cheap and it showed. The "best" thing I can say about this pedal is that the 6/8 drum beat was suitable only for playing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Nuff said?
i know ive sold a ton of pedals after buying them, but cant remember ever really not liking any of them. i hate the green boss phase shifter, but i could make use of its digital-high resonance-sound...
man. i guess im lucky..
man. i guess im lucky..
