CAE MC404 Wah

Hello everyone, I'm going to review a very cool wah pedal called CAE MC404 by MXR. As some of you might already know, this is one of those wah pedal that has tons of features that mostly are only available on boutique high end wah pedals but with friendlier price. Also, this one is built with the highest standard and could survive Armageddon without a scratch on it. Read on :)

CAE
In case you don't know, CAE or Custom Audio Electronics is a very famous rig builder that designed many high profile artists' rigs with ultra custom solutions that will maintain good tone, ease of use and durability. Besides building rigs, CAE also starts to build effects pedal as well. So far, they come with MC401 Boost, MC402 Overdrive/Boost and MC404 Wah.

Features
This wah pedal features so many stuffs!! First of all, it features two separate inductors, one called yellow and the other one called red; the red one has tons of low end deep sound while the other one focuses more on the high end treble, the two can be switched back and forth using a side switch on the right. It also has a built in MC401 Boost circuit, also with a side switch that can be easily engaged; the boost is very useful when you need to add more low end while keeping the top end loud and clear or as an extra dirt to kick the front of the amp.

However, the most important feature for me is the TRUE BYPASS. This pedal has been confirmed as a true bypass as it does not suck any of your tone at all. This is very important as I mentioned on a past post that wah pedals don't usually have the luxury of true bypass. Wah pedals like this usually comes in the boutique range but now we can have it for a more reasonable price.

Sound
Super nice!! One of the nicest sounding wah pedal that I ever heard. The yellow inductor works very well for clean funky tunes as well on some overdrive parts. The red inductor shines very well on lead playing. I don't really use the boost but it's very useful if you have some volume balance issue with the amp. The MC401 boost can really hit the front of your amp with more volume and with as little dirt as possible.

Still remember my old post about Weeping Demon Wah? This one totally kicks that wah out of the food chain haha! Although I don't use wah as much as some of my friends, this one really deserves a special place on my pedalboard.

Worth the price?
It comes for around USD $150 on the market, maybe higher than that sometimes. It's not cheap for sure, but  you get two inductors and a boost that comes around $90.00 alone, that's like three pedals in one form factor. What more can you ask? It's totally worth it!!! I wouldn't even mind paying a bit more.

From 0 to 10
11. Never been this happy with a wah pedal. I tried every wah that I found on guitar stores, this one wins the competition significantly in terms of price, reliability and tone.

CLICK HERE FOR YELLOW CLEAN AUDIO SAMPLE
CLICK HERE FOR RED LEAD GAIN AUDIO SAMPLE

I hope you enjoy the post, cheers and God bless :)

ELECTRO HARMONIX MICRO POG

Hello everyone, today I'm going to talk about Micro POG. It's a very unique pedal that can generates octave up and octave down sound and mix it the way you want. It's made by Electro Harmonix and it stands for Polyphonic Octave Generator.

Electro Harmonix
As you already know, EHX created tons of innovations that revolutionize the way guitar pedal sounds. Micro POG is one of the evidence of that. Although the basic idea that it enables you to play your guitar with added octave up and down sounds pretty dull, the reality is very far from dull because you can replicate some interesting tones that sound un-guitar-like. This pedal can make you sound like you play through a 12 string guitar and even like a Hammond organ.

This pedal features a true bypass switch, a dry knob,  an octave down knob, an octave up knob and a stereo output. The way you get the sound is by mixing the knobs until you get the desired tone that you are looking for. It's powered by a 9v adapter and that's already included in the box.

The sound
As I mentioned before, it sounds pretty un-guitar but it's quite fun actually. This is not the type of pedal that you turn on all the time all day long on any song; this is the one that requires the perfect timing to turn it on. Try to turn it on when you play harmonics with all knobs cranked, and you'll get a pretty sweet sounding harmonics. Turn it on with a Tube Screamer during a very mellow slow rhythm part with octave up and dry knobs cranked, you'll get a very cool and rich tone that'll add a certain air to the overall song.

Is it worth the price? 
Comes pretty expensive at around $200, the chip inside is pretty pricey. I don't say it's not worth it because it is worth the price, but I don't say that it truly is. Whatever type of music that you play, this pedal will not be used more than 40% of the time. For me, although it sounds good, it doesn't justify the price vs amount of time spent with this pedal. But hey, this pedal makes playing guitar more fun.

From 0 to 10
I'll give this pedal 9. If it comes cheaper, I'll give 10 for sure.

CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO CLIP

I hope you found this post useful, thanks for reading. Cheers and God Bless :)

RADIAL TONEBONE HOT BRITISH

Hello, today I want to talk about the Radial Tonebone Hot British tube overdrive pedal. While there are so many tube overdrive pedals out there in the market, apparently there are only a few that sound really good. This pedal happens to be one of them. Let's check it out.

The Spec
It contains a 12AX7 tube inside that produces most of the overdrive sound. There are so many knobs; a knob to control the output level, treble knob, bass knob, contour knob, drive and three voicing switches that controls the top end, the overall voicing and mid boost. Each of the switches had three different options, so you pretty much get wide variety of overdrive tone.

It comes with 15V adapter with more than enough power to accommodate the 12AX7 tube. It's also true bypass so if you turn it off it won't suck some power from your tone. The manual provides some helpful example settings that you can use as a starting point before you tweak the pedals.

The Sound
Extremely killer, life changer!!! This pedal can be used as your dedicated lead/crunch channel without changing your amp's channel. I used this pedal only on the clean channel of my amp and it does a wonderful job of providing high amount of gain to the amp. The knobs are extremely sensitive and they do provide so many options of tone that you can use to create whatever overdrive sound you have in your mind.

Turn the drive knob all the way down, the pedal will deliver you a hot Tube Screamer-ish kind of overdrive level, while turning it all the way up will deliver a super high gain Mesa Boogie lead distortion sound. It takes other overdrive pedals pretty well in front of it such as Tube Screamer or BB Preamp to add extra grit to your sound.

The Application
I highly recommend this pedal to those who only had single channel tube amplifier or an amp with bad sounding overdrive channel and needs to have a natural sounding amp-like overdrive that comes in a form of a pedal.

You can also use this on an overdrive amp that doesn't have an effects loop for your delay pedals. Set the amp clean, put the pedal in front of your delay pedal and you can have a natural sounding delays without the need of having FX loop.

I, however, do not recommend this pedal if you are going to use this on a solid state amp, I tried it with an Ibanez 5 Watt amp and it sounds like a total piece of garbage. Also, if you want to use it to boost a tube amp with a great overdrive channel, this might not going to impress you that much(although it can and it sounds good) because you can get a very decent overdrive pedal that sounds as good for cheaper price.

The Maintenance
Tube needs to be replaced once every few years depending on how often it's being used. Also, you have to let the tube warm up before you can switch it on, meaning that it has to be off when the power supply is connected and you have to wait for like 3 minutes or so to prolong the tube life.

Is it worth the money?
$230 is the normal price on the market, you can get it very close to $200 on some stores. I say this is worth it if it's applied the right way(see "The Application" above).

From 0 to 10
Obviously 10.

Sound Clips
Andy Timmons Tube Driver style overdrive
John Petrucci Mesa Boogie Mark style distortion
Warm Tube Screamer-ish overdrive

Hope you enjoy the post, cheers and God bless :)

MY CURRENT PEDALBOARD

Hello everyone, I want to share my current pedalboard that I use for practicing, recording and experimenting. It's actually a bit too big for me to carry during a gig, so I mainly use it only at home and I connect it with my Mesa Transatlantic TA-30 amplifier.

Signal Path
From guitar to Mesa TA-30 amp:
Boss GE-7 Equalizer, CAE MC404 Wah, EHX Micro POG, TC Polytune, EHX Doctor Q Envelope Filter, MXR Dyna Comp, EHX Worm, Ibanez AF-2 Airplane Flanger, Maxon OD9 Silvermod, Radial Tonebone Hot British, RC Booster, Morley Volume Plus.

On the FX Loop:
Boss DD-3, EHX Deluxe Memory Man.

Most of the pedals are powered by the 9V Visual Sound One Spot with the exceptions of Radial Tonebone, Deluxe Memory Man and EHX Worm.

Philosophy of my pedalboard
The general idea of this pedalboard is to be able to cover all kinds of popular effects that you usually hear on any guitar oriented music. Doctor Q can do some envelope filter funk songs, while Worm can deliver phaser,  trem and vibrato. On the other hand, OD9 can deliver some bluesy low gain overdrive tone while the Hot British can be cranked up to a very high gain John Petrucci crunch tone. The RC Booster acts as a transparent volume boost, more like a master volume rather than a gain box. MC404 wah can give you either a bright funky wah tone or a warm lead waht tone with a flick of a switch. Deluxe Memory Man will give you a rich dark analog delay tone while the DD-3 can cover more straight forward digital delay tone. AF-2 can act as either flanger or, with the right setting, an analog chorus from the '80s.

Do I need all of those 14 pedals to sound good?
This pedalboard grows from a simple idea that I talked about in a past post about signal path. Essentially, it can be reduced to four aspects with one pedal for each "tone aspect": EQ, Modulation, Overdrive and Delay. However, as we grow in terms of musical taste and tone consciousness, we usually want more choices for each aspect that I mentioned before. I've been very fortunate and blessed to have all these pedals but if the pedalboard is reduced to only 4 pedals to represent each tone aspect, I can still survive.

If you are a beginner in the world of effects, I wouldn't suggest you to get 14 pedals at once; buy just one or two pedals for each of the tone aspects I previously mentioned and then slowly upgrade in the future. Don't buy the cheapest you can get, buy the ones that sound good; buying cheap low quality pedals will give you hard time in the future, trust me.

What pedalboard to choose?
I'm using Gator GPT-Pro 16" x 30" but to be honest it's better if you can build your own simple board because you can save a lot of money unless you want to buy something more fancy like Pedaltrain or other high end pedalboards.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope you enjoy it. Cheers and God bless :)

BOSS DIGITAL DELAY DD-3

UPDATED, WITH SOUND CLIPS
Behold, one of the most popular Digital Delay Pedal you've ever come across, it's the Boss Digital Delay DD-3. It's one of the most used digital delay pedal on the world. Popular artists such as Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and many others use this pedal to get that crystal clear delay sound with no added anything. This pedal does not belong to me but I'm going to have it on my pedalboard for some time.

Digital vs Analog
As we all know, there's a significant difference between a digital delay and analog delay. Apart from the circuitry, the tone between the two delays is quite different. Analog delay is known for its lush, warm, wobbly, saturated lo-fi repeats that sometimes resemble an old tape echo delay. On the other hand, digital delay provides clean, pristine clear, hi-fi repeats that really aims for simply clearer repeats. Both have totally different feeling although they can be used on same situation. I still prefer analog delay for its wobbly-ness but this DD-3 provides an extra range that can further enhance your sonic projection.

What's so special about it?
You can read all the technical details on the website, I'm not going to include them in here. Anyway, there are many ways to use this delay pedal; it's quite flexible, unlike my analog delay pedals. Paul Gilbert used to store some lick in it and call it down using the "Hold" mode, while Eric Johnson replaces his Echoplex tape echo with this pedal just to simply get that 300-500ms repeats. Some people set the delay time very short and get that slap-back reverb-kind-of repeats; some others set the time very long and get that glorious long delay lead tone which everyone loves to hear. Very versatile indeed!!

Anything bad?
It's not true bypass if that's your main concern, but it doesn't suck too much bypass tone so if you only have one of these on your pedalboard, you should be fine. When engaged, your real tone will get darken a little bit; while this will make your guitar sound fatter, actually some people hate it because their high end got lost and they cannot get that clicky pick attack sound when this pedal is engaged. Other concern includes automatic turn on every time I power it up using my One Spot 9V pedal power. I never tried the using it with battery so I can't tell you if there's any battery concern.

Is it worth the price?
This one comes at around $110.00, quite expensive but sounds pretty good. I say it's worth it and I may even say this one is a "must-have" on your pedalboard.

From 0 to 10?
I can say 10, but remember to try it first and see if it matches your tone. A great pedal to experiment with.

CLICK HERE FOR SOUND CLIP. I hope you enjoy this post, cheers and God bless :)

BYOC TRIBOOST

Hey everyone, I'm back with a new pedal called Triboost. It belonged to my friend Anthony Woen and I am very lucky to have this home-made clone pedal in my pedalboard for testing right now. It sounds awesome, it doesn't price too high and you can build it yourself and save some money.

BYOC
This company sells you ready-to-make clone pedals of well-known pedals such as Tube Screamer, Boss Chorus, etc. The company provides easy-to-follow instructions for assembling the pedals. Most of the pedals are not too hard to build even if you have a minimal experience in soldering. All of them feature true bypass switching and high quality components(ICs are usually good NOS chips!).

Three in one
This pedal is actually three boosters being made into just one pedal in a compact sized enclosure. It features three mode:
- Green: based on a generic MOSFET clean boost that is available around you. It adds a bit of dirt when you dial the boost a bit high.
- Blue: based on a linear booster. This is simply the cleanest among all three, doesn't add too much dirt and colors your tone minimally.
- Red: based on a Dallas Rangemaster boost. It uses NOS germanium transistor to achieve the Beano/Rangemaster sound. It has the most dirt compared to all and you can also adjust the boost frequency using the top rotary knob; you can choose from full, treble and mid boost on this mode.

This pedal intended to work strictly as a booster and not as an overdrive. If you expect this pedal to do an overdrive sound, you'll probably be disappointed. Use it as a booster on either clean or dirty channel and you'll immediately hear some classic boost sounds on each modes. Absolutely fantastic!

Worth the money?
I can't see why not! This pedal does work as what its advertised. A three in one booster is one of the rarest thing in the world. As long as you can solder neatly, you'll get a good quality pedals in your hand. There's a Canadian seller that sells BYOC pedals that are already assembled if you don't want to solder the pedals by yourself. This one is priced at $95.00 and you can buy it on BYOC website: www.buildyourownclone.com. An LPB will cost you around $40.00, MOSFET booster at around $100.00 and Rangemaster Booster clone at around $100.00; three of them separately cost $240.00 approximately and this Triboost only cost you $100.00.

From 0 to 10?
Depending on how good you build the pedal yourself. Nonetheless, it will be 10 if you do a great job. I recommend this pedal for a less expensive solution for finding a booster pedal.

Here's the sound clip of this pedal. Clean - MOSFET - Linear - Rangemaster Full - Rangemaster Treble - Rangemaster Mid. CLICK HERE for the sound clip.

Cheers and God bless :)

SIGNAL PATH 101

Hi everyone, today I want to discuss about the so-called "GENERIC SIGNAL PATH" for guitar. Signal path is basically all the stuffs that are between your guitar and your amp or speaker or earphone or whatever device that will generate the sound. Let it be your preamp, your wah, your volume pedal, your FX pedals, your booster, your loop, your switching boxes, they're all part of the signal path.

There is no scientific rule about how to arrange your pedals

People had thousands of different configuration on their pedalboard. Some prefer certain pedals on a spot, others prefer same pedals on different spot. That really depends on a person's need and how they want their signal to sound.

What you need?

The first step on figuring out how to setup your signal path is by knowing what you need. These are what people usually need:

- at least one 'Gain Box' (Distortion, Overdrive, Boost or Fuzz)

- at least one 'Modulation' (Chorus, Flanger, Univibe or Phaser)

- Compressor

- Wah pedal

- at least one 'Time Based' (Delay or Reverb)

- Volume pedal

People go with rack-mounted effects for its superb control, but now stomp boxes are popular again. I'll go explain how I setup my stomp boxes, it's pretty general and you can apply my explanation to rack-mounted effects.

My signal path

On the input plug

Guitar -> Wah -> Overdrive -> Amp

On the FX loop

Send -> Boost -> Volume -> Chorus -> Delay -> Reverb

This is the most generic setup that you can find. You can replace the volume pedal out of the FX loop into the very beginning of the signal path to make it act like your guitar volume knob instead of making it acts like a master volume control. Some artists put wah pedal after distortion to get more extreme wah sound. Chorus or flanger can be put before or after distortion out from the loop to get more wobbly sound.

FX Loop

One thing that I should point out is the fact that I had a preamp pedal that acts as my amp and cabinet simulator. It has the send/return plugs for FX Loops which means you can put some boxes there that you don't want to get mixed with other pedals that you put before the amp. Usually you put delay/reverb pedal on the loop to avoid those pedals from getting affected by the increased gain signal from the overdrive or distortion pedal.

If you don't have FX loop, you can just put everything before the input of the amplifier or preamp. It will sound a bit different and some pedals might not be able to tolerate the amount of gain increase caused by gain boxes on the beginning part of your signal chain. If you do run into this problem, there are some loop boxes available to be placed right before your amp and it will have send/return option for your pedals.

Try to experiment as much as you can

You can start from the most generic signal path that I explained above, but ultimately there is no correct option of placing your FX units. Try to research different setup and see if you can find the best setup for the tone that you're looking for. Pay attention to your pedal requirements as well, sometimes a pedal doesn't want to be placed before of after a specific pedal because it might damage the unit.

That's all for now, I hope you enjoy my post!

Cheers and God bless ! :)

MXR M234 ANALOG CHORUS

Finally, the pedal that I've been waiting for is here! It's the Analog Chorus by MXR! I can't believe I'm actually using a chorus pedal now, I've been living without one for years and I thought I won't need it until some days ago haha!

First Impression

Good pedal so far, not really true bypass but the buffer switching in this pedal isn't bad at all. In fact, it increases my signal volume instead of eating my tone, so I'm pretty grateful for that. Comes with EQ knobs that you can control to adjust the amount of bass/treble cut on the chorus; also it has a level, rate and depth knobs to adjust the basic chorus functions as in other pedals. It has a stereo option, the second output will carry the dry un-chorused signal.

The sound, the feel

This is not boutique pedal, doesn't have a sky-rocket price tag and it's not really something that people look around too much in the forums. I don't know how it compares to other chorus pedal yet except to a Boss Dimension C chorus. Boss chorus pedals are known for their wide open spacey lush layering effects that bring lots of air around the notes or chords that you play; that's exactly what I've heard from the Dimension C chorus.

But fear not, this pedal is not bad at all. In fact, it's pretty good and it's comparable to its rivals. Just hear the sound clip that I posted on the bottom of this post to get an idea of how it sounds. It's pretty flexible and you can adjust the kind of chorusing effect that you want from the knobs but it works best when you don't over-do the depth off the chorus.

What it lacks

It's a perfect chorus pedal if you want to layer your tone nicely just like in the '80s. It doesn't work well on a heavily distorted tone although it sounds perfect on a clean channel. It also doesn't bring out the dimension of the notes that you play as much as Boss DC-2. I'll try to compare this pedal with other well-known chorus pedals and see what will happen.

Worth the price

Yes! For a hundred bucks, this is the best chorus pedal for its price range!

From 0 to 10

10!

Here's a sound clip, beginning with dry signal, the pedal turned on and the pedal turned on with a touch of delay and reverb: CLICK HERE

Cheers and God Bless ! :)

NO OCTAFUZZ FOR ME, MXR ANALOG CHORUS ON THE WAY

Sorry for the very lack of update everyone.

Bad news and good news, here we go

I changed my mind, I don't really want the octave fuzz pedal anymore, I don't really see how it will fit on my playing style. So with the same amount of money that I already saved, I turned the budget to an analog chorus by MXR. It's on its way now, hopefully by tomorrow I'll get a chance to put it on my pedalboard.

What really draws me to this analog chorus pedal is the lush layering sound that it's capable of. I haven't personally tried this pedal on a local guitar shop, but from the videos on Youtube and from some reviews, I can be sure that this one will satisfy my needs for a clean, lush, wide, spacey chorus effect.

Those of you who doesn't really know what does a chorus pedal do, here's a short lecture about it.

Sometimes, a guitarist needs to add some layering to its guitar sound to recreate the effect of some number of guitars playing together. This can be done easily by stacking together multiple guitar tracks on the recording, but for live situation, this is where a chorus pedal will shine. It's a time based effect(mostly), it creates a slightly out of tune sound on a certain period of time and by doing this, it simulates multiple guitars being played together.

A chorus pedal will thickens a clean sound, will add some harmonics quality on dirty tone and it will help lead tone to layer up the notes even better.

Stay tuned!

Hopefully my MXR will arrive tomorrow, I'll have some time to post stuffs after that :).

Cheers and God Bless

MXR CARBON COPY DELAY M169

I tested this guy on a real gig just this evening on my church and I have tons of things to say but I'll keep it as short as possible. Enjoy my review :)

Another delay pedal?

Yes. To be more exact: another true analog delay pedal with true bypass. Remember my Electro Harmonix Memory Boy review last month? Well, this is actually kind of similar like that.

This thing packs lots of features in a relatively small foot print. It's very easy to use and it has the same size as your nano-sized EHX pedals. The regen knob is for the feedback time, mix is for dry vs wet and of course delay knob is for the delay time. It has a modulation switch that turns on chorus-like effect on the repeats to emulate the famous tape echo effect. This thing is not 100% true bypass by the way, it has what they call a hard-wired bypass. I don't know what it is, but this doesn't seem to suck a very significant amount of tone so it's still better compared to a Boss or Ibanez pedal.

So what sets this thing apart from other analog delay pedals?

The delay time can reach a maximum time of around 600ms, that's long enough for me. The warmth of the repeats also has some unique characteristics that doesn't appear in any other pedal. It's hard to describe what I heard from this pedal, but trust me, this thing is good.

So far so good...

Please note, however, that this pedal is a very straight forward delay pedal. It will do basic analog delay functions, it doesn't do fancy stuffs, it doesn't have expression pedal output, it doesn't have stereo capability, no multi output, no fancy switching.

I personally use this pedal together for long-delay sound around 500ms. It works well combined with other delay pedals and it's quiet enough so that it doesn't create noises or anything. I switch to this pedal mostly during lead guitar parts and it does a great job on getting the repeats to blend together with the notes as long as you set the knobs carefully.

The obvious: is it worth?

Absolutely! Well, it's a bit pricier than a Memory Boy frankly speaking, but still, for this kind of price you get something very good. It sounds just nice, works very well as an analog delay pedal. You can get this pedal for around $140.00 more or less.

From 0 to 10?

I'll give this pedal a 9.5! Could be better if it's cheaper of course, and also I haven't really tweak the internal trim pots for modulation range and depth. I'll get back with more info once I tweak those pots!

Sound clip: click HERE --> dry, wet no modulation, wet with modulation, combined with Memory Boy and Holy Grail Reverb. I used a tube screamer on all sounds to add a bit of top end chunk.

Update: The internal trim pots for the width and speed of the modulation doesn't really change the sound that much since as you can hear on my sound clip that the modulation is too narrow and hard to hear. Nonetheless, without the modulation it already sounds great. Still 9.5....

Cheers and God bless :)

p.s: I will post a discussion about Memory Boy vs Carbon Copy soon

RC BOOSTER

Yes, it's finally here in the blog! The ultimate clean boost machine is now available for reviewing. After spending some time with this pedal, I'm finally able to share some cool stuffs that this pedal has to offer.

Xotic Tremendous Trio

First, let me explain the concept of Tremendous Trio by Xotic. The Tremendous Trio are actually three booster/overdrive pedals that Xotic has to offer: BB Preamp, AC Booster and RC Booster. You may wonder, what's the difference between the tree? They are all almost identical, they have similar control knobs and they're all booster pedals.

Well, they are in fact very different...

... in terms of gain level, sound characteristic and function. A cranked up RC booster will sound like a near-breakup vintage tube amp on a clean channel while an AC booster will deliver Tube Screamer like quality with more warmness; as we already know, BB preamp has the highest gain and can really drive an amp into a high saturation level. In terms of sound characteristic: RC booster is clean and smooth, AC booster is somewhat more mid-scooped compared to a TS and BB preamp have the most amount of warmness compared to the others.

RC Booster in more detail

I said above that RC Booster is clean and smooth: it's not just clean, it's TRANSPARENT. That means, you can use it as a clean boost to increase your volume level without adding gain or altering your tone. You can add some bass or treble depending on what you want but you can really keep your original tone as it is. This is very useful for a clean lead tone where you need extra volume boost.

Personally, I use the RC Booster only on the clean channel. When I tried to use it on an already overdriven amp, I can't really get a volume boost and I don't really need to get extra gain out of it. I once tried to use this as a tone modifier to make my single coil sounds warmer and it did a great job on doing that. Well, there's actually many ways that you can use this pedal to suit your needs. Leave it on all the time with minimum amount of gain and added level increase, it will help to bring out your long-cable-degraded tone back to life while boosting your tone.

Please remember

This won't give you a massive amount of distortion as I mentioned before, so don't really expect this pedal to work on a high-gain situation although it will still surely provide something useful in that case. This also doesn't work as a compressor although it can boost your output and add some sustain. Don't get disappointed when it doesn't provide you with enough gain and massive amount of compression, it's not really what it's designed for. Remember that there are AC Booster and BB Preamp that provide more compression and more gain compared to this baby.

Is it worth?

Current retail price of around $170.00, it's an expensive pedal for sure. But for its true bypass capability, boutique quality, tone enhancement features and unique functions, I would say that this thing worth every penny. Clean boost and tone enhancer is not really something that you may want, but give this pedal a try and you'll surely know why Xotic made this pedal.

From 0 to 10?

9.5. Cheaper price can bring it to 10 for sure. Xotic is a very expensive boutique pedal maker, but for a price this high you'll get something with a very high quality.

Sound clip: CLICK HERE, first original signal then RC booster with minimum gain maximum volume, and then RC booster maximum gain and volume, I backed off the treble a little bit by the way.

Cheers and God bless :)

MEMORY MAN VERSUS MEMORY BOY

I just got a chance yesterday morning to mess around in my local Guitar Center and compare side by side a Deluxe Memory Man and a Memory Boy. Man, this is the greatest delay pedals comparison that I've ever done. Sorry, there will be no audio clip available for this comparison since I don't have a chance to have the Memory Man in my home for recording.

Let's start with the Man

It has extra Level knob to adjust the output of the pedal which is great. It also has two options of output: one for direct output, one for FX out. This is great since you can use both output for stereo kind of effect to get the dry vs wet signal to whatever configuration you like.

The sound that I'm getting is actually pretty subtle, nothing too dramatic or surprising. The knobs aren't as sensitive as the Boy, but this one is fine tuned for perfection. I can see why the price range is pretty high, this pedal is meant to last forever and there is indeed some feeling that the pedal naturally adds warmness to your signal.

That's the best 10 minutes I've ever had while testing this pedal. I didn't use anything fantastic: just a cheap Ibanez Artcore guitar plugged straight here onto the amp. The delay sound is very very classic, you can easily nail anything with this pedal. Furthermore, the chorus effect offers a very subtle slightly out-of-tune repeats that don't get too far; that's good since you don't want people to think that you're out of tune. This pedal also has slightly longer delay time compared to the Memory Boy.

I don't really have anything to complain from this pedal except that it's BIG, almost the size of a Memory Boy combined with a Memory Toy. Price range around $320.00. From 0 to 10, I give this one a 10 ! It's worth every penny you spent

How does the Boy compare to the Man?

To be honest with you all, after I compared this baby to the Man, I have to say that this is actually VERY CLOSE to the Memory Man. Really, if you're looking for something more basic that has the same power as the Man, this is what you're looking for. What are lacking from this pedal:

- Output Level adjustment

- Multi output option

- Overly sensitive knobs(especially the chorus depth knob...compared to the Man)

- Not so natural added warmness(I'll explain more)

What I mean by not-so-natural warmness

The pedal doesn't have output level adjustment, so it adds the most amount of warmness that you can get without the ability to reduce it at all. This is good enough for me, but keep in mind that when you turn on the pedal, there's gonna be a slight increase of volume(that doesn't necessarily alter your tone besides added warmth). It's not artificial though, the internal construction of the pedal is based on full analog circuitry.

Therefore, I can surely says that the Memory Boy now gets a 10 out of 10 for it's ability to almost match the Memory Man. Well, actually if I may add, the price of the Memory Boy is a bit "steal" for something this good, but if you want something more between the Boy and the Man, there's a Deluxe Memory Boy with Tap Tempo adjustment, just in case you want more flexibility of setting the delay time.

Good job EHX for making this great pedal at a very cheap price. Surely this one beats everything on its price range!!

Cheers and God bless :)

MORLEY VOLUME PLUS

First of all, pardon me for the lack of update for these couple of days. Good news: I got my new pedalboard and everything is installed together and it's ready for audio recording. Just need to find some time to record A/B comparisons of using pedal and no pedal.

Transparent volume pedal

At this opportunity I'll review a Morley Volume Plus pedal. Before I even do that, let me first say that my volume pedal hunting doesn't go so well. As we all know, most volume pedal uses potentiometer that causes signal degradation due to increased resistance of the overall signal on your signal chain. That's TONE SUCKING basically. Well, this pedal isn't sucking any of your tone(or almost not sucking tone, I can't really hear the difference!).

Instead of using a potentiometer, this pedal uses optical sensor or something like that. This is great because a pot will eventually wear out and need to be replaced besides its nature of being a tone sucking factor. Thus, using the optical sensor makes this pedal a reasonably transparent volume pedal. I'm trying to A/B with and without pedal and see how much tone sucking is going on: I can't tell haha !

Swelling action

Although the volume pedal is transparent, it isn't really good for accurate volume swelling due to the fact that the rocker's angle isn't too wide. However, there's a switch on the bottom right of the pedal that actually turns on the "minimum volume" adjustment with the knob on the bottom left to adjust the minimum volume that you want as you put the rocker to its lowest position. This will help you get a more precised swelling or even do a rhythm/lead switch by moving the rocker.

Nonetheless, the mechanic moving part of the pedal is smooth enough so you can get that friction-free movement when you use this pedal. I'm still trying to figure out how to adjust the rocker's tension so that I can have it a little bit harder.

Built quality

The casing is very good, the battery compartment is easy to access, nothing really to complain except for two things:

- The size of this pedal will eat a lot of space on your pedal board. This thing is so huge, it has the same size of three small-sized MXR pedals combined together. Yikes !!

- You can't really "stand" on the rocker. What I mean is you can't literally put your foot on top of the rocker and kind of put your body weight above this pedal. It doesn't really have that strong feeling like when you stand on top of a wah pedal.

Is it worth?

Usual price is $90.00. It's totally worth! It's on the same price range of the other volume pedals.

From 0 to 10

I give this pedal an 8.9. It needs to have smaller footprint and stronger metal enclosure. But actually that's a bit too harsh, I can still give this pedal a 9.5 to be honest for its transparency.

Cheers and God bless :)

ELECTRO HARMONIX EHX HOLY GRAIL NANO REVERB

I decided to do a review today before continuing the Part II of the "Guitar Artists with Great Tone". Today we will be reviewing another great Electro Harmonix pedal called Holy Grail Nano.

Reverb pedal around the world

There are tons of good reverb pedal on the market, some come with a very expensive price tag and claimed to have some boutique qualities not found in other reverb pedals. But some reverb pedals actually come pretty cheap to the market and they sound just unbelievable! This one is one of those good cheap pedals. With a price tag of less than $130.00, this one blows the competition away!

What makes it so special?

First of all, EHX is known for its good quality pedals that ranges from overdrive unit to even fully functional power amp in a form of a stomp box. EHX makes the Deluxe Memory Man, the only worthy rival of the real tape echo. The Holy Grail reverb, not surprisingly, is also a very high quality pedal with exceptional sound.

It has three options to choose: Spring, Hall and Flerb. It also has one knob that basically controls dry vs wet. Furthermore, with the nano version of the Holy Grail, it takes only a very small space on your pedalboard. I tried all the three options of the Spring, Hall and Flerb.

The Spring option gives me that short slap type of reverb, very good for acoustic sounding tone and it doesn't over-boost the slap or pick frequencies thus making the overall sound not too harsh.

The Hall option gives me that classic concert hall reverb sound. I prefer the signal to be not too wet, maybe around 9ish, so that I can still get definition of my notes. But you can make it sound totally wet and roomy and try to experiment with it a little bit.

The only mode that I don't enjoy is the Flerb which is basically a flanger combined with reverb, sort of like chorus and delay of the Memory Man series. It doesn't quite attract me since I prefer a more traditional sound out of a reverb pedal. But you might find it useful for something that I haven't catch yet. Who knows :)..?

Inconsistencies?

Yes, I heard that the Holy Grail Nano pedal is famous for its frequent defect units. Some of them sound bad, some of them hiss when being used, even some of them won't turn on or even possess bad switching system. I am pretty lucky I didn't get any of those, but I've seen people in a guitar forum got pissed because they got the defect ones. So by any chance, test the pedal first if you can before you buy it.

How does this one compare to any other reverb pedal?

If we're talking best for its price, this one definitely wins the game totally. But yes, some other reverb pedals actually sound a bit nicer than this. They come with higher price tag of course as I mentioned before. The original Holy Grail and the Holy Grail Plus actually sound almost the same with this one, people confirmed this, and they're more expensive for sure; they offer more knobs for controlling various stuffs though, so maybe if you need to tweak your sound more, you should check them out. EHX also comes with the Cathedral stereo reverb if you want stereo reverb with tons of options and knobs, but of course it's even more pricey!

This thing is totally worth!

For around $120.00, it's totally worth every penny you spend. If you're looking for a basic reverb with decent sound and great price, look no further. For this price, I would call it a steal.

Anything you dislike?

Digital? No I'm just joking, the word digital doesn't really scare me because lots of reverb pedals are digital. If you want the sound of a true analog reverb, it will only come in the form of spring and it won't replicate the big Hall sound. I like this pedal so much, it gave me the reverb tone I'm looking for.

From 0 to 10

10, or maybe 11 if I may add. Haha !

Here's the sound clip: HOLY GRAIL

Cheers and God bless !

p.s. stay tuned for the next "Guitar Artists with Great Tone" post.

GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.I

No review today, but something different.
Today I want to share a little bit of my opinions about guitarists with great tone and great skills. They're all highly respected musicians and most of them are enjoying their careers either solo or with their bands. Most of them most people will already know because of their popularity but some of them are not really famous in the public but possess great tone and exceptional guitar skills. Some of them are my biggest influences but some of them I don't really check them out yet.

John Petrucci from Dream Theater

John Petrucci is famous for his work with Dream Theater, a progressive rock metal band that's currently growing rapidly in terms of popularity and exposure in the public.

His tone is coming mainly from his Ernie Ball Music Man John Petrucci signature guitar combined with Mesa Boogie Mark series amp. His EBMM JP guitar is usually loaded with DiMarzio LiquiFire and Crunch Lab humbuckers.

What sets him apart from the other guys in terms of tone is his ability to get a well defined fat warm super-driven notes during high speed picking with not too much muddiness when using highly saturated amp. The settings on his amp is not really surprising in the world of metal heads: scooped mids. Although he used scooped mids, his humbuckers are designed to work well on mid frequencies so he's kind of trying to balance between the amp and the pickups to get a well defined tone.

He definitely uses many FX pedals especially during live performances to create layering effects. He uses chorus, phaser, flanger, delay pedals and also overdrive pedals ranging from stock market models to hard-to-find vintage modded ones. However, his tone does not mainly come from his gear but it's mostly from his fingers.

Recommended album with great tone: Black Clouds and Silver Linings, Scenes From a Memory, Octavarium.

Stevie Ray Vaughan(R.I.P)

Almost every blues guitar fans know him and try to get his tone. He's a very famous Stratocaster user that really knows how to get a good tone out of it. The secret of his tone is nothing more than his Strat on a 6L6 based amp with mild drive and some boost with the Tube Screamer. In fact, if you have a Strat, a Fender Twin Reverb Amp and a Tube Screamer, you'll nail some of his famous tones instantly.

He used various gears and guitars but his main ones are the Fender Stratocaster '62 "Number One", a TS808 Tube Screamer and Fender Twin Reverb/Tweed Bassman Amps. Secret ingredient to his tone is super heavy gauge strings, probably around .013 and tuned it down half step to lesser the tension of the strings.

A lot of modern guitar players mentioned SRV as their tone inspiration because of his massive bluesy tone. Even gear manufacturers are trying to capture the sound generated from his gear and make it into a box or something. Thus, SRV is undeniably a very important figure in the world of guitar tone development.

Paul Gilbert from Racer X/Mr. Big/Solo

Every shredder must have heard Paul Gilbert's name at least once in their life. He's the shredder of the nineties, very famous with his work with Mr. Big and some people even know him while he's still in Racer X.

Starting from his solo album era around Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, his tone is suddenly transformed and becomes very enjoyable.

His tone is not really the fat-warm type of tone, but it's very rich with articulation and definition. It's good for fast stuffs, chords and blues licks.

The secret of his tone during the nineties is definitely an Ibanez PGM with no tone knob loaded with PAF style pickups, particularly DiMarzios ranging from PAF Pro to the Tone Zone to even the Super Distortion high output pickups. The Ibanez is then plugged into a Marshall high gain amp. He get a very decent tone coming out from this combination.

Another secret to his tone is the picks that he used: he prefers a .60mm Dunlop Tortex to the standard small pointy Jazz picks that almost everyone uses. He angled his thin pick to get more treble and attack from the strings and it really is the biggest secret to almost nail his tone.

FYI, he didn't really care about tone until he started touring on G3 with Joe Satriani and John Petrucci. He now uses Marshall Vintage Modern, Ibanez Fireman loaded with DiMarzio Area series pickups, Majikbox Fuzz Universe overdrive pedal and some flanger, phaser delay and other boxes. He also used some Xotic pedals and he constantly changes his pedals depending on what he wants. Now he sounds much better than he was!

Definitely check out Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, Fuzz Universe and his works with Mr. Big and Racer X. All of them contain Paul's mighty shred-ready tone.

Andy Timmons

He's relatively new to most guitar players but he's actually been around for quite some time in the guitar world. He played with metal band called Danger Danger around nineties. He's now currently a solo artist and has his own band called Andy Timmons band.

The secret of his tone comes mainly from his signature Ibanez AT series loaded with DiMarzio Cruisers and AT Humbuckers/Seymour Duncan JB plugged into Mesa Boogie Lonestar/Stiletto Deuce/Transatlantic 30. Other important part of his tone is the delay FX units that he uses and also his gain box. He loves the Echoplex tape echo very much, but he prefers to use a box to replicate the effects during live performance by using an EXH Memory Man or sometimes using rack type delay units. For his gain box, he relies mostly on his signature Xotic BB Preamp. He used Ibanez Tube Screamer sometime in early 2000 to get that bluesy tone much like SRV's with more gain. He's also known as a Telecaster guy and he also played an SG although we haven't see him playing live with his SG.

He's been respected very much as a guitarist and also as a tone chaser. He tried various pieces of gear and experimented with all of them to achieve a good sound. Unlike any other Ibanez endorser artists, Andy prefers the sound of a guitar with lower output pickups and cool vintage-style hardware and look.

Definitely check out his new album Resolution and his compilation That Was Then, This Was Now. Don't expect anything too shreddy from his songs but he has couple of tricks under his sleeves just in case someone needs shreddy stuff!

Stay tuned for PART II !!

Cheers and God bless :)

IBANEZ TONE LOK WEEPING DEMON WD7

Tone Chaser Class: Introduction to Wah Pedal 101(skip if you're a tone chaser)
In the world of modern electric guitar music, wah pedals are commonly used in many different areas covering rhythm and lead playing styles. Hendrix was among the first one to use this type of FX and this inspires lots of players nowadays to add wah pedal to their rig.

In the world of serious tone chasers and guitar gear heads, the word WAH will summon a generally known picture in their mind; a picture of dark valley covered with disturbing thoughts of tone sucking creatures that will haunt their precious tone all day all night. I'm sorry, this is a little bit too much but basically most wah pedal sucks your tone even in off-switch position.

Okay...

I got this pedal long time ago since it was the only wah pedal available in my town. I used it back then when I was still playing Guns N' Roses and needed a wah to play Sweet Child of Mine. Then I used this pedal also for Satriani and Vai stuffs.

The thing I like about this wah is the fact that it has automatic mode, you press the rocker and it turns on without having to hit the switch. Also I like the controls that are very flexible. You can cover wide range of frequencies (or Q) and adjust how sharp or wide is the sweep. Other useful control is the low tuning mode to make the wah covers lower frequencies.

I must say I can cover lots of ground using only this wah. No comparison has been made with other pedals but the good thing is I can cover so many frequency sweeps by just changing the knobs and suddenly I have a new sound, almost like having a new wah pedal !

That's kinda cool

Well not everything is cool with this pedal. They said that this pedal is using true bypass switching. NOT TRUE. I recognize that this pedal sucks tone when turned off. It's been proven, I can hear the difference(hopefully I'll post some audio clips soon). Well, it's not too much since this pedal is using buffered switching system and it's impossible to use 3PDT or 4PDT switch since it won't be compatible with the automatic on/off mode. But it bothers me to be honest since I am using low output pickups.

Oh and keep in mind that this pedal is not funk ready; it adds small amount of gain to your tone when engaged, so this can only be good if you're using an already saturated signal. If you want a super clean funk wah tone, this pedal won't make you happy.

Not true bypass :(, but is it worth?

Roughly less than $100.00 for a new one, this is where it starts to get tricky. If you really need to use multiple wah sounds and you don't mind buffered switching that's sucking your tone a little bit then this pedal will totally worth your money. But if you really want to keep the integrity of your whole signal chain, then I don't really think this is the best choice in this price. Add $60 bucks and you already got a boutique wah with true bypass switching called Budwah by Budda, check it out. I haven't got a chance to try one, but Andy Timmons(yes, him again) uses one and it sounds great in my opinion (FYI boutique wah can reach $200.00 or more).

Final verdict, from 0 to 10

*sigh* I can only give this pedal a 7.5. What's keeping it from getting lower score is the great enclosure, the auto on/off, the flexibility, the Tonelok(press the knob down and you won't hit it accidentaly with your feet) and the size of the rocker that fits perfectly to my right foot.

If this pedal comes with true bypass with no gain reduction, I'll give it an 8.7. If this pedal comes with gain reduction and no true bypass, I'll give it a 9.2. Comes with both, 10 if it does not pass $160.00.

Cheers and God bless :)

IBANEZ AIRPLANE FLANGER AF2

Pablo Gilberto

I am a big fan of Paul Gilbert's work and been checking out his guitar setup and try to incorporate his ideas into my setup. This pedal just came out by the time I checked his youtube video explaining what it does, and of course it was still pricey back then so I just kind of let it slipped away from me. But I got blessed with so many caring friends around me and they bought me this pedal for me as a birthday present(thank you guys :) ).

Two buttons?

Yes, two buttons, one for on/off true bypass switch and one for mode selection. This cool pedal has two modes: taxi and take off. Taxiing, you can get normal flanger sound that I will explain below; take off-ing, you will get a super crazy self oscillation mode with just speed knob to control the speed.

Organic flanger pedal

On the Taxi mode, let me say that this thing is not your average flanger pedal. This thing packs a lot of organic quality; the flanger timing is a little bit random to a certain degree and while it colors your tone, it still let the majority of your signal to be noticed transparently. The knobs have broad range of controls so you can make the pedal acts as transparent as possible with almost chorus-like quality to the most heavy tone-coloration you can possibly get.

My personal setup is to have all the knobs at the very minimum to aim for that chorus-like sound that I really like. Personally, I am not really a flanger guy like Paul Gilbert, I don't really have the skill to tame the non-precise timed flanger sound but this pedal really makes things become interesting without making me struggle.

4 knobs with strange names

Manual is for controlling the delay time, Speed is for controlling the speed of course, Range is for controlling the frequency range of the flanger and Enhance is for controlling the amount of coloration.

Cabin crew take off position

The Take Off mode really sets your pedal to generate crazy auto whammy sound that will never stop. It will just go up and down like a police siren with some degree of original signal replication. I can hardly hear my original tone AND note when I'm in Take Off mode. You can get down and play with the speed knob to get even crazier slow-fast-up-down self-oscillating skull-cracking auto whammy.

It's a flanger, how often do you use it?

If it's normal flanger, I don't even want to have one, I tried one many times before but it's not my type of FX. But this one? I can turn it on on every channel: clean, dirty, lead, whatever channel and I can have that shimmery effect that enhance the 3D-ness of my signal and add some organic quality to my tone. I don't turn it on all the time though because some songs requires simpler more straight forward type of sound, but when I want something cool, this pedal is always on.

Value for its price

A true bypass pedal with a unique sound and organic quality, this pedal is worth the money. I think now the price is not as expensive as before and you can get it for less than $150.00 for sure. This is not too pricey for something this good, and considering that this is a signature pedal, this thing is probably a steal for that price :p.

Like it so far

I find this pedal is almost flawless.....except that it's BIG. May or may not cause any space related problem to your pedalboard. Powered with 9V standard adapter, does not accept battery power.

From 0 to 10

10. Period.

Normal sound clip: HERE, it contains three different settings: first no effect, second with chorus-ey flanger, third with more straight forward flanger.

Takeoff sound clip: HERE, it contains original overdriven sound with the takeoff mode in the middle, you'll know it from how it sounds!

Cheers and God bless :D

p.s. check out Silence Followed by A Deafening Roar album by Paul Gilbert to hear this pedal in action during Take Off mode. Paul also used the Take Off mode during live gig when performing an older Mr. Big song called Alive and Kickin'.

XOTIC BB PREAMP

Let me start by saying that I am recently digging a lot of Andy Timmons' stuffs. I think he is one of only few guitarists that has great tone. Surely he plays great too (check out his new CD called Resolution)

What is it?

Okay, let's start. BB Preamp is actually a gain box that has unique characteristics. It's made by the Xotic. I use this pedal for sometime now as my primary gain box on my signal chain.

Let me talk about the sound that it can produce. This thing is capable of producing a super warm fat overdriven guitar tone that is similar to a vintage cranked EL34 based tube amps, let's just say an old Marshall. Not too much gain, but quite flexible gain control that can beef up your guitar tone while you're still running clean channel of your amp.

Another gain box? Something unique?

Let's just say almost everyone that chases tone knows Tube Screamer and what it does. Well, this is not a Tube Screamer wannabe; it's far from being called a TS clone. This thing maintains the transparency of your original tone and adds warmth and impressive amount of room to your signal. I tested this pedal using a basswood Ibanez equiped with Dimarzio Cruisers(bridge) at the neck and mid, and an AT humbucker at the bridge and it works very well on all position. The single coils get compressed tone with fair amount of treble, the humbucker gets a very sweet mid based overdriven sound with no muddiness at all.

What can I do with this pedal? What's the limit?

This thing is quite flexible, when you set the gain to a very low level, it will act almost like a clean boost, something that you can step to play clean leads without saturating your signal. If you put the gain at maximum, it will sound like a pushed crunch channel of a Marshall. It's NOT enough for metal music(I used to play metal years ago, so I know what kind of metal tone that people usually want), but if you put it in front of an already saturated amp, this thing will help your guitar to cut through the mix much easier.

Word of caution?

Beware, if you are NOT looking for extra mid on your signal or even try to cut the mid, this box will not do that job quite right. The nature of this box is to add extra mid to make warmness to your tone.

Anything else you need to know

This pedal is an IC based pedal. I believe it uses op-amp much like any other gain box in its range. It's not the one that has 12AX7 or germanium diode or whatever fancy stuffs, this is just plain IC based. It's meant not just to recreate vintage tone, but it's also going to help you get more fat warm non muddy tone that every lead guitarists want. However, if you're more interested in getting a vintage creamy fuzz sound from the sixties, I suggest check out pedals that has tubes or germanium diode in them. They'll have different feel than this box.

I personally disagree with the name "preamp". It should be BB Boost or something similar. Preamp doesn't usually come with true bypass :D...(I'm talking about TRUE true bypass, not just some true bypass, that should make you happy)

Power comes from 9V battery or the usual adapters such as BOSS and MXR.

Was it worth?

Talking about price, I got mine for $170.00. Pricey !!! But hey, it's worth every penny I spent. I personally use it side by side with an original TS808 so I can switch back and forth between two overdrive tones that I want. My personal favorite configuration: Bass 1 o'clock, treble 10 o'clock, gain around 3pm and the output will depend on your signal path but mine is set at around 9am and it already balances with the rest of my signal chain.

From 0 to 10

I give this pedal: 9.5....It will be 10 if it's bit cheaper, say in the price range of the usual TS or little bit more but not too much.

check out http://www.xotic.us

for sound clip MP3: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12709731/sound%20demo/bb%20preamp.mp3

Hopefully you find this post to be informative, I will update if necessary. Otherwise, stay tuned for more reviews. CHEERS and God bless :)

p.s: if you are a truly Andy Timmons fan, go get the AT BB preamp limited edition, it's sold out already but if you check Mike Analogman's site, you'll find it there. Just google analogman :p....Oh, you can also get BB Preamp plus too, check it out, it's a twin BB preamp in one box.