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 :)