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 :)

TC ELECTRONIC HALL OF FAME REVERB

Tonight, I got a chance to review a relatively new reverb pedal from TC Electronic called Hall of Fame. It's a superb pedal with lots of knobs to tailor your reverb to your pleasing. One thing that I want to point out to you before we even start is that this thing marks the new chapter of digital guitar world that still carries the passion of analog sound; it has the new Toneprint technology that allows you to download an artist's reverb tone to the pedal via USB.

Overview

This thing looks nice and neat, it's just as big as your nano EHX pedal. It has four knobs; one to adjust the length of the reverb called decay, one to adjust the reverb treble called tone, one to adjust the level of reverb, and one to select the reverb mode. It has a selector for long and short pre-delay. It also has a true bypass switch(sweet!) that can be switched to buffer(even more sweet!) depending on how many pedals that you will have in series with this pedal. It has stereo output and input. What more can you ask from this pedal?

Sound

It's a digital reverb, same as the other reverb pedals out in the market, they are basically delay pedals. This one is more flexible and adjustable. I can get lots of settings out of this little box that can totally enhance the trails of my tone. It's just so good and so tweakable that it requires hours of some serious tweaking to get the ultimate reverb of your dream.

If you don't want to spend hours on getting your reverb tone, take the USB cable from the box, connect this pedal to your computer and download your favorite guitarist's setting. Voila, you'll get the exact setting of your guitar hero.

The different reverb modes, all sound very convincing. It even has the Mod option to add chorusing to your reverb just to make it sound like you're using a super short delay with lots of repeats from a tape echo.

What it lacks

NOTHING! I can't find anything wrong with this reverb pedal. It's so flexible, it sounds great, it's easy to use, it's true bypass/buffer, and it's small enough. I wish everyone on this planet would make pedals like this!

Worth the money?

Price range around $150.00, a bit pricey for a reverb pedal. But with those options available in this pedal, it's worth every penny you spend, trust me!

From 0 to 10

10 of course, you can already tell haha!

Here's a sound clip containing different modes of this pedal that I think are the best. It starts from dry to room mode, hall mode, spring mode, church mode and modulation mod: CLICK HERE

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

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.

LINE 6 POD X3 LIVE + SPECIAL CONTENT

Special post

If you're reading this, congratulation, you're in for a treat: this post will cover one of the most popular digital FX unit and we'll cover a little bit about digital vs analog topic that's been around for a while. Hopefully it's not biased and it'll be informative enough for you.

I bought this pedal from a good friend of mine. Back then, I don't really care about my tone and I'm using nothing more than a Metalzone MT-2 in front of a Korg Ampwork with a wah sometimes before the MT-2 if I need one. They sounded "nice" to me but not too nice until I got my enlightenment. This pedal is really a huge upgrade for me since I can get great tones with different types of sound and put them on patches and just press on the switches to change from one sound to another sound.

First impression

I can get a good thick fat lead tone using Mesa Boogie Rectifier high gain amp replication on that pedal. I can also get any other kind of tone that I want, even an Andy Timmons'(yes, him again) tone on different songs using a 6L6-based amp replication. The amps sounded great and thick to me.

The FX are also great, they sounded nice to me and very close to the real ones. The particular one that shines the most is the Screamer stomp that is the replication of (you guessed it) Ibanez Tube Screamer TS808. It sounded warm and clear, almost like the real one. The delays are also nice, particularly the digital delay. I also like the sine chorus FX, it's not too harsh and it keeps the integrity of the 'tune' pretty well.

All of the simulated units are fully adjustable and even more adjustable than the real ones. This is very useful for live performances because you can use the same tone for different situation just by tweaking the settings a little bit. This shows how serious are the Line 6 guys when they designed this thing.

On a live performance, this thing sounds as good as the real thing (some people claim it sounds better than the replicated goods!). Furthermore, you have the built-in EQ that can be tailored as flexible as you want. This totally beats tube amps and stomp boxes in terms of flexibility; you can even get a dual tone mode that simulates two signal chains together with different settings with stereo option available.

You can have around 30 user channels and you also have tons of original presets. I don't find the original presets to be very useful. But some of them can help you to inspire your own particular sound.

So far so good...

I kind of hate when it's time to make a new sound on a particular channel. It takes lots of time to tweak things around and get them all together to sound well. Other thing that I hate is sometimes I miss-pressed the switches because they're so hard to step on, not as smooth as a 4PDT switch or a regular Boss enclosure switch. The placement of the bank select switch is also not convenient in my opinion; it's located on the bottom left of the box and besides the channel select. I miss-pressed that switch lots of time as well because I thought it was my other channel switch; I ended up changing to a totally different sound and I was a little bit embarrassed.

Also I don't really like the expression pedal, the switch underneath it that changes between wah and volume mode is very easy to get pressed. I remember one time I was supposed to engage the volume back to normal loudness but I ended up pressing a little bit too hard and accidentally I activated the wah mode on a live performance. Oooppsss.

Do all of the above bother you significantly?

YES during live performances. But to be honest I'm more concerned about how I sound so all of those above don't really drive me crazy.

So does the pedal worth?

For a brand new one that costs around $400.00 or maybe less, I say it's worth. It has lots of amps and FX units replication inside of it and most of them sound great. It's flexible, it's powerful, it's not very easy to use at first but you'll get use to it very quickly, it sounds good as well(for now). This item worths every penny you spent !

From 0 to 10

10. But with some exception: some amp modelings and FX units do not have the same responsiveness of the real ones although they still sounded good. This will add some difficulties to your playing but not necessarily on your tone.

We're not done yet, "Mythbuster: Analog vs Digital " is coming next

Some people swear by the name of analog tube amps and real stomp boxes, some people think it's just superstitious. After I did tone chasing for some time, I must say that both are true. I think some of you already know what I'm going to say, but it wouldn't hurt to discuss this topic again.

To be very honest with you guys, after I checked out a real tube preamp and all of those analog pedals, I must say that they "sound" very nice to ME. They have that special "ingredient" that spices up my tone significantly IN MY OPINION. I can sort of hear more definition of what I'm trying to express on the guitar and that really help me a lot. They cost more too and they're being used by famous players with nice tones.

Is it true? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Talking about digital, it's worth mentioning that Axe FX by Fractal Audio is gaining popularity as well with higher price, better processing power, more options and "better sound+responsiveness" compared to the POD X3. Some artists already use POD X3 on live performances such as Lincoln Brewster. But more high profile guitarists like Greg Howe now choose to use the Axe FX for their live rig.

Well, what's good for me doesn't necessarily mean good for you or other people.

I've heard people with the real device said that the POD X3 sounded better during a comparison. I've also heard that with some serious EQ tweaking, the POD X3 can beat its digital rival Axe FX. But not too few audiences also said that the tone that's produced on the X3 or Axe won't match the real thing.

It seemed that all things really depend on the definition of a good tone. Once again, a wise once said, "A good player can make a cheap practice gears to sound beautiful". It all really depend on so many factors and all of those factors will be different from one player to other player. No one can really explain what is a good tone. For me, the best way to address this topic is by stepping back to the very basic understanding of tone:

"Someone will be able to judge whether a tone is good or bad by just listening to it on his ears. One doesn't need to see nor touch the device that's needed to generate that tone in order to make a conclusion of the tone. What matters the most is the ear." - Om Ganteng

I personally have this kind of mild addiction of checking out gears to see how they perform and hear how they sound. This "Gear Acquisition Syndrome" influenced my perception of tone a little bit, I have to admit my G.A.S because it's true. Because of the price, someone sometimes said that when it's more expensive, you get good sound. THAT'S NOT ALWAYS TRUE. It's just that person's justification because he's influenced by a very general miss-perception, expensive = better. You have to be careful with something pricey, don't let the high price tag fools you. And from there, the price vs quality debate that I posted days ago will expand.

So by now I hope you can think that digital effects such as POD X3 or Axe FX is worth as much as how you view it as a helping tool to get the tones that you want with maybe some lack of responsiveness that affects your playing; but not your tone. However, your audiences may be happy enough to hear the tone of your digital effects, or may be not; it depends on the "factors" mentioned above.

I think by now you should already get the idea. Sorry, this post is a little bit lengthy but I hope you can enjoy the discussion that I made here and think about it for a little bit so you can apply what I've wrote above to how you view the tone world. No insults or offend intended, if you feel offended please know that the examples I used were from multiple anonymous sources *peace*.

If the ears praise the tone of real tube amps and analog hardware, go for it.

If the ears praise the tone of digital modeling, go for it.

There's no right or wrong :)

Cheers and God bless :)

ELECTRO HARMONIX EXH MEMORY BOY

Analog Delay Pedal

Almost everyone who plays lead guitar can't live without delay pedals or racks on his or her rig. If you are a tone chaser, you would not want to settle for just any kind of delay FX, you'll either use an Echoplex tape echo that costs you as much as a brand new American Strat or an expensive digital rack that eats a lot of space and hard to carry around.

Hence, the analog delay pedals were created. Popular one is the EHX Deluxe Memory Man, used by Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons(YES, him again) and possibly some other cool players out there. That pedal is still pretty expensive by the way, thus EHX creates cheaper delay pedals that still carry the same basic function of a DMM but in a more affordable price. This is one of those.

Basic Sound

To start, analog delays are usually famous for their warmth and added 3D quality on the repeats. This sounds very different from the usual digital delay that just copy and paste your signal without adding anything. The EHX DMM is famous for it's ability to replicate a tape echo that has slightly out of tune repeats that makes the chorus-like effect on the repeats. Hence, it's usually called analog delay pedal with modulation/chorus.

This pedal here is basically doing that analog delay with added chorus effect. I don't know how it will compare to a DMM since I don't have one and the stores near me don't have them in stock since it's pretty rare. But this one, I kind of like it. When you turn it on, the entire signal will get more warmth and 3D-ness.

Chorus, Vibrato, Expression Pedal

I never tried the Expression Pedal mode. I enjoyed the Chorus modulation but only when it is engaged on triangular waveform with only tiny amount of blend. When you use the blend knob above 8am, it will sound very out of tune. Some people might be able to use that to create some weird layered sound but I personally don't aim for that sound. The vibrato is also nice to have around since it straightly makes the note bent on the repeats, unlike the chorus that uses layering to get that effect.

Boy vs Man, Boy vs other Boys

I really wish to compare this with a DMM and see how much compromisation is happening. I am able to find some youtube videos that compares between the two, but the sound quality is not really detailed(audio are recorded using the same device to take the video, not from recording).

Compared to other delay pedals out there, this one is still one of the warmest on its price range. It's not overly expensive and it does not have too much options. But this basic package already contributes a lot in my signal chain. Everytime I have my lead time, I just turn on this pedal and the hairs on my back rise haha !

Worth?

For only $120.00, this one is not too expensive. It surely beats the Carbon Copy from MXR for sure, I've seen it happening. Also I prefer this to a standard Boss Digital Delay since this adds more touches to your entire signal rather than just copy paste and make the repeats. Basic functions, great sound, great price, it is surely worth the price.

Dislikes?

Well, we all know there's a debate about price vs quality. Better quality needs greater price sometimes; this pedal is great, but maybe a real DMM will sound better, who knows, and that will surely change how you view the Memory Boy once you can compare it with the real deal. But I don't find any flaw on this pedal, I got compliment from using this pedal.

From 0 to 10

I say 9.5 for now, wait until I can compare with a DMM and maybe it'll get lower or higher. Hopefully the apple doesn't fall far from the tree haha !

Edit: I compared it with a DMM, here's the link to that post: CLICK HERE

Here's the audio clip: CLICK HERE

Cheers and God bless ! :D