the watmm GAS thread

[TubularCorporation]

You could always get a DX21, too.  I haven't used a reface or a volca FM so I can't compare, but an old DX2 was one of my first synths ever and it was really simple and immediate, and they're about half the price of a Reface

[auxien]

The CS (no external effects added in this 1st video) and DX refaces are very lush. 

 

 

 

I hadn't given these a moment's notice tbh, but that CS sounds damned nice for what it is. Price ain't bad at all either (under $300 USD right now)

[flacid]

Yeah, I think it sounds great for the price. Put it through some effects and you've got a pretty close BOC impression (some people dig that). 

 

Made this with the reface CS. 

 

https://soundcloud.com/606303/ralphs-song

[Guest Chesney]

Been away for a week over Chrimbo and only just had time to play with the LYRA-8. Utter bonkers and so much fun. 

 

Weirdly I didn't get on with the reface DX, the touch buttons made it feel harder to program, I'd rather just use the DX100, so much faster. Only had a short time on the CS but it sounded great, still had that lovely clean CS square wave sound. I have the CP, that one was the most fun for me.

[auxien]

Yeah, I think it sounds great for the price. Put it through some effects and you've got a pretty close BOC impression (some people dig that). 

 

Made this with the reface CS. 

 

https://soundcloud.com/606303/ralphs-song

 

I'd like to nominate this as best image/music combo of 2017. :)

[auxien]

I want a Squarp Pyramid so bad.

[sheatheman]

Yeah the reface dx is great. I don't use it for its sound often but it's always on my desk as my midi controller for softsynths and hardware, as the keybed is so great.

 

I made this track with the dx:

https://tefosav.bandcamp.com/track/dxcid

 

Its a great synth i use it as my mini controller!!

 

(i do the same thing with my ms2000...)

[TubularCorporation]

I won't deny I'd love to have one of those Deckard's Dream rackmount CS80 clones but that's not going to happen, even the kit price is way more than I'd pay for another synth at this point even if I could spare it.

[sweepstakes]

I just went to the music shop and the only thing I enjoyed playing was the monologue, which I already own. To be fair, if they had a volca kick, I probably would've bought it.

[Kavinsky]

 

Yeah, I think it sounds great for the price. Put it through some effects and you've got a pretty close BOC impression (some people dig that). 

 

Made this with the reface CS. 

 

https://soundcloud.com/606303/ralphs-song

 

I'd like to nominate this as best image/music combo of 2017. :)

 

love those detuned bells but for more boc i would have slowed that whole track a bit down

[xox]

i need an over drive/distortion/fuzz pedal for md&mnm. 

 

watmm, pls. recommendations, do tell!

 

was thinking:

 

1. boss ds-1 (60 euros)

2. proco rat 2 (66 euros)

3. zoom ms-50g (85 euros)

4. jhs pedals colour box (444 euros)   ...ammm, no

 

edit: i'm planning to use it on send/return on a mixer so it doesnt matter if it's mono

Edited January 2, 2018 by xox

[psn]

Big Muff or Rat.

[xox]

Big Muff or Rat.

 

im lost! :( which of these 11 big muffs? https://www.thomann.de/gb/search_dir.html?sw=Big+Muff+

[psn]

Pi.

[Guest Chesney]

I use a rat (and a few other dist/fuzz/gain) pedal's on stuff and it's great but obv not ideal for most situ's for MD/MnM because ideally you want stereo but it is fun sending to a mono pedal for some stuff. The muff is a good pedal but don't own it so only tried it on a friends guit. I use the Heat and the dist's on the DP-4 for stereo.

[xox]

I use a rat (and a few other dist/fuzz/gain) pedal's on stuff and it's great but obv not ideal for most situ's for MD/MnM because ideally you want stereo but it is fun sending to a mono pedal for some stuff. The muff is a good pedal but don't own it so only tried it on a friends guit. I use the Heat and the dist's on the DP-4 for stereo.

 

 

Pi.

 

so far im thinking deluxe big muff pi

[sheatheman]

strymon deko maybe? it can process in stereo.

 

or analog heat.

[flacid]

 

love those detuned bells but for more boc i would have slowed that whole track a bit down

 

 

I'd like to nominate this as best image/music combo of 2017. :)

 

 

[TubularCorporation]

In a previous life I played a whole lot of fuzz guitar in quite a few bands on the fringe of heavy psych, space rock, stoner metal, and stuff in that universe, so I have a lot of opinions on this subject

 

Big Muff is pretty much all-or-nothing with a fairly extreme amount of filtering on any tone control setting (it's not just a simple lowpass).  It's a cool thing to have around but I wouldn't recommend it as an all-around distortion, especially for electronic music. Really, I'd be hesitant to recomment anything with a really aggressively voiced filter, which the Rat has too (supposedly the original Rat wasn't even a distortion, it was a filter that had a massive amount of boost around the resonant frequency meant more for using in front of a mixer channel than as a guitar pedal but it had such a high output it actually had a habit of damaging mixers it was patched in to so after the first hundred or so they redesigned it as a distortion, with the tone control based on the original filter design but a lot less exreme.  EThey're great pedals but everything that goes through a Rat pedal sounds like a Rat pedal.

 

They're getting hard to find unfortunately, but the Zoom Power Drive is one of the best distortions I've used, modern or vintage, and I'd recommend one to anyone looking for a flexible distortion that can cover a lot of ground and can distort a lot without ever getting out of control (plus it has the secret clean boost mode that sounds fantastic and has a LOT of gain on tap, something like 30 or 40 dB).

 

MXR Distortion+ is a conservative choice but they're popular for a reason and sound great on synths. 

 

If you know someone handy with a soldering iron, a Dallas Rangemaster is one of the easiest effects to build, the actual circuit is only 5 or 6 components, and it's even less you leave out the high pass capacitor (which you'd want to do if you were using it for synths) to make it into a full-band booster that distorts a lot as soon as it's above unity (even though it's not technically a distortion at all).  The first four Black Sabbath albums were recorded without any distortion pedals at all, just a Rangemaster pushing the input of a tube amp.  It's meant for an instrument level input so if you're pushing line level in it ill get really dirty, but in a rawer way than a full blown fuzz or distortion.  One of the nicest sounding effects I've ever used, and also very useful in front of distortion or fuzz pedals to push them into really extreme clipping.

 

 

All of the other suggestions are goo and useful but I'd really advice you to try out a the big muff before you buy one because you might not like it.  It will make every instrument you run through it sound like the lead guitar on a Mudhoney record.  I like the earlier generation black Russian/Sovtek ones best but they're all different depending on what components were in the bins that day.  The values in the schematic were more like recommendations than rules, and they're even less consistent than vintage Fuzz Face pedals.

 

 

Speaking of, Germanium Fuzz Face clones are amazing (the Dunlop reissues less so) but might be frustrating in practice because they sound different depending on room temperature and you have t compensate for that by ear (another reason to avoid the official ones, they don't have a bias control so you can't compensate for temperature).  Analogman Sun Face is supposed to be good and was reasonably priced last time I looked.  Never used one myself, because it's a very easy pedal to make, the one I use was literally the first thing electronic I ever built.

 

 

I've never tried it on synths, but the Mosrite Fuzz Rite is amazing.  Listen to Blues Theme by Davie Allen and the Arrows - that's the sound.

 

Devi Ever SM Fuzz sounds great on anything.

 

It's not a distortion but the Dan Armstrong Green Ringer is really cool on synths.  It's a half-wave rectifier, which means it takes the negative half of the waveform fed into it and folds it over to positive, which gives you a sound that's somewhere between ring modulation, distortion and octave (it's basically the octave part of an old school octave fuzz but without the fuzz).  Not in production right now but it has been through a few cycles of reissues and they're another one that's very easy to build.  I mostly use the one I made on guitar but I've put it on some synths and it is definitely a cool sound, x0xb0x/TB303 through a Green Ringer is really, really good.

 

 

I've got a soft spot for the Boss PW-2 Power Driver.   IT was marketed as a "marshall stack in a box" but it sounds nothing like that, it's closer to an early generation Big Muff but with a completely different tone stack (and therefore a very different sound) played into an amp with a cracked speaker.  People hated it, it was pulled in something like 9 months, and they're still dirt cheap and not too hard to find despite being probably the rarest Boss pedal ever made (mine was free because I a friend of a bandmate gave it to him because it was broken, and he gave it to me because it was broken, and it wasn't actually broken at all, that's just how it sounds - on guitar it can be pretty hard to keep it from feeding back if you don't take the time to get used to it - and not the good kind of feedback, more like a badly wound pickup - but once you do it's actually really flexible and has its own unique sound). I actually like it a lot.

 

Another pedal that nobody wants that can actually sound pretty great on synths is the DOD Grunge.  They're, what, $15?  I haven't used one in ages but it was kind of like a cross between a Big Muff and a Marshall Shredmaster (another great pedal but way overpriced now - first pedal I bought, and it still kills me I traded it in for $80 credit on a DOD wah pedal back in high school - if it wasn't for the inflated price I'd recommend one in a heartbeat), except with a certain sort of DOD blandness that's not so hot on guitar but actually makes it pretty flexible on synths.

 

 

That's all I can think of right now.

[TubularCorporation]

If price is no object and you want more of a rich, warm thing than an over the top distortion, consider one of these.  They are very, very nice and can work as a tube distortion, DI, clean boost, half watt recording amp, or microphone preamp.  More of a traditional studio tool than something that the electronic music world would be likely to look at, but it might be just what you need.  I got one back in 2013 during the year and a half when I had a really good paying freelance job and very low rent at the same time and was loading up on any gear I could find, and it's the fanciest thing from that period I actually kept.

[xox]

Wow thanks for the help!

[YangYing]

patiently waiting for the softpop.. bastl fucked up with casing n stuff which lead to incredible delays but I'm thinking it's gonna be worth it..

[TubularCorporation]

Wow thanks for the help!

 

Don't get me worng on the Rat and Big Muff, they're both fantastic distortions I just think that they (especially the Big Muff) might have to much character if you're only going to have one distortion pedal.

 

That said, I only have an 80s Turbo Rat not a standard Rat and it's higher gain, so the classic type might be more appropriate - haven't used one of those in quite a while (even though they're kind of better than the Turbo).

 

 

Also, FWIW, on guitar I never tried any fuzzes or distortions or combinations of pedals that worked as well for me as DIY Dallas Rangemaster clone (stock circuit, NOS transistor) -> DIY Fuzz Face (stock circuit, NOS matched transistor pair) with bias/temperature compensation knob.  All the other stuff I tried was fun and can be useful but most of them ended up being sold or traded for other stuff I wanted to try.  It doesn't work quite as well on synths because it's pretty sensitive to how the input is loaded (but a simple, passive reamp circuit could be built in to the same enclosure to compensate for this, that way no matter what was plugged in to the input it would behave pretty much like a guitar was plugged in to it) but part of the beauty of the Fuzz Face is that you can leave it on all the time - it cleans up so well that you can have it set for really extreme fuzz when the input signal is high but when you turn it down it will be so clean it almost works like a clean boost - you don't really lose much volume as you turn the input down, it just gets cleaner.  With a guitar, you can bring the volume almost all the way down on the guitar itself and it won't actually get much quieter but it will sound clean with just a very subtle brightness compared to the bypassed sound.  It acts a lot like a tube amp in that regard.

Edited January 3, 2018 by RSP

[psn]

Just remembered this thread, so I re-uploaded the x0xb0x pedal tests I made a few years ago.

https://forum.watmm.com/topic/10924-guitar-pedals/page-1

 

https://soundcloud.com/psnpsnpsn/sets/x0xb0x-pedal-test

[TubularCorporation]

On the cheap, there are a couple simple mods (basically swapping a resistor or two) that you can do to a Boss DS-1 that make it a lot more useful, and those things are dirt cheap used.  I did the so-called "fat mod" to one a coworker gave me last year and it's still not that exciting on guitar but it sounds pretty great on the x0xb0x.  MAybe after work tonight or while I'm snowed in tomorrow I'll record some x0xbox demos comparing some of the different distortions I still have lying around.