3-in-1... choose your poison

[Aussiephoenix]

Say you have a friend that makes his own homegrown pedals, based on diagrams etc found on the net, and you got this crazy idea to ask him to make you a 3-in-1 pedal that is true bypass, has master volume and wet/Dry mix, and you get to choose 3 fx. What would you choose?

(RULES: no EQ, no Distortion, no Compressor. those are taken care of.)

[cheddatom]

Octave up or down, depending on your taste and whther or not it would count as seperate options.

Flanger with very flexible controls so you can go from chorus to phaser type sounds.

Digital Delay.

You should also have a feedback blend option on it!

[escholl]

[quote name='cheddatom' post='257034' date='Aug 7 2008, 11:05 AM']Octave up or down, depending on your taste and whther or not it would count as seperate options.

Flanger with very flexible controls so you can go from chorus to phaser type sounds.

Digital Delay.

You should also have a feedback blend option on it![/quote]


+1

[Kev]

id go for reverb with plenty of modes, a phaser which has plenty of options to make it sound chorusy and what not, and delay

[cheddatom]

Reverb! Really? Do you play in a band Kev?

[Alien]

I'm guessing that this isn't [i]entirely[/i] hypothetical... Are you in a position to give more info, or does this 'friend' want to keep things off the radar for the moment?

Andy

[Tee]

Octave - Tremolo - Delay

[cheddatom]

Is tremolo something you use quite often Tee? For what kind of stuff?

[Tee]

Unfortunately not as much as i'd like to, as i have a lovely Demeter Tremulator pedal (gorgeous on guitar, but works well on bass too). Stuff? um, 'Rock' for want of a better word.

[Kiwi]

For the work I do:

multi tap delay with a tempo switch - > Octave -> Chorus

or

looper - > Octave -> Chorus

(looper would be great for allowing me a break on repeative songs when there's not enough time between songs to grab some water or dry off)

[Oscar South]

I'd probably get 3 different time based effects (modulation, trem, delay for example) with a unified tap tempo (and probably a double/half time toggle for each effect).

[clauster]

Overdrive->Comp->Octave

[Aussiephoenix]

[quote name='Alien' post='257125' date='Aug 7 2008, 12:38 PM']I'm guessing that this isn't [i]entirely[/i] hypothetical... Are you in a position to give more info, or does this 'friend' want to keep things off the radar for the moment?

Andy[/quote]

Hey Andy,

No, its not entirely hypothetical... this guy is used to picking up the diagrams of well known pedals off the net, and making his own based on that, with a few added bells and whistles...

So, what I was thinking about initially was something along the lines of:

(TC Electronics Bass Chorus + Flanger) +
(some kind of deep fat phaser) +
Delay (if I could find a MUCH SIMPLER delay than the DL4, but that could record a long enough phrase, that would be just wicked, and yeah,. I'd like the normal delay options though nothing too extensive)

I really liked the idea of a "Flanger with very flexible controls so you can go from chorus to phaser type sounds"... if you know about any pedal that will fit this bill, let me know.


Now, I'd like to have some input from you guys in what specific pedals you would choose that would be doable in DIY and would have good quality and versatility.

[cheddatom]

A whammy XP-100 would do your chorus, and almost get to a flange, would add wah to the set up, and would cover octave up AND octave down. He's probably not going to build one of those though!! I'm a bit stumped to be honest because i've always used phase and flange on my multi effects, and chorus on my whammy.


Tee - I meant what kind of lines do you play with temolo on? As in would you use it in a verse that is quite upbeat? The thing is, as much as I like tremelo, I would only use it as an "effect" and only on high parts (I play a 6 string). I imagine that if I was playing a big fat groovy bassline with tremelo on, it'd really take away from the feel of it. I was wondering your thoughts?

[Tee]

[quote name='cheddatom' post='257258' date='Aug 7 2008, 02:48 PM']Tee - I meant what kind of lines do you play with temolo on? As in would you use it in a verse that is quite upbeat? The thing is, as much as I like tremelo, I would only use it as an "effect" and only on high parts (I play a 6 string). I imagine that if I was playing a big fat groovy bassline with tremelo on, it'd really take away from the feel of it. I was wondering your thoughts?[/quote]

Aha, i see. Both high and lows, but more importantly on sparser parts perhaps, more likely a verse, letting the trem do it's thing in between notes. I play a 4 string (i'm probably in the minority on this forum ^_^ )

Having said that, you can use it on upbeat bits too. It's all how you do/use it

Edited August 7, 2008 by Tee

[cheddatom]

Interesting! I did use some tremelo before on my zoom pedal, but I was only using it on my high frequencies. I suppose on low notes it could be quite rythmic and entrancing! I should give it a go.

[Kev]

[quote name='cheddatom' post='257101' date='Aug 7 2008, 12:17 PM']Reverb! Really? Do you play in a band Kev?[/quote]
yeah, im quite a fan of reverb, and no i dont have time for one too much studying to do this year

[cheddatom]

[quote name='BassManKev' post='257400' date='Aug 7 2008, 05:18 PM']yeah, im quite a fan of reverb, and no i dont have time for one too much studying to do this year[/quote]

Interesting. I think your reverb might disapear when playing in a band, which is why I asked.

Are you using it to simulate a live room kind of sound, or is it a big long reverb, like an effect rather than a tone.

[dannybuoy]

I know you said no distortion, but I'm gonna break your rule. Make a synth pedal like this:

Octave -> Fuzz -> Filter

Octave can be whatever tracks well. Fuzz should be something really heavy with a nice top end, like a Maestro Brassmaster or Tonebender clone. For the filter I would go for a low pass Korg MS20 or a DOD 440 clone, controllable by either an expression pedal or taking an envelope signal from the very start of the chain (so it's clean and hasn't been messed with by the octave or fuzz).

Hell, make one of these and I'd buy it off you!

[Lenny B]

[quote name='dannybuoy' post='257426' date='Aug 7 2008, 05:47 PM']I know you said no distortion, but I'm gonna break your rule. Make a synth pedal like this:

Octave -> Fuzz -> Filter

Octave can be whatever tracks well. Fuzz should be something really heavy with a nice top end, like a Maestro Brassmaster or Tonebender clone. For the filter I would go for a low pass Korg MS20 or a DOD 440 clone, controllable by either an expression pedal or taking an envelope signal from the very start of the chain (so it's clean and hasn't been messed with by the octave or fuzz).

Hell, make one of these and I'd buy it off you![/quote]


+1

[Aussiephoenix]

[quote name='dannybuoy' post='257426' date='Aug 7 2008, 05:47 PM']I know you said no distortion, but I'm gonna break your rule. Make a synth pedal like this:

Octave -> Fuzz -> Filter

Octave can be whatever tracks well. Fuzz should be something really heavy with a nice top end, like a Maestro Brassmaster or Tonebender clone. For the filter I would go for a low pass Korg MS20 or a DOD 440 clone, controllable by either an expression pedal or taking an envelope signal from the very start of the chain (so it's clean and hasn't been messed with by the octave or fuzz).

Hell, make one of these and I'd buy it off you![/quote]

You know, that does sound interesting... to me, there are a couple of problems though...

Octaver: Never found one that actually tracks properly...
Fuzz: Never found one that didnt sound like a buzzsaw on steroids.
E.F.: Never found one that didnt eat up the low end and doesnt have stupidly high peaks.

[mr.sibs]

[quote name='Lenny B' post='257610' date='Aug 7 2008, 09:32 PM']+1[/quote]

+2, there has got to be a clean enough set of effects out there to put this together

[bobbass4k]

[quote name='cheddatom' post='257407' date='Aug 7 2008, 05:27 PM']Interesting. I think your reverb might disapear when playing in a band, which is why I asked.

Are you using it to simulate a live room kind of sound, or is it a big long reverb, like an effect rather than a tone.[/quote]

I used reverb in my old band, i had a a holy grail that i unfortunatley sold, i loved that pedal, I used it as an effect, it didn't get lost in the band mix, but it was a post-rock/soundscape band (we were just ripping off mogwai and didn't want to admit it), and you can only really get that sound live when everything is saturated in reverb, but my bass lines were quite prominent too. I can see in your point, in a conventional 4 piece rock band, it probably wouldn't fit and get lost in the mix

I should probably answer the original question, eh?

I would go for 3 effects that need minimum adjustment, and are generally used together, probably Phaser, Flanger and MAYBE an auto-wah, or ring-mod filter type thing, if it fits your sound, but a chorus or compressor seems more sensible

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I'm not allowed to play - I'd have gone for limiter, valve-sounding distortion & eq - ie like a posh version of the Behringer green limiter pedal & silver bass preamp pedal in a decent box with decent pots & sockets.

[cheddatom]

If I could have a little bit more than three I would want....

input - split - A into compressor with attack, threshold, and volume control
- B into a two stage overdrive i.e low gain grit, going into fuzzy teriotory with a footswitch
- Mix the two into a limiter with just threshold control, going into a digital delay.

Perfect! Any modulation etc that you want as extra can be put before the pedal, swapped about etc, but that would be an excellent unit to have at the end of your chain with a DI out etc.