During the COVID isolation times of Summer of 2020 I went back and restarted playing guitar. My playing is still pretty bad, but I am enjoying myself. My main rig is an el cheapo guitar with a Roland GK3 split pickup mounted on it going into a Boss GP10 and into a set of speakers/my PC in the home office. Around November of 2020 I decided that I needed an analog setup in the garage (in part because my main setup did not work well with a looper - I could only loop through a DAW). I assembled the pedalboard out of pieces of wood and metal bought at Home Depot and started buying budget pedals - thankfully there is a decent market for $20-40 beginner guitar pedals.
Today, in anticipation of a new pedal (large in size) arriving to my house, I decided to revisit the pedalboard, fix a few things and rebuild the signal chain. While doing so I decided that I want to record my experiences with each of the pedals. Not certain who this might interest, but I am very much a beginner, and I expect that the target audience for most of these pedals are other beginners like me who are trying to figure out how to work pedals in their signal chains and don't want to spend significant amounts of money, because a $400 pedal makes significantly less sense when you are playing a $100 guitar into a $150 amp.
Difficulty of use: Easy. Turn it on and just start tuning.
Rating: C. (does its job)
Provenance. The only true pedal I won in a shopgoodwill.com auction.
Cost. About $45 with delivery.
Category: Vintage, used.
Review. This pedal stood unplugged on the board for the longest time because I did not have a space on the power supply initially to hook it up, and it burned through batteries like crazy. But after I got my second power supply, I hooked it up, and now it is the first pedal in the chain. I don't play it too much, but it is the real deal. The wah is awesome and works well with pretty much any level of overdrive and any other effects I have on at the moment. Because my pedalboard has pedals about two-tow and a half inches up above the floor, the physical act of constantly stepping on and off the pedal is a bit awkward (and thus I don't play with it as much as I should). It also does not always hold the position perfectly when left alone, so tricks with cocking it half way are a bit harder.
Difficulty of use: Easy. Awkward placement of foot aside (this is my local pedalboard issue, not a global problem with the pedal itself), it's easy to operate and get great sound out for even an absolute beginner. Hit it, pull the pedal back, and start rocking it. The range of tonal changes is very impressive.
Rating: B. (great sound, rarely used)
Provenance: Amazon. One of the first set of budget pedals I got in late 2020.
4. VSN GT EQ
- Booster. Ramp the volume up, and move the highs and the mids above the median. Moving the EQ all the way to the top starts breaking the amp much sooner. So, even with no overdrive pedals and going into a clean amp, I can manage some level of dirt with it.
- Tone warmer/Bass. Dampen the highs and the mids, boost the lows. Small boost warms the tone, larger boost dulls it considerably. Used with the Octaver pedal (see below), the latter combination turns my guitar into a poor man's bass.
- Treble boost. Up the treble, lower the lows. This is my default setting on the EQ, it helps with pedals that produce muddy lows, this is pretty much every overdrive I have.
- Mid boost. Used it with the scooped-middle Tantrum (See Part 2), and for a few other high gain sounds. Usually I just add a little bit of mids to the treble in the treble boost setup.
Provenance: Amazon. Bought it recently, got interested in playing with an octaver, this is one of two cheap ones available.
Cost: around $30. I think I waited for a small sale.
Category: brand new, bargain basement budget
Review: This is a really weird one, but at the end of the day, not a very useful one. Definitely not as useful as four octave knobs would have you believe. In fact, only one combination is really usable for a beginner. Here is what I wrote in my two-star (**) Amazon review:
There are four octaves on the pedal, the "normal" one, one down, two down and one up. They can be mixed in any proportion to create a variety of sounds. My first two days of playing the pedal were very confusing. After that I watched some youtube videos and was able to harness this pedal somewhat. Here is a brief narrative.1. Two octaves down is rather useless. In isolation it produces a very dull sound that isn't particularly useful by itself, nor does it play well with the rest of the pedalboard (note: my chain here is Octaver -> Compressor -> overdrvies and fuzzes -> flanger -> phaser -> delay -> reverb -> amp).2. One octave down is workable. After some tweaking and mixing octave down with normal signal I am able to get a sound that with addition of some careful warm overdrive can approximate bass, which allows me to lay down a simple bass loop when I am practicing.3. One octave up is weird. The signal it produces in isolation (when all other octaves are set to minimum) is this really thin fuzz. It is NOT an "octave fuzz" per se (nor have I seen this pedal call itself "octave fuzz" anywhere), and the signal sounds very similar to what happens when I am playing out of phase pickups running through a regular fuzz with EQ controls boosting the treble. By itself this sound is somewhat unplayable, but... When you hit an actual fuzz pedal with it (or another saturated overdrive/distortion), the octaver enriches the sound and actually sounds good.Overall verdict. This is a somewhat playable pedal, but there is a mismatch between its entry-level price - and thus - a very entry-level target audience (like myself), and the actual amount of effort needed to make this pedal produce useful and useable tones. Basically, if you are beginner guitar player on a budget and want to find out what an octaver pedal is, this pedal isn't really your friend. Your experience is likely to be confusing and frustrating, unless you are willing to watch about an hour's worth of youtube demos and explanations, and put additional pedals on your pedalboard that play nice with this one.One beginner use I can see, that can be reached without much trouble is a poor man's bass. Minimize ocatave up and two octaves down, get octave down past 12 o'clock and adjust normal octave to your liking, and then adjust gain/tone on subsequent drive pedals and the amp, and it'll serve the purpose until you buy your first bass guitar. But this pedal is supposed to be more versatile, and it really requires a lot of effort to make workable, effort that a lot of other entry level pedals just do not require.
Difficulty of use: Difficult, as explained above. Most of the noises and knob combinations are unusable and discouraging. Use of higher octave requires a saturated distortion/overdrive/fuzz downstream, and even then, it is not a given that you'll like the result. Use of lower octave requires careful calibration.
Rating: D.
Verdict: Keeper for now, as I don't have anything better. Permanently set up in a "poor man's bass" position. I might buy the Behringer octaver next before deciding if I want to spend four times the money on a real thing.
6. Behringer CS400 Compressor-Sustainer
Provenance: Sweetwater, during one of their $19/pedal deal on Behringers
Cost: $19
Category: brand new, bargain basement budget
Review: I can definitely tell the difference between the tones it generates - both different setting combinations and on/off. But even after watching multiple Youtube videos, this compressor is not easy to get under control. What's depicted on the photo is my main setup, with both Attack and Sustain at the max. I occasionally move the compression rate back and forth. Higher compression rate seems to result in more dirt/overdrive. It is helpful somewhat when I am strumming clean, but I usually keep it off.
Difficulty of use: Difficult. I feel like even after a year, and countless youtube videos, compressors are still a bit of mystery to me, because what I hear folks say on the youtube channels, and what I hear my compressor do, are two different things. This is probably me not hearing the right things, so bygones. What's important though is that if you are a beginner, this pedal may baffle you before it starts serving you well.
Rating: C. Presumably, it is doing its job.
Verdict: Keeper for now.
7. DOD FX80-B Compressor Sustainer
Provenance: Flea market. Same day and same guy as the Arion tuner.
Cost: $8. There is a price sticker on the pedal saying "$58".
Category: Used, vintage.
Review: This one is even more of a mystery than the Behringer Compressor-Sustainer. Definitely changes the tone, definitely in a different way than the Behringer, and controls definitely are doing something that Behringer controls are not doing and vice versa. On the plus side, this pedal looks legit badass on the board, and perhaps this alone makes it worth keeping it on the board. Except, on the minus side, this is the only pedal I have with a non-standard power jack, so it has to work off of batteries. It also has a somewhat broken on-off switch (it turns on. and off. but not always and not when you want it to), so the battery runs out fast.
Difficulty of use: Difficult, because I cannot connect what I think should be happening with what I am hearing.
Rating: B-. ("B" is for "Badass")
Verdict: Off-the-board. At least until I can figure out the power supply issue. My next goal is to make a small pedalboard of vintage used and abused pedals only, and this pedal will be the anchor there.
8. EX (ENO) AutoWah
Provenance: Amazon. First ENO pedal I bought.
Cost: around $30.
Category: brand new, bargain basement budget
Review: This pedal possesses a wide range of tones and sounds. Unfortunately, most of them are not pleasant. Here is my two-star (**) Amazon review.
Meh. Extremely hard to find a sweet spot.
I stand by it. There are only two controls, Level and Peak, but they are very difficult to place in a position that create a reasonable effect. Put them too low, and there is nothing. Move a bit higher and suddenly your guitar sounds like dogs are barking into your ear in a very foreign language. I was able to find some meaningful sounds after a while, but an envelope filter needs to do better. My Boss GP-10 has an autowah effect that I can tweak in all sorts of directions, and it remains playable. This pedal is barely usable.
The EX/ENO is a somewhat interesting beast in the realm of bargain basement pedals. Where everyone else essentially repackages the same 8-12 pedals under different branding, and sometimes in different cases, these guys have pedals that no one else has made, which is why I bet on them twice for effects that other bargain basement brands just don't carry. Both times I missed. Of the two, the Octaver is a bit more useful, but only because I personally have a use case for it. I don't have a solid use case for this auto-wah.
Difficulty of use: Difficult. Very hard to find the right tone. Definitely a disconnect between the target audience (people who are willing to pay no more than $30 for an envelope filter are probably mostly beginners) and the amount of effort and understanding of how envelope filters are supposed to work is significant.
Rating: F. I could have been charitable and given it a D-, but let's be honest here.
Verdict: Off the board. Probably forever. The design is kind of cute, so it has a spot in my Cabinet of Curiosities.
Provenance: Flea market. Elder kid found and scooped it for me.
Cost: $5. I wish flea market had more people selling pedals.
Category: used, bargain basement budget.
Review: Unlike the previous envelope filter, this one is very workable. I watched some Youtube videos, and followed the pointers on the settings. There are definitely positions there that will make you want to curl in a corner and cry, but this pedal is quite versatile, and it is possible to dial back from those harbingers of hell into a much more friendly territory. At the end, I found the settings that produce a decent "wah" no matter how hard I hit the strings, while still reacting to the dynamics in a proper way.
This pedal originally sat after the drives and before the modulations and time-based effects in my chain. After I got some delays, I temporarily displaced it and put it second in the chain after the CryBaby. I also may have hooked it to 18V power rather than 9V. This resulted in a very different tone. Most of the "wah-wah" were gone, but this pedal turned into a mid-booster and started distorting the sound. Interesting, if unexpected effect.
Difficulty of use: Moderate-to-difficult. If you are a beginner, watch a few videos about this pedal specifically, they will tell you what to expect. Familiarity with the physics of envelope filters is also a big plus. But the pedal itself is relatively forgiving, except in a few places, so simple tweaking with the knobs via experimentation will eventually result in success.
Rating: B. I don't need auto-wah all that often, but when I do, this pedal is more than enough.
Verdict: Keeper, and will return to its position between the drive pedals and the phaser.
Well, it's the end of the day. The expected pedal has not arrived, so the board is still standing empty. Next on our agenda are the multiple drive pedals.
