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Thread: Today's favorite stomp box...

  1. #1
    Mandol'Aisne Daniel Nestlerode's Avatar
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    Default Today's favorite stomp box...

    I don't know how long I've had a DOD FX-10 Bi-FET Preamp, It certainly sat around in cupboards and boxes for a couple decades. But today it is my favorite stomp box.

    I have recently purchased a Boss MO-2 Multi-Overtone pedal. So, I've been exploring it. I liked it well enough to drop it on the pedal board the other day to see how well it responds to changes made by other pedals.

    I was tapping through the chain... (Origin Effects Slide-Rig pre-amp compressor/limiter, FX-10, Boss EQ-7, Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive, and the MO-2) before turning everything off except the FX-10.

    I usually run through a Marshall MG30CFX, an amp I only use in clean. The 'crunch' channel is too crunchy, and the other two channels are for metal-heads only. I do want a bit of break-up which is REALLY hard to get on this amp. If you crank the channel volume AND the gain you get just a hint that break-up is possible when you go don't use pedals.

    But if I use the FX-10, I can overdrive the power stage a little and get nice creamy breakup, which can be adjusted for more or less overdrive using the volume pot on the emando.

    I spent an hour playing only with that.

    What's your favorite stomp box today?

    Daniel

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  3. #2
    Pittsburgh Bill
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Just shifting in to the world of electrics. So much to learn! This post just brings home to me how little I know and will be following this section of the forum that I for so long neglected.
    Big Muddy EM8 solid body (Mike Dulak's final EM8 build)
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    Registered User Simon DS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

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  5. #4
    Mandol'Aisne Daniel Nestlerode's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...



    Qu'est-ce que c'est?

    Daniel

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    Registered User Simon DS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Well... I cant divulge everything, but just to say that the two speakers are wired as pickups and that there's a fair amount of air-filled conduit embedded in the one inch thick stomp pad.
    There are other things too, nine pickups altogether.

  7. #6
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Quote Originally Posted by Pittsburgh Bill View Post
    Just shifting in to the world of electrics. So much to learn! This post just brings home to me how little I know and will be following this section of the forum that I for so long neglected.
    I got a ton of help and advice from my brother, who is a long time electric guitar guy. He taught me a lot. And what I have discovered is that there is a lot of money that can be spent getting it wrong. Redundant effects, effects that screw up other pedals, all kinds of holes to fall into.

    The best first step, at my brothers suggestion, to buy a modeling amp. I got the Fender Mustang I. But there are likely many many other great options. Through all the preset sounds and individual effects available on the amp, my brother gave me a comprehensive tour of history of rock and roll history. I messed around with that for many months, and then my brother and I spent a glorious afternoon "reverse engineering" all the presets on the amp, showing what individual effects were combined in what proportions, like recipes. Lastly, I learned how to set up the amp for a clean sound and then went on my stomp box adventure.

    I still made some expensive mistakes! But it was not as bad as it could have been. Without the modeling amp, and my brother, I would be going around and around in circles dropping loads of cash at each round.

    My best advice is to get a brother like mine.
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    Registered User BoxCarJoe's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Honest a humble Graphic Equalizer pedal has been my best friend for years.

    Don't leave home without one.
    Distortion and fuzz is not my thing.
    But I keep buying them!
    But lately a Boss AC-2 (acoustic simulator) is always on. I find that sound really pleasant.

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    Registered User Simon DS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Quote Originally Posted by Simon DS View Post
    Click image for larger version. 

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    -I forgot to add that the board is warped so it sounds like wooden floor boards. You can use it in this mode when the river floods and the electricity gets shut down.
    The licence plate is also acoustic with adjustable tone.

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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Did somebody say stomp box? Do we talk about those on the cafe?

    I have a few, nothing too impressive, but have been eyeing those Origin slide rigs, how do you like it?
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    Kentucky km900
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    a pedal steel (highly recommended); banjo, dobro don't get played much cause i'm considerate ;}

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    Registered User Tom Wright's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    My current rig, using it with my jazz trio.

    My amp is a lightweight bass amp head, so no reverb or distortion built in. Carbon Copy is actually analog echo, nice tone and low current draw. King of Tone is also analog, very low current draw. It bumps up the midrange, so the EQ compensates.

    The distortion box is very configurable, with a DIP switch inside for changing gain settings on the two sides. I like the lowest internal gain setting, for modest crunch. One side set for very slight distortion, the other more, and with both sides on I get lots of overdrive.

    Because it happens independently of the amp I have full control over tone and volume.

    I have a new favorite speaker cone, the Alpha 8a (8") from Eminence. 125 watts. I have two in my cabinet, for a 250 watt rating, which nicely matches the 200 watt amp. It is very smooth, no jangly resonances to add harshness. The naturally bright emando needs no help being trebly. For small high-power cones, bass speakers are the answer. Plenty of high end and plenty of power capacity. Guitar speaker cones are optimized for guitar overtones, and I find them too bright.
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    Quietly Making Noise Dave Greenspoon's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    My acoustic rig is my Rigel into the Boss AD-10 into anything, typically my older Loudbox. The AD-10 is equally useful with the El Rey. This box is a game changer.

    Otherwise, the DOD 250 (ri) is it. One is on the board...and an unopened spare sits on the shelf.
    Axes: Eastman MD-515 & El Rey; Eastwood S Mandola
    Amps: Fishman Loudbox 100; Rivera Clubster Royale Recording Head & R212 cab; Laney Cub 10

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    Mandol'Aisne Daniel Nestlerode's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Quote Originally Posted by gtani7 View Post
    Did somebody say stomp box? Do we talk about those on the cafe?

    I have a few, nothing too impressive, but have been eyeing those Origin slide rigs, how do you like it?
    https://reverb.com/marketplace?query...cts%20SlideRig

    I have the original (huge) "Dual Chained Limiting Amplifier" version. I love it. I really dig the tone it imparts on emandos. The response smoothes out and the tone is really pleasant.
    The fact that it's a compressor/limiter makes it difficult to adjust the volume of your rig using the pot on the emando. But that's the nature of the beast.

    It has two channels, so you can set one for rhythm playing and one for lead playing.

    Bonus: I have used it between my Mix F5 and the PA to excellent effect. It tames the top end, adds a bit of power to the signal, and makes the sound engineer's job easier.

    Daniel

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    Mandol'Aisne Daniel Nestlerode's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    I got a ton of help and advice from my brother, who is a long time electric guitar guy. He taught me a lot. And what I have discovered is that there is a lot of money that can be spent getting it wrong. Redundant effects, effects that screw up other pedals, all kinds of holes to fall into.

    The best first step, at my brothers suggestion, to buy a modeling amp. I got the Fender Mustang I. But there are likely many many other great options. Through all the preset sounds and individual effects available on the amp, my brother gave me a comprehensive tour of history of rock and roll history. I messed around with that for many months, and then my brother and I spent a glorious afternoon "reverse engineering" all the presets on the amp, showing what individual effects were combined in what proportions, like recipes. Lastly, I learned how to set up the amp for a clean sound and then went on my stomp box adventure.

    I still made some expensive mistakes! But it was not as bad as it could have been. Without the modeling amp, and my brother, I would be going around and around in circles dropping loads of cash at each round.

    My best advice is to get a brother like mine.
    You were lucky! I've had to go at this piece by piece learning on my own as I went, just trying to get good tone with what I had.
    When I was younger, I had a '65 Fender Bandmaster head and a 67 2x12 cab. Sold it when I went acoustic in the mid 90s. (stupid, stupid, stupid!)
    But the thing is, I didn't know how to use it well! I do now and would love to have it back.

    I recommend Rhett Schull's YouTube channel. When he discusses amps and tones, it's really informative.

    Daniel

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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Daniel: thx for info. I'll keep watching Guitar center's used listings, where i get most of my pedals and they do no hassle returns, you just won't get your shipping cost refunded.

    There's a couple good books on pedals by Joseph Alexander /Rob Thorpe and Dave Hunter, and JHS' youtube channel is good. Also Premiere guitar's rig rundowns, tho that's probably hundreds of hours of vids by now, so flip past the sections where they're talking about their 56 Les Pauls and Dumble amps. I think the unobtrusive effects are most important: buffer, tuner, clean boost like a Echoplex circuit, compress/limiter, EQ, noise gate
    Kentucky km900
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    My fave pedal for eMando is my Pigtronix Envelope Phaser. I can get mine to sound like a trumpet!

    I like a bit of delay and reverb under the tone then build from there.
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    Registered User vwfye's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Love this with p90s on the tenor and the octave. Was a bit harsh with the emando though.

    https://youtu.be/dCUcBAGBIQM
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  23. #17

    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    I got a ton of help and advice from my brother, who is a long time electric guitar guy. He taught me a lot. And what I have discovered is that there is a lot of money that can be spent getting it wrong. Redundant effects, effects that screw up other pedals, all kinds of holes to fall into.
    Yes, mentors are invaluable but not always appreciated. Good on you for acknowledging yours.

    My high-school electronics teacher was Gar Gilles, the fellow behind Garnet Amps that powered the Guess Who and Randy Bachman so I became a gear-head at an early age. During high-school I worked part-time at a big tv and stereo outfit in town and did everything from installing stereos in cars to doing tv and stereo bench repair. And I did some time taking tv and radio electronics at college but never finished it. These were the days when tube tvs and radios were transitioning to transistor, so there was a lot of tube stuff in the field.

    Fast-forward a few decades and I get a knock on my door from this kid from NY who had moved into my building and needed to rent my parking space. He was in town following his girl-friend who was doing a doctorate or something at the university and he was bored. He sees my guitar stuff, not much at that time, and we start talking and hanging out together. He had this nondescript homemade pedal that added a nice lushness to his tone. Turned out it was something he had a friend put together by copying 2 circuits from a DIY electronics book. It was novel and sounded great.

    Between my high-school electronics years and then I'd changed careers and was a successful marketing exec - at that point semi-retired. I had worked with Steve Jobs to package and launch Simply Accounting - the first ever accounting package for the Macintosh - and had run a company that specialized in packaging and launching high-tech hardware and software.

    Over the next year or so I taught this kid how to solder, read a schematic and all things electronic, as well as packaged and launched his DIY pedal at NAMM 2004. That was the start of Pigtronix that went on to create a whole line of stomp boxes and related stuff.

    During that first year or so when we were putting together the Pigtronix EP-1, we also built up every type of stomp-box circuit we could find to see what made them tick. This laid the foundation for many of the Pigtronix pedals that were to follow. Here are some of them - I used surplus ammo cans because they were cheap (for prototyping) and I could get a few circuits in each one, saving on board space:

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Part of the deal with Pigtronix was that I was to get one of everything they made. While they didn't make good on their promises I did get some. Here's my current rig which I also use for electric and acoustic mandolin. It's made up of 2 rigs - one for clean and the other for crunch. The command center is the Looper, drum pedal and amp switcher. The drum pedal syncs to the looper so everything stays in time. The looper is stereo so I have each rig on it's own channel. The looper allows me to control the volume of each side as well as a master volume for the whole rig, which is handy in an apartment.



    Perhaps a bit over the top but now that you know how it came about you'll understand it got built up over years and I didn't spend a lot of money on it. I must say it's a great way to spend hours working on tunes.

    If I want to pretend I'm doing a live gig, the drum pedal even has a "drunk" mode that lets me set the intoxication level so I can have it play (and control the looper) out of time just like a real drummer!
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  24. #18
    coprolite mandroid's Avatar
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    Question Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

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ID:	197093 to the right is the RMC Polydrive 2 black box
    combining the 4 in-bridge pickups ,
    also has a preamp for bridge analog signals, with tone/volume controls .

    Passing thru the magnetic pickup signal , to a jack on the back of the black box

    and a 13 pin to talk to Roland guitar synths . a GR 30 & Gr33 shown ..
    CGDA tuning {GDAE runs out of guitar synth frequencies too early}


    Last edited by mandroid; Oct-25-2021 at 7:11pm.
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Quote Originally Posted by mandroid View Post
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	IMGP0009.JPG 
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ID:	197093 to the right is the RMC Polydrive 2 black box
    combining the 4 in-bridge pickups ,
    also has a preamp for bridge analog signals, with tone/volume controls .

    Passing thru the magnetic pickup signal , to a jack on the back of the black box

    and a 13 pin to talk to Roland guitar synths . a GR 30 & Gr33 shown ..
    CGDA tuning {GDAE runs out of guitar synth frequencies too early}


    Nice.

    I have a GR-33 and a couple guitars with pickups but nothing tuned in 5ths.
    VerneAndru.com | oKee.ComX

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  27. #20
    Mandol'Aisne Daniel Nestlerode's Avatar
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    Default Re: Today's favorite stomp box...

    Quote Originally Posted by mandroid View Post
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	IMGP0009.JPG 
Views:	87 
Size:	609.9 KB 
ID:	197093 to the right is the RMC Polydrive 2 black box
    combining the 4 in-bridge pickups ,
    also has a preamp for bridge analog signals, with tone/volume controls .

    Passing thru the magnetic pickup signal , to a jack on the back of the black box

    and a 13 pin to talk to Roland guitar synths . a GR 30 & Gr33 shown ..
    CGDA tuning {GDAE runs out of guitar synth frequencies too early}


    I have two minds about multi-effects units like yours. On one hand, I love the idea of one box 'to rule them all' as it were. On the other I am resisting the idea that I should have to learn how to program such a thing.

    Do you prefer programmable devices to single function devices?

    Daniel

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