There are a TON of tape echo/delay pedals out on the market these days, and there have been for years, but how many of them can say they use REAL TAPE to achieve the sounds they create? Precious few, honestly, especially ones that aren’t decades old and riddled with maintenance problems and unavailable or expensive replacement parts. The first Replicator from T-Rex solved those problems, as they released a fresh, modern and much...
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For all the pedals we’ve had the pleasure to peruse from our friends at Free The Tone, we’ve never come across a bad apple, and there’s no reason for that to change now. Their latest endeavor is a wonderfully exploratory delay unit, rivaling the Flight Time delays, but with a new, unique sound. The FF-1Y Future Factory RF Phase Modulation Delay “succeeds in creating a new modulation sound with a unique method,...
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Another day, another delay….and why not? They’re only the most fun effects out there, and we’ll review and demo ’em as long as companies keep making ’em! Speaking of making exceptional pedals, today’s gem comes to us from Mr. Black, longtime maker of intriguing devices and inspiring tone machines, and this one is no exception. The SS-850 is a solid state echo chamber delay unit, featuring a retro...
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Scott Metzger New York City Joe Russo’s Almost Dead WOLF! The Showdown Kids www.scottmetzger.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I started playing saxophone in the third grade and I kept that up all through high school. A love of early Metallica led to the guitar when I was about 14-ish. Who have been some of your major musical influences, past or present? Tons of Motown &...
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We here at Pedal of the Day have been fortunate to be able to review and demo many pedals from our friend Eric at Hungry Robot Pedals, which makes us even more excited about today’s featured effect. Having checked out the original Moby Dick Delay, we were excited to see what changes and improvements awaited us in V2 – well, let’s just say that our expectations were exceeded. Aside from the obvious smaller enclosure,...
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Bob Feldman Shin-ei Austin, TX USA www.shin-ei.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve been playing guitar since 1965. That’s fifty-three years! Damn!! I had friends from school and the neighborhood that played guitar and other instruments. They got me interested in playing. I tried trumpet for about a New York minute but fell right into the guitar and haven’t put it down since. Who have...
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Joey Lewis Buffalo, NY Funktional Flow www.funktionalflow.com facebook.com/FunktionalFlowMusic youtube.com/user/funktionalflowmusic/videos How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? From what I can remember, a man in our neighborhood growing up gave an acoustic guitar to my older brother Justin and he quickly lost interest in it. That’s when I swooped in and nabbed it lol. But it was ok...
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The folks over in Japan at Free The Tone don’t mess around with their effects, always taking things up a notch from where we all think they might level off, surprising and delighting us along the way. Their TA-1H Tri Avatar Multi-Dimensional Chorus pedal continues this tradition by unleashing an absolute mammoth of a chorus pedal, full of all the modern, vintage, classic and yet-undiscovered sounds you could imagine, and then a...
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It’s no secret: WE LOVE DELAY. Old, new, analog, digital – bring it on. There’s a special place in our instrumental hearts for a good tape echo, though, and the Tapex 2 from Mr. Black Pedals is a top-notch inspirational charged delay that echoes (see what we did there?) the echoes of some classic players, songs and tones. A Stereophonic Tape Echo, this silver machine glistens and drips with analog sound, with a ton...
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We’ve all had a pedal, effects or vintage sound-making machine that has peaked our curiosity for years, but have never had the ways or means to acquire said piece of gear. One of the most famous of these is undoubtedly the Echoplex EP-3 from Maestro, a warm echo machine full of tasty modulated delays, and one responsible for many of the classic and iconic recorded tones ever put down on tape. These units, however, are...
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There’s a decent chance you’ve heard of the famous Echoplex EP-3 Tape Delay from Maestro, made popular in the 70’s and 80’s by Andy Summers, Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, and Brian May, among others. You may also know that these older units are finicky, tricky to repair, costly at times and not always the most road-worthy for the touring musician. That’s where today’s pedal comes in: the Belle Epoch...
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Marco Benevento Upstate New York Homepage Follow the Arrow When longtime jazz/jam favorite of ours, Marco Benevento, brought his band through town last week for a show at the Asheville Music Hall, he was kind enough to sit down and talk with us about music, touring, gear and more…here’s our chat, enjoy! [Pedal of the Day] First of all, where did you grow up? Do you still live in the same place? [Marco Benevento] I grew up...
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Ben Deane Overland Park, KS (Kansas City Metro) Monarch Musical Devices https://reverb.com/shop/monarchmusicaldevices How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve always had a connection with music. From my dad’s outlaw country vinyl LPs to my mom’s affection for artists like Paul Simon and Billy Joel, music always spoke to me and I wanted to speak back. I had a couple of years of piano lessons...
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Michael Weavers Christchurch, New Zealand Flux Effects www.fluxeffects.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I started playing guitar and drums when I was 15. We had a crappy nylon-string acoustic guitar with a cracked neck lying around which I began playing around with. I’d try to play U2 songs off the Joshua Tree album with the 3 chords I had learned. In my late teens I bought a...
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Lance Seymour Atlanta, GA Gear Talk www.gear-talk.com www.youtube.com/GearTalkChannel iTunes: Gear Talk Podcast Instagram @GearTalk Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/geartalk (one of dozens of Gear Talk groups on FB) How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I have been a musician for over 20 years. Not near professional that long. LoL. I started playing drums and piano. In high school, I moved on...
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A good chorus pedal can really add depth and dimension to your tone, while a not-so-good one can make you sound a bit cheesy and thin. Today’s featured pedal falls squarely into the former description, providing a warm, lush effect for both emulating guitar heroes of past decades and creating new and exciting modern sounds. The Anadime ADC-4 Chorus is the latest version of this pedal from our pals at Providence, and brings a...
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Who likes delay and echo? “WE LIKE DELAY AND ECHO!” Of course you do, silly. Today’s pedal is an incredible recreation of one of the most famous echo units ever created, the Binson Echorec. This classic delay unit created in the 1950’s was made famous by bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Hawkwind and the Chemical Brothers. The folks at Gurus Amps have created their take on this magical machine, and today we...
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We dig a good reverb pedal, and we figured this new line of MXR pedals would have a pretty good one when they finally released it. In short, we were right. The M300 Reverb features SIX selectable reverb types, along with 3 basic control knobs, to give you more reverberated sounds than you’ll know how to use, but will have a blast figuring out just how to do so. For the control section, Decay, Tone and Mix are all you need to...
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Rafferty Swink Evolfo: www.evolfo.com Low Noon: lownoon.bandcamp.com Oyinda: oyinda.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I started taking piano lessons when I was about seven years old and never stopped. In middle school, I started playing in garage bands with my friends, as well as taking jazz piano lessons with a private teacher. I think having the balance of a serious music education...
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Tape delay/echo units have produced some of the most unique and recognizable tones in music history, used by countless artists and studio producers for decades. However, the older, “classic” units are big and bulky, and are extremely prone to damage, lack of replacement parts and near impossible upkeep. Fortunately, we live in a golden age of effects pedals, and companies like Danelectro re-create these machines with...
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REVERB! You love it, you know you do, and today’s pedal will make you love it even more. One of the highest-quality and well-known reverbs out there, the Space Reverb from Eventide is truly the next level in studio and live performance reverb effects, with up to 100 preset reverbs, studio-quality sound, stereo outputs and more. We’ll give you a little run-down of how this big black beauty works, and show you a demo video...
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In today’s crazy world of ambient pedal obsession, there are more and more incredible machines being produced, and today’s featured piece of gear is a unique and glorious ambient player’s delight. The Wash from Hungry Robot Pedals completes the arduous task of using both delay and reverb to create an organic, below-the-mix wash of sound, while only taking up a fraction of the pedalboard space usually required to...
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Happy Labor Day to all our followers in the United States! Hope you’ll be kicking back with a cold one and some tasty grilled food later on this afternoon, and enjoying the day off (for those of you who have it). In other news…It’s pretty hard not to be impressed by the sheer volume of pedals that come pouring out of the Edmond, OK offices of Keeley Electronics – what’s even more incredible is how...
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Let’s face it: we all love delay. Sure, you can tell your friends or your buddies in the local death metal band that delay is weak and has no place in music, but as soon as you get home, you bust out your favorite delay and noodle for hours. You can admit it. Speaking of killer delays, today’s featured “pedal” just might top the list for modern analog echo recreations, and certainly holds a spot near the top of...
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Andy Greene Escape Plan Pedals http://www.escapeplanpedals.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve played music for pretty much my entire life. I got my first guitar, a miniature steel string acoustic, when I was 5. I learned simplified versions of most of the standard position major chords and a few minor chords and would try to put on concerts for my family. I really got interested in...
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After hearing so much about and seeing the Caveman Overdrive all over the place over the last year, we were super-excited when the guys from Oddfellow Effects said they wanted to send us their newest pedal, The Bishop Overdrive, to check out and review. While the Caveman is a dual-channel drive, The Bishop is a more basic, stripped-down overdrive, but with a ton of punch and kick to get your amp sounding incredible. We’ve got...
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Forrest Whitesides Function f(x) Elk Grove Village, IL www.function-fx.com We have five partners: Dave F., Brian, Dave B., Jerry, and Forrest. Three of us are just outside of Chicago, one guy is a breath away from Nashville, and one is in NJ about 50 miles west of NYC. (Forrest has provided the answers below) How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I first started playing guitar in 1989. Just...
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Mike Gantzer Guitarist for Aqueous Buffalo, NY https://aqueousband.com/ https://www.facebook.com/aqueousband/ How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? Incidentally, when I first started playing music was in the 3rd grade with the standard issue recorder they give out to everyone, and i HATED it. haha I picked up trumpet for awhile, but I recall being sort of turned off with the rigidity of the...
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The Boss family of stompbox delays have been a staple on many, many pedalboards since the inception of the DM-1 Delay Machine way back in 1978, especially the DD series, which features the DD-3, DD-5, DD-6, DD-7 and the DD-20 (click each one for our reviews). In keeping with the tradition, but stepping up the game immensely, Boss has created a delay that will rival anything out on the pedal market today: the DD-500 Digital Delay....
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If you want originality in your pedals, one company you can always rely on to come through in the clutch is Dwarfcraft Devices from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Mainly fuzz and octave-based for the majority of their lineup, today’s featured pedal sees them jumping into a new genre, one that’s our favorite here at Pedal of the Day: delay. Not just any delay, of course – the Minivan Echo conjures up analog tones of the past,...
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How does one company manage to craft not ONE, not even TWO, but THREE of the most-used and highly regarded delay pedals in existence? Starting from scratch and perfecting Version One, that’s how. Although the Memory Lane 2 might be generally regarded as a better machine, and the Memory Lane Jr. might appear on more pedalboards throughout the world, it all started with today’s featured pedal, the Memory Lane Analog Delay...
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Simplicity can be a powerful weapon in today’s pedal world, where some manuals tend to read like a Tolstoy novel. The ability to be able to sit down with a pedal and GO, without having to read a bunch first, can be key to gear working it’s way into your rig. Not that the big boys don’t have their place, of course they do, but sometime you just want a couple of knobs that make beautiful noise, and that’s all you...
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The folks at TC Electronic have been creating incredible delay machines for decades now, moving from impressive rack mount units to some of the most incredible and well-known stompboxes that exist today. From the regular Flashback Delay, to it’s older brother, the Flashback x4, to the Nova Delay and Repeater pedals, TC offers a broad range of options and sizes for you to choose which delay is right for you. Today’s review...
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As much as I enjoy a nice, small delay pedal that fits beautifully onto my pedalboard, I love the big box delay pedals, the ones that take up too much real estate but sound so incredible that you don’t mind the size whatsoever. In an attempt to satisfy my delay obsession, I may or may not have purchased a number of these pedals over the years, and one that I really dig is the Plush REP-3 Tube-Voiced Delay from our friends at...
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All-in-one pedals can be great, and they can be terrible, as anyone who has ever tried a few out can attest to. The good ones, though, when they’re good, they are GOOOOD. Where to begin with a pedal like this, with so many options, tones, squeaks, sound and delights? With a long-standing reputation of making some of the finest musical gear around, the folks at Eventide have one-upped even themselves at this point, and released...
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Having already reviewed the Memory Lane Jr. and Quantum Leap delay pedals from Diamond, I wasn’t quite sure what else they could do with their delay line, but thought I would check out the Counter Point anyway. Let me tell you, this is a beast of another kind, with new and wonderful differences from the other two, but still invoking that same sonic structure and delight that Diamond gives out with all of their pedals. And...
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Vibe effects are some of the funnest, most intriguing and awe-inducing pedals in the world, especially when it comes to tremolos. They can be simple, one or two knob deals, or complex machines with expression jacks and toggle switches out the wazoo. The Trembulator from Gojira FX falls somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, with a relatively simple control layout and loads of great tones to be heard. Four basic knobs make up...
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Man, it looks cold in Iceland! Beautiful, but cold. Obviously, for those of you who know, the temperature doesn’t affect our friend Ásgeir from Pedal Projects one bit, as he continually churns out gorgeous-looking and sounding pedals from the frozen terrain. His latest offering is the Undertow Tremolo, an all-analog optical machine that features both simple controls and complex sounds – let’s check it out! The...
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The stompboxes being put out over at Hungry Robot Pedals have really been coming on strong as of late, and their Hungry Robot Dual Overdrive is not likely to leave my board anytime soon. As for today’s review, HRP’s first foray into the world of delay is a good one, a no frills, basic delay that echoes (no pun intended) the tape machines and analog delays of ages past. Although the Moby Dick emulates the sounds and tones...
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(8/8/14) Guitars: PRS Custom 24 SE w/ Seymour Duncan TB-4 JB Trembucker (bridge) & SH-2N Jazz Humbucker (neck) “The Trooper” Fender Standard Telecaster w/ Seymour Duncan STL-1b Broadcaster Lead (bridge) & STR-1 Broadcaster Rhythm (neck) Alvarez AD60SC Dreadnought Acoustic-Electric Amps: Ampeg GVT 15-H All-Tube Amp Head > Dr. Z 1×12 Cabinet (loaded with a Celestion Vintage 30) Orange Micro Terror 20W...
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