EHX Good Vibes - asynchronous pulse question and other weird

[moid]

Hello everyone

I had some good luck last week; a colleague at work told me he had some old guitar effects pedals cluttering up a shelf in his house; did I want them for free? Of course I said yes! Most seem to work fine, but one of them (EHX Good Vibes) seems different to how the demos I can see online behave and I'm wondering if there is something wrong with this pedal - so if any of you have ever owned one, please let me know if the below is 'normal' for the pedal:

Power... the pedal will not run off a normal 9V supply and I don't have the power plug that would come with a Good Vibes. On a normal 9V supply it lights up, sound goes through it (with some filtering of frequencies) but no Chorus / Vibe effects at all. I found I had an old EHX power plug from my Q Balls pedal, when I use that suddenly the pedal behaves like a chorus/vibe... is that normal? All my other EHX pedals run off the multispot 9V no name cheap power adapter I have quite happily (even the Q Balls does). Is there a fix for this, or does the circuit really have to run using a one off EHX plug?

Sound - the chorus and vibe do not generate symmetric pulses - on a normal chorus or vibe I expect the audio to be 'chorused' in a rising/falling sine wave (or maybe triangle?), so that it gently fades into the effect and then out of the effect at the same rate. What happens on this pedal is that the first half of the pulse is very short, and the second half is much longer... I think this would look rather like a sawtooth wave! It's very odd, and makes for a somewhat odd chorus / vibe... it has a character, but I'm wondering if something is broken. Nothing looks burned on the inside of the pedal, but it has 4 vactrols which I guess control the pulse and I wonder if one of them has died which might make the pulse lop sided? I can't hear this effect in the various demos on Youtube.

Cool glitch effect - if I plug in an expression pedal (with a TRS cable), set the mode to Vibe and put Speed on maximum and set the expression to affect Speed, I can slam my foot down on the expression pedal and get a stuttering glitch effect which is pretty cool, and then bring my foot back to turn the glitch off and slow the speed down. This only seems to happen when the expression pedal is flat down, so maybe something is wrong with my expression pedal? This part I don't want to change; it sounds pretty cool! I'm just wondering if any of you have the same problems with your pedal.

Anyway I'm not complaining, I got this for free so if if it broken, I will keep it for the weird glitch sound it can do, but with the annoying power issue I suspect it will end up in the same box as my EHX Worm (which has it's own weird 24V power supply!) and only be brought out for occasional use.

Thanks for any thoughts you have!

[dubkitty]

i Googled this, and it won't work with a 9V supply. it requires exactly 9.6V to work properly, so if you don't have a EHX-brand wall wart that produces 9.6V power you'll have to get one online. yes, i think it's weird too. no, i wouldn't try running it at 12V.

[friendship]

The asymmetry of the LFO is normal. That's part of the classic vibe sound.

[moid]

i Googled this, and it won't work with a 9V supply. it requires exactly 9.6V to work properly, so if you don't have a EHX-brand wall wart that produces 9.6V power you'll have to get one online. yes, i think it's weird too. no, i wouldn't try running it at 12V.

Thanks Dubkitty, at least I know it's not me being stupid... hmmm custom power supply means this one is going in the pedal drawer and will come out on special occasions only!

The asymmetry of the LFO is normal. That's part of the classic vibe sound.

Thanks friendship, I didn't know that - I guess I don't like the classic vibe sound then... well I can't complain; it was free! I'll find a use for it at some point in future I'm sure, but it's now in the pedal drawer with all the other pedals that don;t seem to do what I want them to (but might in the future!)

[friendship]

It's not for everybody! Personally I like the lopsided, wobbly sound. Sort of makes it less "predictable," especially when you set the rate agnostic to the tempo you're playing in. Wiggle wobble wub. Hit me up if you decide to sell it!