ilovefuzz.com

Out for delivery: Pink speed knobs & green P90 covers for my POS Epi Les Paul Special in Worn TV Yellow

Got a Black Acid coming my way from a fellow ILFer and I'm heckn PUMPED. Been wanting to try one of these for awhile now and it might just be the thing to take me off my big muff heat. Thinking about also maybe investing in an SL Drive or Revelation to stick later in my chain. Folks seem to like the fuzz face/colorsound/MIAB thing and I already have a Black Forest. Anyway did I mention I'm PUMPED?

systemofameow wrote:Got a Black Acid coming my way from a fellow ILFer and I'm heckn PUMPED. Been wanting to try one of these for awhile now and it might just be the thing to take me off my big muff heat. Thinking about also maybe investing in an SL Drive or Revelation to stick later in my chain. Folks seem to like the fuzz face/colorsound/MIAB thing and I already have a Black Forest. Anyway did I mention I'm PUMPED?

It definitely works well into amp-like ODs, then you can use the guitar's vol to get a huge spectrum of dirt.

My Attack Decay showed up at the shop today. The store ordered two of them because they're cheap, and they both sound/behave differently. The other one was about 3 db louder, moderately noisier, less sensitive, less range across the controls and had a weird, faintly garbled undertone when playing certain things. EHX QC on the ball, as always, so try to play before buying if possible.

Also, Poly mode sounds kinda like butt and totally changes the quality of your sound on both units, so I dunno if that's intentional as it otherwise functions as intended, but it's a thing.

Strymon Volante on the way!

The Eristic wrote:My Attack Decay showed up at the shop today. The store ordered two of them because they're cheap, and they both sound/behave differently. The other one was about 3 db louder, moderately noisier, less sensitive, less range across the controls and had a weird, faintly garbled undertone when playing certain things. EHX QC on the ball, as always, so try to play before buying if possible.

Also, Poly mode sounds kinda like butt and totally changes the quality of your sound on both units, so I dunno if that's intentional as it otherwise functions as intended, but it's a thing.

This thing about the latest EHX releases is really annoying. A friend had a similar noise problem with a Canyon. Got to the shop, substitute it, and the other one played perfectly.

Dowi wrote:

The Eristic wrote:My Attack Decay showed up at the shop today. The store ordered two of them because they're cheap, and they both sound/behave differently. The other one was about 3 db louder, moderately noisier, less sensitive, less range across the controls and had a weird, faintly garbled undertone when playing certain things. EHX QC on the ball, as always, so try to play before buying if possible.

Also, Poly mode sounds kinda like butt and totally changes the quality of your sound on both units, so I dunno if that's intentional as it otherwise functions as intended, but it's a thing.

This thing about the latest EHX releases is really annoying. A friend had a similar noise problem with a Canyon. Got to the shop, substitute it, and the other one played perfectly.

This is not what I wanted to hear I don't get to try before I buy...but Russian roulette can be fun I guess.

Yeah, this is a definite bummer--a potentially very cool pedal, but

Well, in the back of the manual, it says to expect Poly mode sound weird and "bubbly", so that's intentional. It has a lo-fi, phasey kind of tone, like whatever they're using for the processing in the unit is having its sample rate cut to handle the extra work. It works much, much better with the Attack knob than with the Decay, manual says you can do HOG decay sounds but it's not even close. You can, however, get some pretty wild glitch and stutter tones, though I don't think they're intended!

Mono mode works great and sounds fine, does the swells, bowed and percussive tones, tape sounds, etc you'd expect, plus the fuzz is super sludgy with a hint of octave while feeling nice and squishy under the fingers and has a filter-style tone control which has a lot of range. It's unbelievably noisy if you crank the fuzz gain, but it you back off a hair it mostly clears up. I'm gong to try disabling the internal compressor to see if that helps, don't know why they didn't just limit the range of the control to avoid the final 5th of the travel that makes the pedal unusable.

The auto trigger "trem" sounds really cool, but it's a little hard to manipulate and trigger consistently (more unintentional stutter sounds abound), think that'll be less of an issue as I get a better grip on how the controls interact and how to play it. You can also change the wave shapes of the Attack and Decay controls, though it suffers from Meris-ism a bit in that the shapes (and many other features and settings) are hidden behind multi-button/switch presses with not much in the way of visual indication in the interface besides an LED blink here and there, which is fairly cumbersome.

All in all, it does a LOT of stuff for what it costs (dealer cost was $79, think it streets for $125), so I can put up with its downsides, but, at the same time, I really want to check out a Sneak Attack or Philosopher King (or?) to see if they behave a little better and/or are more intuitive under the hands.

I had a Philosopher King and recently borrowed a Sneak Attack--they're both very nice for the classic mono attack/decay sounds, though I converted to a Sonuus Voluum bc that does much more. No poly mode in either of them, though, obvi. Each is more flexible in it's envelope shaping than earlier pedal offerings. I got the impression that the Malekko "felt" more natural when I was trying it out, but that could just be my memory. The PK is freaking huge if that matters. Knowing Pigtronix, they'll eventually make a smaller version....

I'm a bit surprised EHX didn't attempt/manage to replicate all the attack/decay functionality in the HOG/POG.

I also wonder if the "phasiness" is inherent to granular processing (something which first I found attractive, but which is now beginning to annoy me--hopefully it doesn't get to "chorus level annoyance" for me )
Thanks very much for your thoughtful and substantial comments!

systemofameow wrote:Got a Black Acid coming my way from a fellow ILFer and I'm heckn PUMPED. Been wanting to try one of these for awhile now and it might just be the thing to take me off my big muff heat. Thinking about also maybe investing in an SL Drive or Revelation to stick later in my chain. Folks seem to like the fuzz face/colorsound/MIAB thing and I already have a Black Forest. Anyway did I mention I'm PUMPED?

Awesome pedal. I love mine. Congrats.

Yesterday was a bad day for my newfound discipline in not buying *quite* so much gear. Ended up copping a Generation Loss, which will hopefully come in before I leave next Wednesday for tour, and I also placed my preorder for the MkII verson of the Landscape HCTT which should ship around May.

After commenting on the rack gear thread I looked up one of the units I mentioned on a whim (I've never seen another) and while there were no units for sale I spied a manual listed which includes schematics/etc. So that's now incoming.

Got my Woozy stuck in customs.
Let's see if it takes them one month to deliver it like has happened with the Ct5 two months ago.

Dowi wrote:Got my Woozy stuck in customs.

Twss, or twhs.

Anyways, that sucks. Hope my cloudy doesn't receive similar treatment.