Reissue Blenders are great. I picked one up for $120. Sounds prefect. Meaning "insane and obnoxious."

A bunch of small companies are making Tone Benders that are spot on.

-A

scott wrote:I bought a Digitech RP-7 in 1997. I realized right quick that it wasn't gonna cut it, and upgraded to the RP-20, which I used for a couple-few years.

I haven't used the RP-20 since about 2002.

Guitar + computer = blech.

The RP series!! haha.. I bought the RP-5 around the same time you got the RP-7. Man, what a piece of shit that was. Even my friends cat expressed a dislike for it (by crapping on it). I remembered seeing people with the RP-20 and being jealous because theirs didn't sound so bad.

alex maiolo wrote:Honeyisfunny:
I have to believe that Fulltone doesn't like seeing one of their defining products looking and acting like shit. My experience with high end companies is that they will fix your problem for cheap, or even free, especially if it's a durability issue. They have banked their reptation on making good stuff that's worth the money. Call them on that! It's what you paid for, man. Even if you were tough on it. That's why you bought it.

-A

Funny you should say that, I did contact Mike Fuller about it and he offered to fix the problems but it would have cost me so much to actually send it (and again to receive it as Customs would have no doubt treated it as a new pedal and charged me import duty) that I ended up fixing it myself. It isn't so much a problem with the quality as the design - the switches are clipped onto the underside of the lid with nothing to support them so when you stomp on it it applies lots of pressure to the switch on the underside and eventually they break, hence mine has 2 replacement switches.
It does sound great though with a good, high watt amp.

volume pedal (when not broken)-> boss tuner -> modified gcb95 wah -> rocktron metal planet (this is actually a pretty cool pedal) -> big muff -> sound city concorde 2x12

I get crazy big sounds with the two distortions. I make the metal zone a bit on the tinny side and crank the tone on the muff down a lot, CRA-Z big sounds!

Even though I play bass, I kind of have a ridiculous amount of pedals:

1. Boss tuner
2. Pro Co Rat 2
3. Ibanez DE-7 delay/echo

I pretty much use the Ibanez pedal mostly for segues and noise swells. I think we only have one song were I actually have a part that calls for delay. For the price (I think I paid about $60 new) its a pretty decent pedal, and sounds a lot less clean than the Boss pedals, which is what I was going for.

I used to use a Boss Power Driver 2 for distortion, and besides the Rat, it was the best distortion pedal I've used for bass. I also used a Danelectro Reel Echo for delay; again, another pretty cheap pedal that actually sounds good, and its one of the cheapest pedals I've found that lets you loop your signal and play over it.

I bought a V4-b this summer, and I haven't been totally satisfied with the sound. Any recommendations? I've wanted to try the MXR distortion or one of my friends Fulltones to see what work best.

tallchris wrote:
I bought a V4-b this summer, and I haven't been totally satisfied with the sound. Any recommendations? I've wanted to try the MXR distortion or one of my friends Fulltones to see what work best.

I loved my V-4B before I burned the entire output out of it (fist-sized hole in the circuit board). Hotrod one of the preamp channels...takes, like, 6 resistors and capacitors. You like old Hammerhead?

The most useful pedal I've ever owned is a Boss Noise Supressor. It allows me to use noisy pedals without squealing between songs and all that.

I vary my pedals, lately it's been a Ross Distortion (the good brown unit), a Maxxon compressor, an original Foxx Tone Machine (I have two, one flocked and one wrinkle-finish. Different transistors and tones) an MXR Distortion II (Excellent AC-powered pedal, fairly scarce) and a Boss Dimension D.

Anyone have any experience with a Rangemaster or clone? I normally play through a fairly dirty Park combo or a MK II Super Lead.

Another fan of the poo brown Ross distortion!
I used to use mine all the time. Very under rated.

I know the Rangemaster clones. All I can see that they do is make everything really bright. It will make you sound like the Kinks.
That's not a band thing, but my point is that it will make your sound very thin and it sort of makes your expensive guitar sound really cheap.

-A

These days the only consistent pedal is the EH LPB2ube (stupid name), which I talk more about here. Executive summary: great tone, craptacular, fragile construction. If you buy one, take note of the screw between the tubes. It holds the circuit board up off the chassis, and will loosen over time. When it loosens enough, the chassis goes live. A trivial fix, but quite a surprise, let me tell you. I use it to amplify the guitar going into the laptop, so other effects are all software. This is easier to carry around than my old rig.

Favorite boxes over the years have been the EH Frequency Analyzer (any ring mod is fine by me), the Big Muff, the Graphic Fuzz, the Polychorus, the Memory Man (RIP, for mine, anyway...though I might be able to resurrect it), the Ibanez DML-10 digital modulation delay, the Digitech 2-second sampler, the Line6 delay modeler (whatever its model number)...and that pretty much covers what I've used.

I'm still looking for the perfect preamp/boost/edge-of-distortion pedal which can handle some hauling-from-gig-to-gig abuse. The LPB2ube is close, but loses due to fragility. (I should note that my main guitar has semi-low-output old Melody Maker pickups, so I need the gain.)

I'm also rediscovering the Boss Rocker Distortion. I never really looked inside, and it has a couple of trim pots to tweak it. It's built like a tank and the volume pedal aspect is cool.