The world's most disappointing pedal?

lasermonkey

Just remembered- the first pedal I ever bought was a Kimbara Fuzz, which was a re-branded Shin-Ei FY-2. It would make any minor chord sound out of tune. I gave it away in the end, which is kinda galling, as they're quite valuable these days.
I suspect that something must have been wrong with it, as I've built a few FY-2 clones since and none of them made minor chords sound out of tune, even if I don't  like the sound on guitar. Love it on bass, though.

markr76

I've been really disappointed with most of the latest Keeley pedals that I've played. The Dan and Mick od/boost and the tone workstation 3 in 1 pedal they did in particular.
I used to love my old Keeley modded mellow wah though. 

jamesguitar

^ this!

Cookiemonster

Keeley monteray 

Alvin

jamesguitar said:

^ this!

Yes , i had a G System and i tolerated it for two weeks  , i managed to get some nice ambient sounds out of it eventually but it had to be the most over complicated bit of kit ever and it is well known how poor the (TC) user manual is  . A shame as they are seriously well built but only safe to use if you have a good supply of paracetamol at the ready .  There is nothing intuitive about these , it is shocking how badly TC messed up with the manuals .

simonk

jamesguitar said:

^ this!

Ahh, the mighty G... bloody complicated and bloody heavy! And where’s the bloody manual?? It’s capable of some good sounds though, to be fair.

Dominic

Cookiemonster said:

Keeley monteray 

Must Agree......awful tinny digital plinky sound with added treble harshness..........mod station was just as bad

Oakie

Dod death metal! What was I thinking. Sounded like a swarm of bee's with a chesty cough...

Clarky

for me the most disappointing pedal [fx unit in the case] was the Helix
it's not so much because it's bad, because that is not true at all.. it's an excellent unit..

the reason I found it disappointing was because I had such high hopes of it being able to meet my needs..
and it got so close.. but fell just a little short where I needed it to be strong..

it's not so much that the unit is disappointing 
it's more accurate to say that it was me being disappointed because it came so close to being a solution but didn't quite make it

JayGee

bbill335 said:

equalsql said:

Joyo Voodoo Octave:

Is this one of those China-built clones (of a Foxx) that has one wrong component that makes it suck, much like the GFS Brownie?

It is apparently a China-built clone which has a couple of components inserted the wrong way round, or at least that’s what a mate of mine says who recently opened one up and turned it into something which I think sounds Really Rather Good in about 10 minutes on the basis of this...

http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14129#p164663

Paul_C

ICBM said:

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the Korg Miku yet...

I found it disappointing - it wasn't actually as crazy or as 'vocal' sounding as I expected, the range of sounds was quite limited and all sounded basically very similar, it didn't track well and there was an annoying volume change. It might have been more usable in a parallel mix loop, but the lack of variety and control over the sound itself would still have made it a one-trick pony.

I was made aware this morning of a truly heroic figure who owns not one, but two Mikus. Not something I've ever considered despite my contentment at owning one

peteri

Two(ish) for me:

Dod American Metal Pedal - loved it as a teenager in the 80s, bought one - just awful!

Oh, and everything made by Electro-Harmonix, noisy, unreliable, not worth the hype

Oh(2), all the Pods between the original one and the Helix

Daved756

The bin pedal when the bin is full

peteri

I've thought of more!

As someone above said, the newest Keeley DSP based multi-pedals, just buggy and not much better than a lot of other things on the market

Matchless Hotbox - not sure if it's me or the pedal, I've had two - not cared for either of them, large, heavy, expensive, meh

The TC Nova series, poor quality AD/DA conversion and painful switching

JayGee

peteri said:

Two(ish) for me:

Dod American Metal Pedal - loved it as a teenager in the 80s, bought one - just awful!

Oh, and everything made by Electro-Harmonix, noisy, unreliable, not worth the hype

Oh(2), all the Pods between the original one and the Helix

Duly wisdomed for the comment about Pods.

Not that they were actually bad, weren’t value for money, or weren’t at the very least extremely useful (my XT gave me years of use as a practice/travel tool) but they could never in a million years live up to the claims made for/about them and as such were doomed to be “disappointing” from the beginning...

Octafish

JayGee said:

bbill335 said:

equalsql said:

Joyo Voodoo Octave:

Is this one of those China-built clones (of a Foxx) that has one wrong component that makes it suck, much like the GFS Brownie?

It is apparently a China-built clone which has a couple of components inserted the wrong way round, or at least that’s what a mate of mine says who recently opened one up and turned it into something which I think sounds Really Rather Good in about 10 minutes on the basis of this...

http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14129#p164663

Was going to post that myself, it's supposed to be a clone of the Foxx Tone Machine.

I picked one up a few years ago and it did sound rather farty and lacking in dynamics off the shelf, so I had a go at modding it. I turned the transistors the right way round plus did a couple of capacitor swaps and as you say the results were rather good. It's up there with with much more expensive octave/fuzzes and much more authentic/biting than the EHX Octavix. The fuzz by itself sounds quite good, particularly when fed with a boost/OD, although a bit too hissy. Obviously fuzz/octave can be a bit marmite.

bingefeller

Paul_C said:

ICBM said:

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the Korg Miku yet...

I found it disappointing - it wasn't actually as crazy or as 'vocal' sounding as I expected, the range of sounds was quite limited and all sounded basically very similar, it didn't track well and there was an annoying volume change. It might have been more usable in a parallel mix loop, but the lack of variety and control over the sound itself would still have made it a one-trick pony.

I was made aware this morning of a truly heroic figure who owns not one, but two Mikus. Not something I've ever considered despite my contentment at owning one

Mika Tykksa has an instrumental called Miku in which he plays the melody through a Miku pedal and it sounds great.

Keefy

My nomination is the Maxon AD999 Pro. I had (and still have) the AD999, which is a phenomenal analog delay pedal. The Pro version has switches to activate taps after various of the 8 (yes eight!) BBD chips, so in theory you should be able to get Shadows-style multi-head echo. The trouble is, the delay is voiced so dark that the repeats just end up as audio mush, with no discernible rhythmic content.

Dominic

Clarky said:

for me the most disappointing pedal [fx unit in the case] was the Helix
it's not so much because it's bad, because that is not true at all.. it's an excellent unit..

the reason I found it disappointing was because I had such high hopes of it being able to meet my needs..
and it got so close.. but fell just a little short where I needed it to be strong..

it's not so much that the unit is disappointing 
it's more accurate to say that it was me being disappointed because it came so close to being a solution but didn't quite make it

That's an interesting and fair point of view ,I kind of know what you mean...........almost perfect BUT what exactly didn't it fulfill in your needs or was it simply 95 % great in all and just short of the mark in so many ?

Gulliver

Gadget said:

Gulliver said:

Neunaber WET/Expanse series

Couldn't get a decent sound out of it.

Colour me surprised. I can't stop getting great sound out of it.

I don't really play stuff that needed the shimmer verb - so messed with loading different effects in and didn't really like any of them. The choruses sounded thin and weak, the delays were OK but nothing special.

Maybe I just need simple, analog effects for my simple analog brain!!