Exciter Pedals

longi

I've recently found out that THE exciter model on ms70cdr makes my HT5 sound pretty good, so I was wondering who makes exciter pedals these days? The only one I can find in production is the BBE Sonic Stomp. Are there any others out there?

ESBlonde

The way an exciter works is essentially it takes a bit of the dry signal and boosts it to distorion levels. Those harmonics created from the distortion are syphoned off and added back to the dry sound as additional brightness or 'air'. This means the harmonics remain relevent to the input signal. Further circuits can tune/select or refine the harmonic content. Other parts of some of the BBE products enhance the bottom end.

It may be better to reduce the mids on the amp whilst adding treble and turn it up to compensate. Nothing wrong with aural exciters but the are really problem solvers and it's best to sort the problem at source.

I have an old Aphex Aural exciter type E which lives on my board (half rack size with a remote F/S). I don't use it much these days but it can make some dull guitars sparkle when they need to cut through.

longi

Thanks for the reply. The HT5 isn't the brightest amp out there, the exciter does bring it to life. I'm not sure I'd use on any of my other amps though. I'm just looking for a dedicated pedal so I just switch off the one pedal rather that ploughing through a bunch of presets switching the exciter off individually!

I do like a crispy amp!

JezWynd

Boss used to do the EH-2 Enhancer pedal. I think It works a bit differently to the BBE - it can enhance a defined frequency range and then set how loud you need to play before it kicks in. Works especially well on upper mid range. It was discontinued but they occ come up on eBay for quite reasonable prices.

Danny1969

Try a clean boost in the HT5's effect loop. I've done hundreds of gigs with HT5's and always had a boost in the effects loop, mine was a Boss GT10 .. no effects set but an increase in level. Makes a massive difference to the tone of the amp and how it repsonds.