£100 board of essentials

VJIves

My buddy has decided that she wants to put a cheap board together, having correctly reached the conclusion that when she applies digital fx to recordings they sound bad.

I already have an old Pedalbay 50, path cables, and an isolated 8 port power supply she can use. She'll need a compressor, an overdrive that preferably has the option to be a heavier distortion when required, delay, and a reverb (something roomy). 

The great thing is, she has no brand snobbery whatsoever, doesn't care about where the jacks are and would be totally content with mini pedals, as long as they work and sound OK. So what are the best of the Amoons, the Tomslines, the Joyos? The Tone Citys, the enos, the Kokkos? Can it be done for £100?

VJIves

(and yeah, my preference would be that she sucks it up and drops the extra £70 for the Mooer Red Truck, but I'm meeting resistance there. She prefers individual pedals, but the red truck looks like that basically!)

digitalscream

Definitely going to struggle for £100. The best delay in the small/cheap market is the Joyo Quattro (it's the only one I know of that has delay trails when you switch it off), but that's about £45.

Don't forget patch cables as well - they're probably going to take £15 off the budget too.

Is this for recording only, or live stuff? If it's for live, then reverb may not be necessary with a decent delay.

VJIves

digitalscream said:

Definitely going to struggle for £100. The best delay in the small/cheap market is the Joyo Quattro (it's the only one I know of that has delay trails when you switch it off), but that's about £45.

Don't forget patch cables as well - they're probably going to take £15 off the budget too.

Is this for recording only, or live stuff? If it's for live, then reverb may not be necessary with a decent delay.

It'll be for both, and she'll probably record vocals through it too. I've got spare patch cables, I'll edit that in. I wish I was capable of her restraint when buying gear.

builttospill

I would seriously consider a Boss SD-2 Dual Overdrive from Ebay before the prices start to climb, used prices all over the place for this pedal, it has a brilliant sparkly crunch channel and a nice thick lead tone channel in one Boss enclosure. You can switch between the crunch and lead. And it works well with pretty much any amp.

VJIves

builttospill said:

I would seriously consider a Boss SD-2 Dual Overdrive from Ebay before the prices start to climb, used prices all over the place for this pedal, it has a brilliant sparkly crunch channel and a nice thick lead tone channel in one Boss enclosure. You can switch between the crunch and lead. And it works well with pretty much any amp.

I may actually consider one for myself, but for this exercise it would shoot the budget right in the face.

digitalscream

OK...if I was putting a board like that together, I'd use...

Compressor - SubZero Avalanche (£25)
Overdrive - SubZero Blizzard (£25)
Distortion - Tone City Golden Plexi (£40)
Delay - Joyo Quattro (£45)

...and skip the reverb, because it's often not necessary in a live setting when you've already got delay (unless you're going to massive ambient reverbs, obviously) and if you're recording then DAW plugins do a perfect job of it anyway.

Run the overdrive into the Golden Plexi for an extra gain boost if necessary.

That's still £135, though. One way to shave money off would be to skip the overdrive pedal, and use the compressor with the level up high to boost the distortion (I actually do that on my Helix for lead tones). Alternatively, miss out the compressor altogether.

crunchman

I'd be looking second hand on that budget.  Something like TC Dark Matter might work.  It's £41 new so you ought to be able to get one for £30 or less second hand.

You might pick up some of the Joyo (or similar) very cheaply second hand.  I picked up one of the Joyo knock offs of the Sansamp character pedals for under £20 a while back.  If you want something that copes with a good range of gain the Joyo/Harley Benton knockoff of the OCD would be worth a look.  I've not played it, but the original Fulltone version is very versatile.

Jonathangus

£100, you say?

https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-dept/guitar-pedals/guitar-fx/second-hand-boss-gt-6-w-power-supply-t:ab-ma-sh-198-2367cq07532

EricTheWeary

Tone City do twin drives that are sixty or seventy quid and the Mooer Echo Verb can be had for sixty. That's £120 but would cover four effects. 

Valeton Dapper Mini? £85 would cover , I think, tuner, two levels of gain, delay, chorus, cab sim and headphone out. 

I suspect in reality it's seeing what comes up used.

clarkefan

You can get used multi fx units all day for under £100?

VJIves

clarkefan said:

You can get used multi fx units all day for under £100?

She inexplicably wants individual pedals, another reason the Mooer Red Truck got shot down.

Roland

Yes, something like a second hand GT-8 will give her all the effects she needs, plus tuner, wah and volume.

munckee

I paid £12.50 on here for a Joyo vintage drive which is a ts9 basically.  A few buys like that you'd easily get it for £100

steer

Joyo American Sound - About £30 - will do your basic overdrive / fender amp sound.

Donner Morpher Distortion - About £20 - Heavier distortion. 

Zoom Multistomp - either the MS100bt or MS70CDR or MS50 - Secondhand maybe you might get one for around £50. That will do reverb, compressor and delay and tuner. Yes, I know it is a multi-fx unit, but it sits in a boss sized enclosure, so can be passed off as a normal pedal, and is the best value for money pedal I have ever owned. 

crunchman

The Joyo American Sound is meant to be an amp emulation so it has cab simulation built in for going direct to PA or a recording device.  Other things would probably sound better into an amp.

As @munckee said, the Vintage Drive will give you a TS type pedal.  I think the Ultimate Drive is the OCD knock off.  The original version of the OCD does everything from low gain to quite high levels of distortion - although low gain sounds are definitely better on 18V.   I don't know if the Joyo version is engineered well enough to handle 18V though.

munckee

@crunchman ;

I have the american sound as a stand alone pedal for when I can't be bothered to get my pedal board out, in front of my champ it is really good for overdrive and EQ

Snags

I've got a TC Dark Matter and a MojoMojo. For the intended use I'd say the MojoMojo is the better bet - you can use it like a Tube Screamer (gain min, vol max) or crank it all the way round to get some fairly heavy distortion.  The Dark Matter does have some overlap but gets into high gain territory much sooner.

Edit to add: should be similar kind of money (i.e. not a lot) if you can find them secondhand.

Cookiemonster

Boss me 50

Trust me.

timbuk02

Another vote for the Mojo Mojo
Biyang Tri Reverb looks hard to beat for the price
and am sure I've read good things in the past about the cheap as chips Belcat Delay...

Cookiemonster

Mojo is a good suggestion. Really nice pedal. Not so keen on the dark matter