Cheap nasty horrible pedals!

Flanging_Fred

A little pedal purchase I've just made has got me thinking a bit.

 For ages and ages I've wanted a Danelectro Grilled Cheese distortion pedal. I have NO idea why that idea entered my head, but it stuck there despite reading and hearing on YouTube how entirely awful it is.

So I finally got one despite all common sense telling me not to bother. Guess what?

It's shit.

But that was sort of the point. Danelectro have a long history of 'bad' cheap instruments and yet tons of great music has been created using them ( just ask Jimmy Page). So in this era of Klons, Helix's, Strymons and the like, I get the feeling that deliberately trying to take something 'bad' and get something usable out of it might be a dying creative art for us guitarists.

I spent about 20 minutes last night sat on the floor with my Grilled Cheese and my new Vox Pathfinder making pretty cool steam train noises

jellyroll

Flanging_Fred said:

I spent about 20 minutes last night sat on the floor with my Grilled Cheese and my new Vox Pathfinder making pretty cool steam train noises

What a hoot!

Flanging_Fred

That's weird, half my post disappeared???

The point of the post was to ask if any of you guys deliberately use 'bad' pedals in order to be more creative? What do you use and how?  I love a good classic rock tone as much as the next guy but all things need to evolve.

UnclePsychosis

I like a lot of those garage rock "broken speaker" / "blown up amp" sounds. Everything has a place.

guitarfishbay

Ibanez CF7.

It is how you get the cool almost ring mod tone in My Way by Limp Bizkit. It is not how you get a good chorus or flanger sound though 

guitarfishbay

This isn't a cheap pedal but it definitely sounds nasty.

english_bob

Given that most of the designs at the bottom end of the market these days- guitars, pedals, amps, whatever- are copies of the stuff at the top end it does seem like it's quite difficult to find stuff that is likely to be really bad.

But yes, getting good sounds from bad gear is a skill that guitarists should cultivate, as is getting deliberately bad sounds for when only a bad sound is good enough.

There's a lot of roads to that destination though- I have a few pedals that I know I can get ugly sounds out of if the need arises (a couple of analogue octave up/down effects, a fuzz with bias and voltage starve controls, a crap pitch shifter etc) but that can be made to sound good too. I'd rather that than a house full of pedals I don't actually like except for one shit sound that might be exactly the right kind of shit for some future project one day.

There seem to be quite a few effects makers out there now whose stock in trade is to create pedals that deliberately create harsh, "bad" sounds- Devi Ever springs immediately to mind, although apparently she extended the bad-ness to build quality as well as tone.

steamabacus

I have a Danelectro Fab Overdrive that is pretty pants - but I hang on to it as it does a great 'amp about to explode' impression, especially with the gain low and volume cranked (and it don't half have some boost volume!) into another drive or driven amp. Crap but good.

I also have an EHX Nano Clone chorus that I won in one of the composition challenges on here. Almost sounds like a ring mod.  Absolutely atrocious - crap but really crap!

english_bob

steamabacus said:

I have a Danelectro Fab Overdrive that is pretty pants - but I hang on to it as it does a great 'amp about to explode' impression, especially with the gain low and volume cranked (and it don't half have some boost volume!) into another drive or driven amp. Crap but good.

I had the FAB distortion- actually quite liked it. I found that if you ran it with one of those multi-voltage adaptors turned down to give 4-5v instead of 9v it did a pretty cool mushy fuzz tone.

Flanging_Fred

I gave my FAB Distortion away as a charity prize thingy on here, but I agree, it wasn't without merit for a cheap and cheerful job.

Sassafras

I find that spending a bit of time on nasty pedals can wring at least one usable sound out even the worst pedal.

ThePrettyDamned

guitarfishbay said:

Ibanez CF7.

It is how you get the cool almost ring mod tone in My Way by Limp Bizkit. It is not how you get a good chorus or flanger sound though 

Instantly my thought. 

I use it to make my guitar sound like a spring - the crazy wackd mode - like Korn do on the clean guitar on "it's on".  

Great sound. And I love it. 

ewal

I once had a Danelectro Fab Tone distortion which I got because of Mogwai, Mono and some other bands using them. I found it uncontrollable... Think it might only come alive when you're playing at volume. Would like to try it again some time.

Flanging_Fred

ThePrettyDamned said:

guitarfishbay said:

Ibanez CF7.

It is how you get the cool almost ring mod tone in My Way by Limp Bizkit. It is not how you get a good chorus or flanger sound though 

Instantly my thought. 

I use it to make my guitar sound like a spring - the crazy wackd mode - like Korn do on the clean guitar on "it's on".  

Great sound. And I love it. 

Just listened to the track.  It's a cool sound and exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of; crazy stuff you couldn't really use in normal circumstances but works really well in the ' special  effects'  zone.

DesVegas

Although it's not on my board at the moment i do like the Danelectro Black Liquorice distortion. Very cheap and very nasty

mike_l

Not particularly cheap, but not particularly great the Vox Satchurator.
Like a bad DS-1. Too compressed, too middly.

The only dirt I struggle to get a good sound from.

SimpleSimon

A lot of pedals dont sound right into solid state amps. I presume the Pathfinder isnt a valve amp?

JezWynd

SimpleSimon said:

A lot of pedals dont sound right into solid state amps. I presume the Pathfinder isnt a valve amp?

It's Solid State. I have a soft spot for the Fab Metal pedal and the Fish n Chips is a great bit of kit.

sticker

I have a Rocktek PH-01 Phaser  that I picked up in 1992 , it's plastic , cheap , and very noisy ... and absolutely glorious .

I'd never use it live but if I need a chewy O.T.T phaser for recording it would win every time .