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?
Comments
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.
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.
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.
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
As for "when am I ready?" You'll never be ready. It works in reverse, you become ready by doing it. - pmbomb
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.
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.
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.
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
Edit to add: should be similar kind of money (i.e. not a lot) if you can find them secondhand.
Trust me.
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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...
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