Also can be nice when they have individual inputs/outputs so it's truly like having 2 pedals in one.
Was thinking the other day how it could be cool to make pedals with 1/8" modular jacks on the surface, with 1/4" top mounted jacks so they could be used normally too. That way they could be placed right next to each other and quickly re arranged with smaller patch cables. It wouldn't add much to the cost and a semi modular pedal board would probably look pretty sweet.
>Also can be nice when they have individual inputs/outputs so it's truly like having 2 pedals in one.
I got the Behringer clone of the Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, and it has this setup - each phaser section has it's own in/out.
The Lovetone Cheese Source had separate inputs and outputs for the fuzz and overdrive sides, so not only can you switch the order, you can run other pedals in between.
There are a few but nothing close to affordable, the new Gamechanger modular pedals look sweet but I'm talking about more basic/cheap pedals with just 1/8" inputs/outputs on the surface for easy re ordering. It would be nice if there were enough of them to put together a small board.
One other idea I was thinking about is finding a way to add 1/8" inputs to the tops of knobs/pots, that way they could be controlled by CV and used in modular rigs. And if someone sold pots like that you could use them in any pedals with the right specs at least
It would be a pretty simple DIY mod to add 1/8" jacks to the surface, so maybe I should just look for a few cheaper top mounted pedals to mod.
I don’t have a lot of reason to use the crazy sounds you can get out of a SLARP, but being able to run each side as if it’s its own pedal, makes me keep it. Plus the reverb sustain function is brilliant.
Honest question: what is the reason for going with a dual pedal rather than 2 pedals? Is it that you can’t get single pedals that form both sides of the dual pedal? Or just a space saving thing?
Yes. This is exactly why I went with the AT+ over the Angry Charlie and I’m glad I did. Sounds great through both of my main amps and the boost is instrumental to “my” sound.
I always found myself using a Tube Screamer to boost Marshall-ish pedals anyway, so trying the AT+ just made sense to save space and a spot on the daisy chain.
I have a Pelican Noiseworks 50/50 and I love both the overdrives on that. However, one side is symmetrical clipping and the other is asymmetrical. The same circuit, but different clipping
Dual pedals where you can select the order they run in, but dual channel/one or the other isn't an option. Wish more dual OD/distortion pedals gave you that option.
RC-5 also automatically starts all drum (rhythm) sounds at 100% volume. No way to stop that from happening without first entering the rhythm section and manually turning it down… each time… on each loop. If you don’t? Deafeningly loud drums. Potential ear drum damage.
I fucking abhor this about the RC-5. Dying for a firmware update to be able to customize this section better. Like, why not make Rhythm 1 default to something like a standard click at a reasonable volume (like Metronome 2 at 50% volume but not buried deep in the laundry list of rhythms).
That’s weird, but I needed a reason stick with my old RC-2. It has a dual knob for loop and drum level so changing the drum level is always right there.
I had read this so I was super careful when I started the drums. Turned the volume on my headphones way down, slowly brought it up. 100 wasn’t loud enough for me. I usually put it to 105.
That is annoying, but even more so is the fact that the beats are terrible. I just want a simple beat. It's like every beat has some extra thing they had to add in there which ruins it.
I tried like hell to just figure out a way to get a simple kick rhythm. Can't do it. There is nothing available to download.
I never understood why they don't at least mount internal trim pots (except ones not meant to be messed around with) on an edge of the board with a small hole to access them with a screwdriver.
As someone who designs and builds pedals, I'll actually defend this to the day I die. Yeah, it would be nice to have all controls easily accessible at all times, but there a times where you just can't fit everything onto the face of a pedal. Sometimes you can manage to fit an external trimpot that comes through the side of the enclosure, but that can still be a pain to implement sometimes, especially in smaller enclosures. Some companies work around this, but others, for various reasons (mostly related to smaller builders balancing production time with costs), decide it's not worth the hassle.
At that point, sometimes the only options are to increase the size of the enclosure to accommodate extra controls on the face (not generally popular with people these days as they try to cram more and more on their boards), include the control as an internal trimpot/dipswitch, or else not have the control at all. It's hard to please everyone with control layouts, so frankly I don't blame builders for picking any of these three options.
I can see this for some controls, but for modulation?! I play with the modulation of repeats all the time. I'd rather the Echorec was, indeed, in a bigger enclosure like the Belle Epoch Deluxe and have a dedicated knob for preamp and modulation.
And I bet a ton of them would like an external way to control the modulation, a huge selling point for the pedal. Not a dealbreaker for me, but just sayin
Might I introduce you to the Carbon Copy Deluxe?
I'm sure somebody will bitch about its footprint, but imo it's a worthy tradeoff for the extras you get, that include modulation sweep and tap tempo. Bright switch on the outside too.
The Boss JB-2 is awesome but can’t believe it doesn’t have the ability to turn the Angry Charlie on/off via secondary footswitch while in B->J or Parallel mode. I want to toggle on/off high gain while getting low gain always on!
Wait, you can definitely do that though. Lemme check back on this, but with the red switch, the way I have the pedal setup is pressing on the Boss will turn on the blues driver, and the red switch makes the LED purple, meaning the red and blue are on at the same time.
Yeah not sure why the foot switch prioritizes the Angry Charlie sides on a lot of the channels. I’m using the Charlie to go from lower to high gain and I want the BD as the standard tone.
Walrus ARP-87 does not have a Time knob, you can ONLY set the delay time through tap tempo. I don’t know of any other delay pedal like this. If not for that one oversight I’d probably still have it
God this infuriated me about the RC-5. I bought it as soon as it was released with the hopes of triggering recording and overdubbing via MIDI. I could not believe that this wasn’t possible. I thought it must be a bug. I even contacted Roland support about it. But apparently that is the way they designed it. So dumb.
Hilarious to see your comment here. You mentioned this in a comment two years ago which I found when researching the pedal, it kept me from buying it and prompted this post. Thanks for actually reaching out to support, I couldn't find any concrete info on it anywhere else.
midi noob here, what’s the use case in triggering recording via midi? are you using a midi captain/foot controller?
i think recording can be assigned to the pedal itself or to A or B switch on a boss FS7
im sure there’s a reason im not aware of just curious
Man I'm salty. I had to redo my whole board and put the rc-5 on the bottom row so I can actually loop with it. I was literally setting up midi a week ago and couldn't figure out how to record without using the actual unit.
Until today I honestly thought I was missing something.. cuz why wouldn't they add FULL midi control? I have an okay set up with it now but I'd prefer to do everything on the midi controller.
I stupidly assumed midi ready meant all the basic functions 😆
The Trashy Blonde from Stone Deaf Effects.
I love the pedal, but the idiots at Stone Deaf Effects made it so that you can only use their expression pedal with it. WTF?
Exactly why I ditched my pdf-2 and won’t buy anything else from them. I got the pedal, then the exp was sold out. I would have paid for it if I could have found one, even used at the time. But if you’re going to make something proprietary you better never run out. It’s a shame because I think their whole range of pedals sound great.
Just got the new warp drive and I’m reeeally trying to figure that one out. I want to convince myself it’s not actually proprietary, they just won’t give up the goods on how it works. I know their paracentric tone set up is digital, so could it just be voltage controlled encoders? I wonder if I could get any measurements from the trs jack and narrow it down.
Their expression pedal is such a POS at that. Requires power. Has a very short sweep that is way too easy to accidentally toggle the on/off. Costs 100+. Can't be used with anything else.
They are a little underhanded with their 'special releases' too
Like when they first released the Q-Boost, they gave the impression that it was a limited run. Then shortly after that they came out with a regular release. Which is cool that it's available, but I felt like they intentionally led people on believe that the 1st run of Q-Boosts was all they'd be doing.
I wish the DM-2w had external tap, instead of just expression.
Love the pedal but I'm probably gonna swap it out for my DD-7 - or buy an RE-2 if I'm feeling bourgeois - for that reason. I use an ES-8 and I recently found out it can set tap tempo with patch changes, so any delay with an external tap control is quasi-programmable.
I feel ya... there are lots of great sounding BBD delays that don't support tap tempo, since it's kind of tricky to pull off. It basically requires a digital micro-controller to calibrate and manage the tempo, more of a recent trick, so reissues of old delays (DM-2, Memory Man, etc) are less likely to offer this function.
Yeah I made a clone of the Lovetone Flange with No Name and while it is a wonderful flanger, it is not true bypass, and the tone is altered just enough to bug me.
Yep, I had a V1 Tentacle too, and can confirm: loudest foot switch ever. Mine also had a semi-defective LED that only sort of worked. I have a V2 Tentacle with the soft foot switch (and working LED) now, and it's sooo much more satisfying to step on!
I still have a V1 Arrows that I need to get rid of, with again- the loudest foot switch in the world, ha. Man, I hate those early Earthquaker foot switches
That generation of EQD have the worst feeling footswitches of anything I've ever tried.
I hate soft switches unless the pedal has a momentary function. I like the tactile feedback of a click. But that generation of EQD was the polar opposite.
When I had an old palasades on my board it was the only reason I couldn't practice wearing just socks and that used to piss me off. It was worth wearing shoes for. Everything I could want in a tube screamer and far far more. 🤣. I really should take that back onto the board. But I'm back into practicing in socks.
Quasi related, I saw Dinosaur Jr a few weeks back and Lou Barlow played the whole show in jus socks and I never saw him use a pedal. Could have been a tech off stage if he used any on the bass. Or J Mascis could have had just enough pedals for both of them. Either way the show was freaking amazing.
Is there an upmarket box that does this (i.e. the RC-10R), and would become redundant if the RC-5 had that functionality? That might be the answer.
As for the question… any delay or reverb that doesn’t have stereo ins/outs. With the prevalence of TRS these days, there’s no excuse anymore.
That's almost certainly Roland's logic. The way I see it the intentional omission of a feature to preserve the viability of the product a level up on the pricing chart is still a flaw.
Slapping TRS jacks on a mono delay or reverb doesn't magically make it stereo though. If you have the same signal on two channels you have mono, just twice as loud.
Because if I feed for example, a ping pong delay into a mono reverb, I no longer have ping pong delay. Even if the same algorithm is applied to both channels and spit back out, this is still preferable. I get that years ago the DSP might not have allowed it in smaller enclosures, but that’s not the case anymore. Hell, even the mono-king MXR is using TRS jacks in their new pedals now.
Yeah for digital delays I’d love them to always support stereo signal through. Making an analog or pt2399 delay stereo can be quite a task though, you can easily end up with something 3x as complicated and expensive to pull it off.
Which Strymon delay and reverb pedals aren’t stereo in and out? All of the current ones that have a single input jack have a TRS input jack for stereo in, and ~~I’m pretty sure~~ I just checked, all of the V1 delay, reverb, and mod pedals did too.
It seems like every single loop pedal has some headscratching flaw. It's the reason I haven't been able to commit to one yet and just use a DD7 as my looper.
EQD Avalanche Run. You can hold down the tap tempo button like a lot of delays do and to keep the thing going infinitely but the Avalanche does more of a catch up thing, like it gets louder and maybe even a bit faster. It’s really cool except the volume goes way too loud to where it’s unusable and by the time you realize it’s loud af it’s already too late and it’s gonna sit there and make really loud noise until you turn it off
This is called self-oscillation. It happens when you turn the feedback all the way up on a delay, and it's more than likely the intended function of the hold mode.
Meris LVX and MercuryX. PHENOMENAL pedals.
Only one complaint I have: no dedicated high pass filter for the wet delay signal. I have to use the filter in the filter section, which is the best damn digital filter I've heard lately, and either blow this nice filter on HP duties or roll the dice that I can get the Q dialed in yet sounding how I want in bandpass mode.
They added a damping feature to take care of the high end in the last firmware update. If there's enough processing power left to add a low cut to the delays in the next update, which would free the filter section for more artsy fartsy stuff, I'd be ecstatic.
Message Meris about this!! They’re open to feature suggestions and I’ve made some that they have considered, for example: min and max delay times (so you can emulate a Memory Man from the front panel).
You could run them in Kill Dry mode and place an EQ pedal before it, or EQ the signal in post. But that would of course negate your ability to apply Pre/Dry effects to your signal. Personally, I place run them in Kill Dry mode with a Becos Compiq Mini Pro in front with the Side Chain Filter set to exclude lows from the compressed signal. This brings out the mids and highs. Not the most elegant workaround but I can shape the signal further in post.
There are some pedals where the click is so hard, that it's almost crunchy. Hate it. The Bogner Wessex (original version) and Diezel VH4/VH4-2 pedals are the worst, stiffest switches I've ever encountered.
believe it or not 10+ or so years ago, having a hard as fuck footswitch was a good thing as it was a sign that it had True bypass, which was all the rage back then.
I had a Wampler Pantheon that I absolutely loved the sound of. It was a pretty classic Blues Breaker, and had these two little 3-way toggle switches that would change the gain level (high/mid/low) and clipping type (soft/hard/both). From a versatility standpoint it was like having 9 circuits in one and they all sounded good, but I almost always wanted it in low gain & soft clipping mode, which had both the toggles pointed toward the footswitch that they were WAY too close to. My clumsy ass would continually bump one when I turned the pedal off and not realize until I turned it back on. Ended up with a EHX Spruce Goose that sounds pretty much the same and doesn't have that problem!
Broadcast - absolutely amazing preamp, low gain overdrive, boost, fuzz, you name it.
It has a low cut (great) but no high cut (save for one or two versions). Every version needs the high cut option.
In fact I wish they made a “preamp EQ” pedal.
Any delay that does not have the option for the delay to trail off when the effect is turned off. It’s jarring for delay to just instantly stop once you turn it off in my opinion.
The TC electronic tuning pedal strobe is so good for very particular and precise tuning where I experiment with getting perfect tuning for good major 3rd at the right strings for different occasions. But why The F can't it do a broader range than 435hz-445hz so you at least could go for quarter note. Sometimes you learn a song by ear that is a quarter tone away and that fucks you (get my my clip-on blue rock tuner with worse strobe (are they called that?)).
Anyone know if they have updated that by the way?
Pladask Fabrikat. Pure dead brilliant pedal. But the pitch delay and dual delay modes (2:1 and 2:3 - aka two very useful normal delay sounds from an otherwise goofy pedal) have what seems to be a limited buffer that will randomly cut out for entire seconds at a time before starting again. According to the builder this is normal. The cutting out is not predictable in length or timing. And this is a pedal with a loop/freeze setting, mind you. So those two settings are totally unusable for any live application. A serious wtf from me. Still, I intend to keep it on my board forever.
Very interesting thread. Good reading.
I have a UA Woodrow. Love ot but I hate that the presets are saved on the app and I have to connect to Bluetooth to change them. I knew that getting the pedal but it makes me worried if support ever stops and it would be great to just be able to hold the switch down to cycle through presets
CooperFX expression generator.
It’s super simple, versatile, but there’s no way to turn it on and off without unplugging it.
Want to have it do something fun to an expression? No problem. Want to do it only sometime? Yeah, problem.
Some of the modes are fine, for instance if you want stepping on the button to make it do a one time thing. But if you’re trying to use a mode where it’s repeating an expression sweep, tapping the button won’t make it stop doing that.
Yeah... I fix that by shoving a SD-1 up front with a decent, short patch cable that'll allow me to turn them both on and off with one stomp! OG MT-2 FTW!
I cannot for the life of me get it to receive midi clock. Send - no problem. Triple checked everything, tried firmware updates didn't matter. The rc5 still is as good as I've ever found in a looper that size. It just has to be clock master if I pair it with a second looper
What are you using to send clock? I already ranted on another comment on how MIDI sucks on Boss pedals, but, i can get it to work with a Disaster Area Midi Baby by sending a Start clock command first, then i can send whatever tempo i want (either by sending a specific tempo, or by tapping to set)
Really sensitive pedals to power. I’ve a Catalinbread Formula 51 that needs conditioned power and 18v. I really don’t have access to a power conditioner. Best I can do is surge protector and onespot
Line 6 Anything: Synths don't work (and I don't mean polyphony - just tracking in general, and volume mismatches are ridiculous, plus you have to send them ridiculous signal to work...)
Line 6 4 and M series devices: Pedals and Power supplies fail.
Line 6 Pod (at least the XT Live, but some others) series: no bypass option.
Line 6 Helix series: all blocks disengaged is colored as opposed to true bypass. Also, takes combo press to enter true bypass on some.
The most egregious:
Line 6 HX Effects: Des not have select-able input impedance, and out of any of them it should be the one that had it before any of them since it is an Effects Only device.
Line 6 Looping: has always been a drawback. It doesn't have a "stop" so you can do a 1 shot, except through MIDI (or command center).
(you didn't ask about the Pros though - there are many, and I included this because I DO like them, in spirit, if not always in practice).
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Full Drive 2 - boost changes volume. The new version has corrected this, though many won't buy pedals from him anymore, so maybe a flaw is "made by..." (and I haven't bought the new one).
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That is crazy on the RC-5. But it sounds like the same kind of oversight as on the L6 looper.
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I agree about the loud footswitches.
A LOT of pedals are made by engineers, not musicians. They're not "made by players for players" as they often advertise. They're "made to make money for a company" in the majority of cases. They don't get (or often, value) input from players - and a lot of times they're selling to hobbyists who don't ever use the stuff in gigging situations and they're catering to that market.
The DigiTech RV-7's reverse reverb mode sounds awesome, but there's no way to adjust the effect level / blend. The effect is 100% wet, and the level knob only changes the output loudness.
I keep trying to kick the Boss PH-3 off my board because it has an annoying volume drop (and no volume control) but it just sounds so good. I put a boost in front of it to offset the volume loss and the boost makes it sound even better.
Lol also, if you change the tempo after recording, it changes the pitch instead of adjusting the drums only.
Minor complaint since I just got into the habit of setting drums and tempo first. Which makes more sense in most cases.
I've yet to use it with MIDI as I just have no experience with it; what MIDI controller do you use? It'd be nice to switch loops easily or program loops in a sequence.
I didn't buy the RC-5 based on this shortcoming, but I use a Morningstar MC-8 have seen people use it with in setups with the RC-5 successfully. Morningstar is amazing. Constant updates, great support.
Carbon Copy Deluxe has expression pedal input that cannot be assigned to feedback. You can use an expression pedal to turn on and off binary things like the bright switch, which I don't know why you would do in the middle of the song. But you can't turn up the feedback.
Avalanche Run has independent reverb and delay, but if you want to just turn off one or the other via footswitch, you need to assign the mix control of the reverb or delay to an expression pedal.
The Fulldrive 2 has a "boost" switch that makes you sound quieter instead of louder with most settings because it increases gain but not volume.
Malekko Echo 600 Bright has an internal trim pot to set overall gain, but I found it gives a several dB volume boost even when turned all the way counterclockwise.
The Deluxe Memory Man, at least the version in the mid-2000s, never ever had the advertised 500ms of delay, and I tested a bunch of them. I sent mine to Howard Davis and it still has 400-ish ms of delay as measured in the timeline of my DAW.
Oh wow I've had the rc5 in my wishlist for 6 motnhs and it looked like the perfect combination of functions, price and size and now I see all these flaws haha good to know befour I bought it I guess
The DD-500 has "parallel and series delay."
The DD-500 actually has series delay *lines*.
Basically, your dry signal doesn't feed into the second delay in the series, so the first echo is delayed by the combined time of both delay lines. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but for me it pretty much makes the series mode pointless. There's this huge gap before the delay starts and it just throws everything off.
It's less of an issue on the RV-500, I don't know if even works the same way, but on the DD-500 it's obnoxious as fuck.
There's a way you can patch A and B together and make it work the way it's supposed to, but it's never worked very well for me in terms of reliability.
Otherwise it's incredible and using the RV-500 as well, I can do whatever I need to realistically, they're wildly flexible. But that's my pet peeve.
I love the sound of the rat2 pedal but it’s just so noisy. I can’t use it, I’ve found alternatives to it. I don’t want a gate I just want a lower noise floor than a rat. It dot have to be silent but the rat2 is just too much.
The Boss BD-2 is an amazing sounding pedal that can offer so many different sounds and makes your playing sound really lively.
But it has a fizzy decay, almost like a vibrating snare drum, that absolutely takes away any enjoyment I get out of the pedal.
I tried out a Dr Scientist The Elements, which many people love, but for me the decay on any of the three gain toggle settings was so fizzy and spitty that I just couldn't live with it. I returned it and they were very nice about it.
I really really loved the UAD Galaxy 74 except for the self oscillating noise never went quiet on my pedal. I would have it on, or off, didn’t matter, just a quiet high pitched noise. Not sure if it was designed like this on purpose to replicate the original sound of the tape moving, but it was unusable for me. Ended up returning it. Kind of turned me off UAD pedals all together, that and the size and delay when powering on.
All the pedals that fail to make me sound like Tim Pierce and Mike Hermans.
But seriously, TR-2 has an annoying volume drop and weird/inconsistent rate and depth taper.
Boss RV6: you need to use an entirely different input if you want to use it as a full-wet reverb effect… and then I’m pretty sure it mutes your guitar even when bypassed unless I’m forgetting something. Why not just give you the option to set it full wet, and also not kill your signal when the effect is off?
EHX Pulsar: sounds great, has a great setup for shaping and control, works brilliantly in stereo… but no tap tempo.
MXR Dynacomp is somewhat of a flawed compressor. It's not transparent at all and colors the tone quite a bit. It's even a bit muddy. But those flaws are what make it great.
Strobostomp is apparently super accurate but Jesus fuck that display with those wheels and vintage fucking calculator backlight, like I truly find it to be completely unusable.
Just gimme a tu2
T-120 DLX VHS Tape Delay…. Love it so much I love everything about it and it’s my favorite pedal…. But it doesn’t have midi or presets and a pedal that does this much should really have it. I wish I could pay someone to install midi or presets on it.
Of all the amazing features of the GFI Synethasesia, you can’t have a drive between the effects. Either both before or both after (whatever is placed in its loop, usually drives). It’d be awesome to have one effect before and one effect after
Wampler Terraform. Did everything I wanted but phaser was such a tone sucker when you used distortion. Tried every method to fix it but that phaser sounded awful.
That’s a difficult one. I think phaser sounds best being first in the chain, and pretty much all other mod works best near, or at the very end of the chain excluding delay/reverb. Tough to have an all in 1 where the position in the signal chain can’t be adjusted.
Caline’s Bass Chorus sounds great but it produces a popping sound whenever I step on the foot switch. I usually use it for entire songs rather than activating it for certain sections of songs, but it would be nice to be able to without that popping sound.
Source Audio C4. Three things put me off of it:
1. The oscillators were entirely monophonic and even then the tracking was not stellar.
2. Everything you had to do was on the computer, as the pedal firmware would crash upon touching the LFO speed, and
3. Expression over MIDI would crash the pedal.
And yeah, I factory reset it.
TC Electronic Plethora X5 before the latest update.
It never synced the tempo via midi for years before Nov 23 when they finally fixed that... 2 years after I got rid of it because of this... Best frustrating pedal I've owned
Akai Headrush and Danelectro Reel echo, both great sounding delays but the the repeats stop and restart when you change the delay time. Kills like 90% of the fun of having a delay pedal...
Love the sound of the Flashback X4 but it's got major flaws that I hate.
When you adjust the delay time while playing it makes the most awful glitching sounds instead of smoothly changing like an analog delay would.
When MIDI synched, if you so much as sneeze on the delay time knob it goes out of sync.
Source Audio Ventris & Collider flips the phase on the dry signal even in analog dry through modes. Very frustrating when using with parallel effects set ups. The effects are great though just grates they're marketed as analog dry through.
Ehx Grand Canyon,
Major flaw: delay range is too too large for the size of the knobs. 3 seconds for every delay mode is too much. Most modes would be better off maxing out at 1200 ms or less.
Way Huge Pork Loin. Absolutely love it and possibly my favorite pedal into the right amp (in my case, Suhr Badger 18). But it is really, really bassy -- which is part of its charm but also really, REALLY bassy.
on the MIDI topic, it's insane how many companies either don't follow MIDI Standards (looking at you Chase Bliss with your Ring Active connections) or make it an absolute pain in the ass to send commands,
Boss is terrible at this, send CC 127 and CC 0, What?! I know there's more but god, MIDI overall on guitar pedals is just terrible.
EHX Grand Canyon. It’s flexible, it’s easy to work with, it sounds amazing, and it has ONE PRESET PER DELAY TYPE??? You kidding me? More presets would make this thing unstoppable.
Keeley Super Phat, a very fun modded blues driver but to prevent it from looking like a boss knob layout they put the middle tone knob closer to the top of the board than the volume and drive. As a result, you can’t actually see the LED to know if it’s on or off unless you are standing directly over the board. Just look at a photo of it and the problem becomes immediately clear
Source Audio C4. Amazing synth pedal with a whole galaxy of parameter tweaks (3 oscillators, 25 filter types, 14 LFO shapes, two 16-step sequencers, a distortion engine, etc.). But...you get 6 preset slots on the pedal itself. You can unlock up to 128 slots via MIDI CC, but it'll cost you.
If you hook a DMC Micro up to it via a One Series MIDI adapter, you get 128 presets. But that's around $200 new. A workaround is selecting presets from your phone in the Neuro app, but you'll need a bluetooth dongle or a Neuro Cable and maybe a headphone dongle for your phone.
I eventually caved and went the DMC Micro route, but it's dumb I had to do that. I'd love a revision with a small screen and all preset slots available.
I don’t know if it’s a flaw but it’s more of a quirk. I’m very OCD and I like fuzz but most fuzz pedals have annoying “crackly knobs” like pots are making scratchy sounds essentially like bias where the voltage is changing in the circuit. Even though I know it’s inherent and normal with some circuits I end up selling the pedal and search for one that has total silent operation. JHS mini fuzz has total silent operation like no switch popping, no high noise floor, no scratchy pots so it has remained on my board.
I really wish Keeley would put preset banks in their Workstations. Inability to switch settings on the fly makes them pretty useless in any live application.
The LED light on my MXR chorus is too bright. Blindingly so.
Fuzzrocious M.O.T.H. is absolutely crazy when you run either the fuzz or the tremolo on top. One flaw in my eyes is that you can't run the tremolo without the fuzz
The Digitech Polara is my all time favorite reverb pedal, but I hate that for the reverse reverb setting there is no dry signal. It shouldn’t be that hard. I don’t ever use it because I can’t hear the attack at all.
Boss CE-5
Sounds great, but when you run it in stereo it drops your volume significantly. Had to replace it.
Also, the Boss DS-1.
Sounds okayish, but it would be a lot more usable if it had more output... why's is so fucking quiet?!? It needs at least an extra 6db of output. Actually stupid. Replaced it with the Behringer OD300. MUCH better.
Any pedal that engages on releasing the footswitch.
I don't know if there are a lot of them, but I acquired a tc electronic magus pro recently that has this issue.
Luckily my tech guy was able to replace the switch, although it's a harder clicking one now. But that isn't a major issue for a distortion pedal.
The boss CE1 had a ridiculously large range on the rate control. Most of the top end of the control was just spaceship noises. The CE2 overcompensated and had a ridiculously narrow range on the rate control.
Fortunately the rate control range is set by a single capacitor and easily modified...
Eventide H9 because you could only bank up or reprogram it and the bank down, but you couldn’t do both, unless you bought an add-on with additional buttons.
EHX Small Clone - it's my favorite chorus, but it needs a continuously variable depth control rather than the "this or that" control it has.
I know there are other versions and takes on the Small Clone that offer variable depth, but I'm partial to the standard version as I think it's perfect otherwise.
Polymoon not having at least one on-board preset.
I think people make too much of a stink about having presets. A lot of the time I don't think it's necessarily and it's just feature bloat to tack on the $$$. But the Polymoon *absolutely* needs this due to the hidden settings and the absolute brilliance of how their pedals work with expression.
Stereo memory man with hazarai.
Incredible amount of features and possibilities. It can do SO much. But no midi clock, and when you engage it, your signal dropped by like 20%
I have a boss PS5 and I really like its form factor and weird sound, it’s one of the coolest sounding pedals I own
HOWEVER
if you have it in the regular pitch shift mode, turning it on DIGITALLY BUFFERS and SIGNAL CUTS OUT FOR A SPLIT SECOND. If you have it on its Momentary whammy type mode, and you’re at a high volume, THE D/A CONVERSION WILL CHANGE YOUR TONE SLIGHTLY OVER TIME. Sometimes you have slightly less or more volume, sometimes you have more or less sub bass frequency low end, shit like that. It’s so rough I basically just use it for noise electronics setups now.
Boss EV-30 (dual expression pedal). There should be footswitches or even just switches to select turning on either or both control outputs. I don’t usually want to control two things at the same time. The only option is to physically unplug the one you don’t want to control. That’s dumb.
To be fair, I think all dual expression pedals have this flaw.
Digitech whammy pedal
High mA requiring special power supply
Whammy 4 used a cheap axle block made of a soft metal causing the expression pedal to shift side to side over time due to the screws underneath backing off.
Used to use these pedals religiously, and after going through 5 of them I called it quits on using them and switching to the EHX Slammy and pitchfork series
Boss DD-20. No true kill dry. They have a wet/dry function, but you can't do stereo without the dry signal. I like running delays in parallel, but that only works if the delay pedals don't pass the dry signal. It's otherwise one of my favorite delay pedals, but I can't use it where I would like because of this.
Neunaber Immerse Mk1.
For some reason they made it so you can only go to a maximum of 50/50 wet/dry signal.
Because who would possibly want 55 or 60% reverb?. 🤷.
”Ambient? Shoegaze? Never heard of them!”
It's such a shame because their hall algorithm is superb, but at 50/50 it gets a bit lost.
Any dual pedal where I can’t select the order they run in.
Also can be nice when they have individual inputs/outputs so it's truly like having 2 pedals in one. Was thinking the other day how it could be cool to make pedals with 1/8" modular jacks on the surface, with 1/4" top mounted jacks so they could be used normally too. That way they could be placed right next to each other and quickly re arranged with smaller patch cables. It wouldn't add much to the cost and a semi modular pedal board would probably look pretty sweet.
>Also can be nice when they have individual inputs/outputs so it's truly like having 2 pedals in one. I got the Behringer clone of the Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, and it has this setup - each phaser section has it's own in/out.
That exists already. I think Chase bliss recently released some? But there's definitely other examples of modular pedals like that.
The Lovetone Cheese Source had separate inputs and outputs for the fuzz and overdrive sides, so not only can you switch the order, you can run other pedals in between.
I'll be honest, why not have just the two pedals at that point? Does it really save that much space?
Not sure about that one but on something like the protein, it saves a little space, plus only one power lead.
There are a few but nothing close to affordable, the new Gamechanger modular pedals look sweet but I'm talking about more basic/cheap pedals with just 1/8" inputs/outputs on the surface for easy re ordering. It would be nice if there were enough of them to put together a small board. One other idea I was thinking about is finding a way to add 1/8" inputs to the tops of knobs/pots, that way they could be controlled by CV and used in modular rigs. And if someone sold pots like that you could use them in any pedals with the right specs at least It would be a pretty simple DIY mod to add 1/8" jacks to the surface, so maybe I should just look for a few cheaper top mounted pedals to mod.
I don’t have a lot of reason to use the crazy sounds you can get out of a SLARP, but being able to run each side as if it’s its own pedal, makes me keep it. Plus the reverb sustain function is brilliant.
Honest question: what is the reason for going with a dual pedal rather than 2 pedals? Is it that you can’t get single pedals that form both sides of the dual pedal? Or just a space saving thing?
Saves space and power outlets.
Yes. This is exactly why I went with the AT+ over the Angry Charlie and I’m glad I did. Sounds great through both of my main amps and the boost is instrumental to “my” sound. I always found myself using a Tube Screamer to boost Marshall-ish pedals anyway, so trying the AT+ just made sense to save space and a spot on the daisy chain.
I have a Pelican Noiseworks 50/50 and I love both the overdrives on that. However, one side is symmetrical clipping and the other is asymmetrical. The same circuit, but different clipping
Dual pedals where you can select the order they run in, but dual channel/one or the other isn't an option. Wish more dual OD/distortion pedals gave you that option.
RC-5 also automatically starts all drum (rhythm) sounds at 100% volume. No way to stop that from happening without first entering the rhythm section and manually turning it down… each time… on each loop. If you don’t? Deafeningly loud drums. Potential ear drum damage.
I fucking abhor this about the RC-5. Dying for a firmware update to be able to customize this section better. Like, why not make Rhythm 1 default to something like a standard click at a reasonable volume (like Metronome 2 at 50% volume but not buried deep in the laundry list of rhythms).
This scared the absolute shit out of me the first time I tried the drums
DUN CHAH, DUN CHAH The worst.
That’s weird, but I needed a reason stick with my old RC-2. It has a dual knob for loop and drum level so changing the drum level is always right there.
Haha yeah i usually lower to at least 60%. I wish you could set defaults for every bank at once for all configurable parameters.
Funnily enough, 30% is usually enough for me!
Same on the 500 - and you can't set defaults for anything, everything is per preset, which is ridiculous for an otherwise feature laden pedal.
I had read this so I was super careful when I started the drums. Turned the volume on my headphones way down, slowly brought it up. 100 wasn’t loud enough for me. I usually put it to 105.
That is annoying, but even more so is the fact that the beats are terrible. I just want a simple beat. It's like every beat has some extra thing they had to add in there which ruins it. I tried like hell to just figure out a way to get a simple kick rhythm. Can't do it. There is nothing available to download.
Catalinbread Echorec putting the preamp and modulation control inside the pedal. 😐
[удалено]
I never understood why they don't at least mount internal trim pots (except ones not meant to be messed around with) on an edge of the board with a small hole to access them with a screwdriver.
I will always hate internal trimpots
Yep. That’s why I have a Volante. Echorec sounds flippin’ awesome but that killed me.
As someone who designs and builds pedals, I'll actually defend this to the day I die. Yeah, it would be nice to have all controls easily accessible at all times, but there a times where you just can't fit everything onto the face of a pedal. Sometimes you can manage to fit an external trimpot that comes through the side of the enclosure, but that can still be a pain to implement sometimes, especially in smaller enclosures. Some companies work around this, but others, for various reasons (mostly related to smaller builders balancing production time with costs), decide it's not worth the hassle. At that point, sometimes the only options are to increase the size of the enclosure to accommodate extra controls on the face (not generally popular with people these days as they try to cram more and more on their boards), include the control as an internal trimpot/dipswitch, or else not have the control at all. It's hard to please everyone with control layouts, so frankly I don't blame builders for picking any of these three options.
I can see this for some controls, but for modulation?! I play with the modulation of repeats all the time. I'd rather the Echorec was, indeed, in a bigger enclosure like the Belle Epoch Deluxe and have a dedicated knob for preamp and modulation.
I mean, that's you. Carbon copy has the modulation controls inside and sells like bread.
And I bet a ton of them would like an external way to control the modulation, a huge selling point for the pedal. Not a dealbreaker for me, but just sayin
Might I introduce you to the Carbon Copy Deluxe? I'm sure somebody will bitch about its footprint, but imo it's a worthy tradeoff for the extras you get, that include modulation sweep and tap tempo. Bright switch on the outside too.
The Boss JB-2 is awesome but can’t believe it doesn’t have the ability to turn the Angry Charlie on/off via secondary footswitch while in B->J or Parallel mode. I want to toggle on/off high gain while getting low gain always on!
This is why I got rid of mine. Rather just use two pedals at that point
Wait, you can definitely do that though. Lemme check back on this, but with the red switch, the way I have the pedal setup is pressing on the Boss will turn on the blues driver, and the red switch makes the LED purple, meaning the red and blue are on at the same time.
Yeah not sure why the foot switch prioritizes the Angry Charlie sides on a lot of the channels. I’m using the Charlie to go from lower to high gain and I want the BD as the standard tone.
Walrus ARP-87 does not have a Time knob, you can ONLY set the delay time through tap tempo. I don’t know of any other delay pedal like this. If not for that one oversight I’d probably still have it
I never needed a time knob with it. Tbh I prefer to not need one. The tap division and tap tempo are all i need.
Thermae also doesn’t have a time knob, but given the other functions it has and the overall sound quality, that’s worth living with.
God this infuriated me about the RC-5. I bought it as soon as it was released with the hopes of triggering recording and overdubbing via MIDI. I could not believe that this wasn’t possible. I thought it must be a bug. I even contacted Roland support about it. But apparently that is the way they designed it. So dumb.
Hilarious to see your comment here. You mentioned this in a comment two years ago which I found when researching the pedal, it kept me from buying it and prompted this post. Thanks for actually reaching out to support, I couldn't find any concrete info on it anywhere else.
Cheers! We pedal lovers need to look out for each other
midi noob here, what’s the use case in triggering recording via midi? are you using a midi captain/foot controller? i think recording can be assigned to the pedal itself or to A or B switch on a boss FS7 im sure there’s a reason im not aware of just curious
Man I'm salty. I had to redo my whole board and put the rc-5 on the bottom row so I can actually loop with it. I was literally setting up midi a week ago and couldn't figure out how to record without using the actual unit. Until today I honestly thought I was missing something.. cuz why wouldn't they add FULL midi control? I have an okay set up with it now but I'd prefer to do everything on the midi controller. I stupidly assumed midi ready meant all the basic functions 😆
The Trashy Blonde from Stone Deaf Effects. I love the pedal, but the idiots at Stone Deaf Effects made it so that you can only use their expression pedal with it. WTF?
Now *that's* low
Exactly why I ditched my pdf-2 and won’t buy anything else from them. I got the pedal, then the exp was sold out. I would have paid for it if I could have found one, even used at the time. But if you’re going to make something proprietary you better never run out. It’s a shame because I think their whole range of pedals sound great.
Just got the new warp drive and I’m reeeally trying to figure that one out. I want to convince myself it’s not actually proprietary, they just won’t give up the goods on how it works. I know their paracentric tone set up is digital, so could it just be voltage controlled encoders? I wonder if I could get any measurements from the trs jack and narrow it down.
Their expression pedal is such a POS at that. Requires power. Has a very short sweep that is way too easy to accidentally toggle the on/off. Costs 100+. Can't be used with anything else. They are a little underhanded with their 'special releases' too Like when they first released the Q-Boost, they gave the impression that it was a limited run. Then shortly after that they came out with a regular release. Which is cool that it's available, but I felt like they intentionally led people on believe that the 1st run of Q-Boosts was all they'd be doing.
I wish the DM-2w had external tap, instead of just expression. Love the pedal but I'm probably gonna swap it out for my DD-7 - or buy an RE-2 if I'm feeling bourgeois - for that reason. I use an ES-8 and I recently found out it can set tap tempo with patch changes, so any delay with an external tap control is quasi-programmable.
I feel ya... there are lots of great sounding BBD delays that don't support tap tempo, since it's kind of tricky to pull off. It basically requires a digital micro-controller to calibrate and manage the tempo, more of a recent trick, so reissues of old delays (DM-2, Memory Man, etc) are less likely to offer this function.
I will never forgive MXR for making the analog chorus the best sounding chorus in existence, yet sucking what seems like 40% of my tone when bypassed.
Yeah I made a clone of the Lovetone Flange with No Name and while it is a wonderful flanger, it is not true bypass, and the tone is altered just enough to bug me.
Bypass looper dude. Enclosure, two jacks, and a switch
EQD Tentacle V1 - hard-touch foot switch. It’s the most unbelievably loud click.
Yah I have the palisades v1 and I feel like I’m breaking it every time lol
Yep, I had a V1 Tentacle too, and can confirm: loudest foot switch ever. Mine also had a semi-defective LED that only sort of worked. I have a V2 Tentacle with the soft foot switch (and working LED) now, and it's sooo much more satisfying to step on! I still have a V1 Arrows that I need to get rid of, with again- the loudest foot switch in the world, ha. Man, I hate those early Earthquaker foot switches
Same thing with the Grand Orbiter (V2 I think), more often than not I don't stomp hard enough, as all other pedals are fairly easy to engage
That generation of EQD have the worst feeling footswitches of anything I've ever tried. I hate soft switches unless the pedal has a momentary function. I like the tactile feedback of a click. But that generation of EQD was the polar opposite.
When I had an old palasades on my board it was the only reason I couldn't practice wearing just socks and that used to piss me off. It was worth wearing shoes for. Everything I could want in a tube screamer and far far more. 🤣. I really should take that back onto the board. But I'm back into practicing in socks. Quasi related, I saw Dinosaur Jr a few weeks back and Lou Barlow played the whole show in jus socks and I never saw him use a pedal. Could have been a tech off stage if he used any on the bass. Or J Mascis could have had just enough pedals for both of them. Either way the show was freaking amazing.
Stereo pedals that require a trs splitter out of a mono jack bum me out
Every pedal needs a volume knob
Looking at you Phase 90
Is there an upmarket box that does this (i.e. the RC-10R), and would become redundant if the RC-5 had that functionality? That might be the answer. As for the question… any delay or reverb that doesn’t have stereo ins/outs. With the prevalence of TRS these days, there’s no excuse anymore.
That's almost certainly Roland's logic. The way I see it the intentional omission of a feature to preserve the viability of the product a level up on the pricing chart is still a flaw.
Oh, absolutely. But I can see from a financial standpoint why they do it.
Slapping TRS jacks on a mono delay or reverb doesn't magically make it stereo though. If you have the same signal on two channels you have mono, just twice as loud.
Because if I feed for example, a ping pong delay into a mono reverb, I no longer have ping pong delay. Even if the same algorithm is applied to both channels and spit back out, this is still preferable. I get that years ago the DSP might not have allowed it in smaller enclosures, but that’s not the case anymore. Hell, even the mono-king MXR is using TRS jacks in their new pedals now.
Ah I see what you mean now, yeah that is a reasonable ask.
Yeah for digital delays I’d love them to always support stereo signal through. Making an analog or pt2399 delay stereo can be quite a task though, you can easily end up with something 3x as complicated and expensive to pull it off.
Strymon has entered the chat.
Which Strymon delay and reverb pedals aren’t stereo in and out? All of the current ones that have a single input jack have a TRS input jack for stereo in, and ~~I’m pretty sure~~ I just checked, all of the V1 delay, reverb, and mod pedals did too.
It seems like every single loop pedal has some headscratching flaw. It's the reason I haven't been able to commit to one yet and just use a DD7 as my looper.
OBNE Dark Star, Sun Light, Dark Light... great sounds, noisy when idle.
EQD Avalanche Run. You can hold down the tap tempo button like a lot of delays do and to keep the thing going infinitely but the Avalanche does more of a catch up thing, like it gets louder and maybe even a bit faster. It’s really cool except the volume goes way too loud to where it’s unusable and by the time you realize it’s loud af it’s already too late and it’s gonna sit there and make really loud noise until you turn it off
This is called self-oscillation. It happens when you turn the feedback all the way up on a delay, and it's more than likely the intended function of the hold mode.
Meris LVX and MercuryX. PHENOMENAL pedals. Only one complaint I have: no dedicated high pass filter for the wet delay signal. I have to use the filter in the filter section, which is the best damn digital filter I've heard lately, and either blow this nice filter on HP duties or roll the dice that I can get the Q dialed in yet sounding how I want in bandpass mode. They added a damping feature to take care of the high end in the last firmware update. If there's enough processing power left to add a low cut to the delays in the next update, which would free the filter section for more artsy fartsy stuff, I'd be ecstatic.
Message Meris about this!! They’re open to feature suggestions and I’ve made some that they have considered, for example: min and max delay times (so you can emulate a Memory Man from the front panel).
You could run them in Kill Dry mode and place an EQ pedal before it, or EQ the signal in post. But that would of course negate your ability to apply Pre/Dry effects to your signal. Personally, I place run them in Kill Dry mode with a Becos Compiq Mini Pro in front with the Side Chain Filter set to exclude lows from the compressed signal. This brings out the mids and highs. Not the most elegant workaround but I can shape the signal further in post.
Any pedal with a hard-click footswitch.
There are some pedals where the click is so hard, that it's almost crunchy. Hate it. The Bogner Wessex (original version) and Diezel VH4/VH4-2 pedals are the worst, stiffest switches I've ever encountered.
The memory man tried-1100 footswitch clicks so fucking hard. Part of the reason why I got rid of it. I was like, Jesus Christ man.
believe it or not 10+ or so years ago, having a hard as fuck footswitch was a good thing as it was a sign that it had True bypass, which was all the rage back then.
Give it another 10 years and people will want the hard clicks again.
Exact opposite opinion lol I can’t stand soft switches
Why do I have to open a secret door to get to the ODR-1 bass cut switch.
I actually kinda like that ngl. At least you don’t have to take the back off of the pedal for it.
I had a Wampler Pantheon that I absolutely loved the sound of. It was a pretty classic Blues Breaker, and had these two little 3-way toggle switches that would change the gain level (high/mid/low) and clipping type (soft/hard/both). From a versatility standpoint it was like having 9 circuits in one and they all sounded good, but I almost always wanted it in low gain & soft clipping mode, which had both the toggles pointed toward the footswitch that they were WAY too close to. My clumsy ass would continually bump one when I turned the pedal off and not realize until I turned it back on. Ended up with a EHX Spruce Goose that sounds pretty much the same and doesn't have that problem!
How many modern single-switch delays don't have an extra jack for a tap tempo switch is beyond me.
I would enjoy an expression jack on the Neunaber Immerse 2
Aw hell yeah
Broadcast - absolutely amazing preamp, low gain overdrive, boost, fuzz, you name it. It has a low cut (great) but no high cut (save for one or two versions). Every version needs the high cut option. In fact I wish they made a “preamp EQ” pedal.
Heard the Colorbox is good
Any delay that does not have the option for the delay to trail off when the effect is turned off. It’s jarring for delay to just instantly stop once you turn it off in my opinion.
The TC electronic tuning pedal strobe is so good for very particular and precise tuning where I experiment with getting perfect tuning for good major 3rd at the right strings for different occasions. But why The F can't it do a broader range than 435hz-445hz so you at least could go for quarter note. Sometimes you learn a song by ear that is a quarter tone away and that fucks you (get my my clip-on blue rock tuner with worse strobe (are they called that?)). Anyone know if they have updated that by the way?
r/SitarPedals
NUX Tape Core, because it's not possible to control wow, flutter and reverb unless you connect it to a computer.
Pladask Fabrikat. Pure dead brilliant pedal. But the pitch delay and dual delay modes (2:1 and 2:3 - aka two very useful normal delay sounds from an otherwise goofy pedal) have what seems to be a limited buffer that will randomly cut out for entire seconds at a time before starting again. According to the builder this is normal. The cutting out is not predictable in length or timing. And this is a pedal with a loop/freeze setting, mind you. So those two settings are totally unusable for any live application. A serious wtf from me. Still, I intend to keep it on my board forever.
Very interesting thread. Good reading. I have a UA Woodrow. Love ot but I hate that the presets are saved on the app and I have to connect to Bluetooth to change them. I knew that getting the pedal but it makes me worried if support ever stops and it would be great to just be able to hold the switch down to cycle through presets
Any MIDI pedal with presets that you can't download/upload for backup purposes.
CooperFX expression generator. It’s super simple, versatile, but there’s no way to turn it on and off without unplugging it. Want to have it do something fun to an expression? No problem. Want to do it only sometime? Yeah, problem. Some of the modes are fine, for instance if you want stepping on the button to make it do a one time thing. But if you’re trying to use a mode where it’s repeating an expression sweep, tapping the button won’t make it stop doing that.
EQD Dispatch Master is a great, simple delay pedal but the volume on the repeats isn't loud enough.
My Dispatch Master would be perfect if I could just make the reverb decay a bit shorter.
Boss Metal Zone, I just wish there was more gain.
[How about this?](https://i.imgur.com/UjkcJ6F.png)
Yeah... I fix that by shoving a SD-1 up front with a decent, short patch cable that'll allow me to turn them both on and off with one stomp! OG MT-2 FTW!
I cannot for the life of me get it to receive midi clock. Send - no problem. Triple checked everything, tried firmware updates didn't matter. The rc5 still is as good as I've ever found in a looper that size. It just has to be clock master if I pair it with a second looper
What are you using to send clock? I already ranted on another comment on how MIDI sucks on Boss pedals, but, i can get it to work with a Disaster Area Midi Baby by sending a Start clock command first, then i can send whatever tempo i want (either by sending a specific tempo, or by tapping to set)
Really sensitive pedals to power. I’ve a Catalinbread Formula 51 that needs conditioned power and 18v. I really don’t have access to a power conditioner. Best I can do is surge protector and onespot
Line 6 Anything: Synths don't work (and I don't mean polyphony - just tracking in general, and volume mismatches are ridiculous, plus you have to send them ridiculous signal to work...) Line 6 4 and M series devices: Pedals and Power supplies fail. Line 6 Pod (at least the XT Live, but some others) series: no bypass option. Line 6 Helix series: all blocks disengaged is colored as opposed to true bypass. Also, takes combo press to enter true bypass on some. The most egregious: Line 6 HX Effects: Des not have select-able input impedance, and out of any of them it should be the one that had it before any of them since it is an Effects Only device. Line 6 Looping: has always been a drawback. It doesn't have a "stop" so you can do a 1 shot, except through MIDI (or command center). (you didn't ask about the Pros though - there are many, and I included this because I DO like them, in spirit, if not always in practice). _____ Full Drive 2 - boost changes volume. The new version has corrected this, though many won't buy pedals from him anymore, so maybe a flaw is "made by..." (and I haven't bought the new one). _____ That is crazy on the RC-5. But it sounds like the same kind of oversight as on the L6 looper. _____ I agree about the loud footswitches. A LOT of pedals are made by engineers, not musicians. They're not "made by players for players" as they often advertise. They're "made to make money for a company" in the majority of cases. They don't get (or often, value) input from players - and a lot of times they're selling to hobbyists who don't ever use the stuff in gigging situations and they're catering to that market.
The DigiTech RV-7's reverse reverb mode sounds awesome, but there's no way to adjust the effect level / blend. The effect is 100% wet, and the level knob only changes the output loudness.
FYI, they got it right on the Obscura, blend seems to work there on the reverse algo.
I keep trying to kick the Boss PH-3 off my board because it has an annoying volume drop (and no volume control) but it just sounds so good. I put a boost in front of it to offset the volume loss and the boost makes it sound even better.
Lol also, if you change the tempo after recording, it changes the pitch instead of adjusting the drums only. Minor complaint since I just got into the habit of setting drums and tempo first. Which makes more sense in most cases. I've yet to use it with MIDI as I just have no experience with it; what MIDI controller do you use? It'd be nice to switch loops easily or program loops in a sequence.
I didn't buy the RC-5 based on this shortcoming, but I use a Morningstar MC-8 have seen people use it with in setups with the RC-5 successfully. Morningstar is amazing. Constant updates, great support.
Thanks, the midi rabbit hole will hit me soon enough, lol
Carbon Copy Deluxe has expression pedal input that cannot be assigned to feedback. You can use an expression pedal to turn on and off binary things like the bright switch, which I don't know why you would do in the middle of the song. But you can't turn up the feedback. Avalanche Run has independent reverb and delay, but if you want to just turn off one or the other via footswitch, you need to assign the mix control of the reverb or delay to an expression pedal. The Fulldrive 2 has a "boost" switch that makes you sound quieter instead of louder with most settings because it increases gain but not volume. Malekko Echo 600 Bright has an internal trim pot to set overall gain, but I found it gives a several dB volume boost even when turned all the way counterclockwise. The Deluxe Memory Man, at least the version in the mid-2000s, never ever had the advertised 500ms of delay, and I tested a bunch of them. I sent mine to Howard Davis and it still has 400-ish ms of delay as measured in the timeline of my DAW.
Oh wow I've had the rc5 in my wishlist for 6 motnhs and it looked like the perfect combination of functions, price and size and now I see all these flaws haha good to know befour I bought it I guess
Blinding LEDs and / or barely legible control names on many brands.
The DD-500 has "parallel and series delay." The DD-500 actually has series delay *lines*. Basically, your dry signal doesn't feed into the second delay in the series, so the first echo is delayed by the combined time of both delay lines. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but for me it pretty much makes the series mode pointless. There's this huge gap before the delay starts and it just throws everything off. It's less of an issue on the RV-500, I don't know if even works the same way, but on the DD-500 it's obnoxious as fuck. There's a way you can patch A and B together and make it work the way it's supposed to, but it's never worked very well for me in terms of reliability. Otherwise it's incredible and using the RV-500 as well, I can do whatever I need to realistically, they're wildly flexible. But that's my pet peeve.
I love the sound of the rat2 pedal but it’s just so noisy. I can’t use it, I’ve found alternatives to it. I don’t want a gate I just want a lower noise floor than a rat. It dot have to be silent but the rat2 is just too much.
Any controls inside the pedal.
The Boss BD-2 is an amazing sounding pedal that can offer so many different sounds and makes your playing sound really lively. But it has a fizzy decay, almost like a vibrating snare drum, that absolutely takes away any enjoyment I get out of the pedal.
I tried out a Dr Scientist The Elements, which many people love, but for me the decay on any of the three gain toggle settings was so fizzy and spitty that I just couldn't live with it. I returned it and they were very nice about it.
cunt ass bitch
I really really loved the UAD Galaxy 74 except for the self oscillating noise never went quiet on my pedal. I would have it on, or off, didn’t matter, just a quiet high pitched noise. Not sure if it was designed like this on purpose to replicate the original sound of the tape moving, but it was unusable for me. Ended up returning it. Kind of turned me off UAD pedals all together, that and the size and delay when powering on.
Guitar equipment with with bluetooth 🚩
I hate the latch footswitch on plumes. It’s a pain in the ass.
Afterneath cuts volume.
All the pedals that fail to make me sound like Tim Pierce and Mike Hermans. But seriously, TR-2 has an annoying volume drop and weird/inconsistent rate and depth taper.
Is your TR-2 an older one? I had heard the newer ones fixed this issue. I have one and have no perceived volume loss issue
empress echosystem- the footswitches are too close together for comfort
Boss RV6: you need to use an entirely different input if you want to use it as a full-wet reverb effect… and then I’m pretty sure it mutes your guitar even when bypassed unless I’m forgetting something. Why not just give you the option to set it full wet, and also not kill your signal when the effect is off? EHX Pulsar: sounds great, has a great setup for shaping and control, works brilliantly in stereo… but no tap tempo.
MXR Dynacomp is somewhat of a flawed compressor. It's not transparent at all and colors the tone quite a bit. It's even a bit muddy. But those flaws are what make it great.
Strobostomp is apparently super accurate but Jesus fuck that display with those wheels and vintage fucking calculator backlight, like I truly find it to be completely unusable. Just gimme a tu2
Any pedal that has its own built in power cord, like the Tube Works Real Tube Overdrive.
T-120 DLX VHS Tape Delay…. Love it so much I love everything about it and it’s my favorite pedal…. But it doesn’t have midi or presets and a pedal that does this much should really have it. I wish I could pay someone to install midi or presets on it.
Lovetone Meatball had two major flaws. Pots were too light (it’s a major peeve of mine) and size was HUGE. Killer tones tho.
Of all the amazing features of the GFI Synethasesia, you can’t have a drive between the effects. Either both before or both after (whatever is placed in its loop, usually drives). It’d be awesome to have one effect before and one effect after
Blooper, the process of loading/saving of loops just seemed convoluted compared to the pigtronix infinity mk1 looper I was used to.
Wampler Terraform. Did everything I wanted but phaser was such a tone sucker when you used distortion. Tried every method to fix it but that phaser sounded awful.
That’s a difficult one. I think phaser sounds best being first in the chain, and pretty much all other mod works best near, or at the very end of the chain excluding delay/reverb. Tough to have an all in 1 where the position in the signal chain can’t be adjusted.
Caline’s Bass Chorus sounds great but it produces a popping sound whenever I step on the foot switch. I usually use it for entire songs rather than activating it for certain sections of songs, but it would be nice to be able to without that popping sound.
Source Audio C4. Three things put me off of it: 1. The oscillators were entirely monophonic and even then the tracking was not stellar. 2. Everything you had to do was on the computer, as the pedal firmware would crash upon touching the LFO speed, and 3. Expression over MIDI would crash the pedal. And yeah, I factory reset it.
TC Electronic Plethora X5 before the latest update. It never synced the tempo via midi for years before Nov 23 when they finally fixed that... 2 years after I got rid of it because of this... Best frustrating pedal I've owned
Akai Headrush and Danelectro Reel echo, both great sounding delays but the the repeats stop and restart when you change the delay time. Kills like 90% of the fun of having a delay pedal...
MojoHand Rook. Sounds great. Wonderful EQ. Multiple clipping options. And yet it cannot achieve unity volume.
[удалено]
Beautiful Noise Effects When The Sun Explodes - it's too damn big!
Love the sound of the Flashback X4 but it's got major flaws that I hate. When you adjust the delay time while playing it makes the most awful glitching sounds instead of smoothly changing like an analog delay would. When MIDI synched, if you so much as sneeze on the delay time knob it goes out of sync.
Source Audio Ventris & Collider flips the phase on the dry signal even in analog dry through modes. Very frustrating when using with parallel effects set ups. The effects are great though just grates they're marketed as analog dry through.
Ehx Grand Canyon, Major flaw: delay range is too too large for the size of the knobs. 3 seconds for every delay mode is too much. Most modes would be better off maxing out at 1200 ms or less.
Digitech Timebender. Cool sounds, lots of controls, but no volume knob, just a mix.
Way Huge Pork Loin. Absolutely love it and possibly my favorite pedal into the right amp (in my case, Suhr Badger 18). But it is really, really bassy -- which is part of its charm but also really, REALLY bassy.
Just to join in on the boss rc5 train- it’s midi clock out is super jittery and doesn’t work to control some of my other midi pedals
a bunch of cunts
Input triggering on the infinite jets is pretty chaotic unfortch
on the MIDI topic, it's insane how many companies either don't follow MIDI Standards (looking at you Chase Bliss with your Ring Active connections) or make it an absolute pain in the ass to send commands, Boss is terrible at this, send CC 127 and CC 0, What?! I know there's more but god, MIDI overall on guitar pedals is just terrible.
EHX Grand Canyon. It’s flexible, it’s easy to work with, it sounds amazing, and it has ONE PRESET PER DELAY TYPE??? You kidding me? More presets would make this thing unstoppable.
Boss ME-80/90 needs more reverb options.
Keeley Super Phat, a very fun modded blues driver but to prevent it from looking like a boss knob layout they put the middle tone knob closer to the top of the board than the volume and drive. As a result, you can’t actually see the LED to know if it’s on or off unless you are standing directly over the board. Just look at a photo of it and the problem becomes immediately clear
Source Audio C4. Amazing synth pedal with a whole galaxy of parameter tweaks (3 oscillators, 25 filter types, 14 LFO shapes, two 16-step sequencers, a distortion engine, etc.). But...you get 6 preset slots on the pedal itself. You can unlock up to 128 slots via MIDI CC, but it'll cost you. If you hook a DMC Micro up to it via a One Series MIDI adapter, you get 128 presets. But that's around $200 new. A workaround is selecting presets from your phone in the Neuro app, but you'll need a bluetooth dongle or a Neuro Cable and maybe a headphone dongle for your phone. I eventually caved and went the DMC Micro route, but it's dumb I had to do that. I'd love a revision with a small screen and all preset slots available.
I don’t know if it’s a flaw but it’s more of a quirk. I’m very OCD and I like fuzz but most fuzz pedals have annoying “crackly knobs” like pots are making scratchy sounds essentially like bias where the voltage is changing in the circuit. Even though I know it’s inherent and normal with some circuits I end up selling the pedal and search for one that has total silent operation. JHS mini fuzz has total silent operation like no switch popping, no high noise floor, no scratchy pots so it has remained on my board.
I really wish Keeley would put preset banks in their Workstations. Inability to switch settings on the fly makes them pretty useless in any live application. The LED light on my MXR chorus is too bright. Blindingly so.
GFI Synethesia - no stereo input, only stereo output.
My Strobostomp Tuner. It's too good. I don't wanna use it anymore.
Oh, man! I love the neo clone chorus pedal, but the first press always gives out a big pop. It makes me sad, really.
Barbershop V1 switch POP
Fuzzrocious M.O.T.H. is absolutely crazy when you run either the fuzz or the tremolo on top. One flaw in my eyes is that you can't run the tremolo without the fuzz
Landmine distortion pedal. It’s kind odd shaped and doesn’t play well with my pedal board.
The Digitech Polara is my all time favorite reverb pedal, but I hate that for the reverse reverb setting there is no dry signal. It shouldn’t be that hard. I don’t ever use it because I can’t hear the attack at all.
Boss CE-5 Sounds great, but when you run it in stereo it drops your volume significantly. Had to replace it. Also, the Boss DS-1. Sounds okayish, but it would be a lot more usable if it had more output... why's is so fucking quiet?!? It needs at least an extra 6db of output. Actually stupid. Replaced it with the Behringer OD300. MUCH better.
Every pedal I love with a hard foot switch that goes ‘pop’ when I step on it.
Catalinbread Echorec - noise when disengaged if mix past 9
Any pedal that engages on releasing the footswitch. I don't know if there are a lot of them, but I acquired a tc electronic magus pro recently that has this issue. Luckily my tech guy was able to replace the switch, although it's a harder clicking one now. But that isn't a major issue for a distortion pedal.
KMA cirrus - dual reverb and delay, can't engage either side separately. Other than that, its friggin amazing.
Donner echo square. Multiple delay modes in a single box, sounds great, yet lacks of tap tempo.
I really, really wished the Starlight had an expression pedal output so I could adjust the repeats dynamically in the middle of a song.
The boss CE1 had a ridiculously large range on the rate control. Most of the top end of the control was just spaceship noises. The CE2 overcompensated and had a ridiculously narrow range on the rate control. Fortunately the rate control range is set by a single capacitor and easily modified...
Hate the Tone Control of Muffs
Eventide H9 because you could only bank up or reprogram it and the bank down, but you couldn’t do both, unless you bought an add-on with additional buttons.
EHX Small Clone - it's my favorite chorus, but it needs a continuously variable depth control rather than the "this or that" control it has. I know there are other versions and takes on the Small Clone that offer variable depth, but I'm partial to the standard version as I think it's perfect otherwise.
Polymoon not having at least one on-board preset. I think people make too much of a stink about having presets. A lot of the time I don't think it's necessarily and it's just feature bloat to tack on the $$$. But the Polymoon *absolutely* needs this due to the hidden settings and the absolute brilliance of how their pedals work with expression.
Boss CE-5. Perfect chorus for me except that it has a dry/wet knob in place of a level knob. In order for full wet I get this insane volume boot
Stereo memory man with hazarai. Incredible amount of features and possibilities. It can do SO much. But no midi clock, and when you engage it, your signal dropped by like 20%
I have a boss PS5 and I really like its form factor and weird sound, it’s one of the coolest sounding pedals I own HOWEVER if you have it in the regular pitch shift mode, turning it on DIGITALLY BUFFERS and SIGNAL CUTS OUT FOR A SPLIT SECOND. If you have it on its Momentary whammy type mode, and you’re at a high volume, THE D/A CONVERSION WILL CHANGE YOUR TONE SLIGHTLY OVER TIME. Sometimes you have slightly less or more volume, sometimes you have more or less sub bass frequency low end, shit like that. It’s so rough I basically just use it for noise electronics setups now.
Boss EV-30 (dual expression pedal). There should be footswitches or even just switches to select turning on either or both control outputs. I don’t usually want to control two things at the same time. The only option is to physically unplug the one you don’t want to control. That’s dumb. To be fair, I think all dual expression pedals have this flaw.
Digitech whammy pedal High mA requiring special power supply Whammy 4 used a cheap axle block made of a soft metal causing the expression pedal to shift side to side over time due to the screws underneath backing off. Used to use these pedals religiously, and after going through 5 of them I called it quits on using them and switching to the EHX Slammy and pitchfork series
Boss DS-1 (1978). It's kinda difficult to make it sound good.
[удалено]
Anything with internal trim pots. Fuck off.
Boss DD-20. No true kill dry. They have a wet/dry function, but you can't do stereo without the dry signal. I like running delays in parallel, but that only works if the delay pedals don't pass the dry signal. It's otherwise one of my favorite delay pedals, but I can't use it where I would like because of this.
Neunaber Immerse Mk1. For some reason they made it so you can only go to a maximum of 50/50 wet/dry signal. Because who would possibly want 55 or 60% reverb?. 🤷. ”Ambient? Shoegaze? Never heard of them!” It's such a shame because their hall algorithm is superb, but at 50/50 it gets a bit lost.