So annoying watching any gear video when they just wank off all over it. the majority seem to do that and it’s a total bore and uninformative esp with effects.
The fuzz on this bad boy is worth the price alone, absolutely blown away by how warm and saturated it sounds, knocked my Big Muff off my board in a matter of minutes. On top of that, swells, tremolo, momentary switching, bubbling, send/return... I can’t believe how cheap this pedal is considering. EHX really knocked it out of the park with this one
This pedal turned my Volca Nubass into an angry guitar with a side of acid. It also can take gear with lots of floor noise and create otherworldly ambience out of it. Pedal is gnarly.
This is the best kind of demo; a recipe video for a pedal. I too bought this pedal after viewing many videos and this video stands out from the rest. Great work!
Really intricate and comprehensive demo/study of this surprisingly versatile pedal; the mind reels at the possibilities that the effects send/return offers. Well done on all fronts; thanx for posting!
YOU have the BEST video EVER, on this pedal! I'm going to be taking notes, and writing down settings. I REALLY need to study this pedal more, and your video has been waaaaay more helpful than anything that Electro Harmonix has put out. THANK YOU!!!!
This pedal is complicated. The instructions are confusing. I needed to supplement them w/ some demo video. This is literally one of three that I've found at all useful. Thanks for posting this.
This is one of the best pedal demos I’ve ever seen. I got this pedal for ambient swells, and I’ll only really ever use 2% of its functionality, but it’s great to see it properly explored! Nice one.
Excellent breakdown and choices to display the features. I’ve debated buying one since it was released, always choosing something else, and your video came up in my recommendations. I’m getting one now. You displayed all the features I wasn’t so sure about in other demos.
Got mine a week ago and just starting to crack the surface. Thank you for the awesome tips, they really opened up the countless possibilities this pedal has to offer. It's worth the price of admission for the fuzz alone! Best pedal to come out in some time no question.
Indeed ! The best demo for this fabulous EHX Attack/Delay ! BRAVO & THANKS, Elliot Knapp ! (I ordered one 7 weeks ago... another 2 weeks to wait before I get it ... soon a lot of experiments, with guitars, but with my vintage electronic organs as well...and voice ? Oh yeah !)
After seeing this vid, I had to buy this thing immediately. Currently it's driving my family crazy. Can't wait for the upcoming rehearsal to drive my bandmates crazy.
I am serious, This is one of the best pedals ever made. Independently of the category you'd classified It. It is a must tool in your arsenal. I bought one and It is never leaving my board
I'm having huge problems getting useful sounds out of it. Particularly anything banjo like seems to defeat it. I have tried some banjo rolls but it seems that it can't keep up with my fingers. In mono mode it misses triggering certain notes and sounds terribly glitchy and in poly mode it just sounds horrible and digital. I wonder if I am doing something wrong or there are some deep internal settings that I am missing somehow?
@@goodbyepolarbears172 well, it will not give you a perfect banjo. It is just impossible. It is something that reminds of a banjo. About the other sounds, I never had a problem. Spot on. Always on poly mode. Keep tweeking
I'm tweaking like crazy but not getting any happier@@Samana009 . A few more days at it and then it may be for sale on ebay! I just went back to my Boss Slow Gear and, whilst it of course won't do the banjo thing at all, it gets pretty close to the EHX with cello sounds and backwards playing (without the cut off of course). I'm sorely disappointed at the moment but hope it's just my incompetence that's letting me down. It feels like a lot of money to have spent just to get a backwards tape effect that couldn't really be used more than a couple of times without becoming an annoyance. Perhaps it's just that digital sound of the poly mode that's putting me off going there much. I seem to be allergic to very digital effects - they make me a little queasy - so it may be that the pedal just doesn't suit my ears. I'll keep tweaking a little longer yet and may stumble into a zone that pleases me. I'm just starting to get my doubts that have always resulted in pedal rejection in the past!
Yes that one's pretty expensive but TC Electronic have their Flashback that's pretty good at reverse delay too. Mind you, what I wanted was a reverse sounding envelope such as this EHX was supposed to provide but with each hour of owning it I am finding more and more flaws with it. I'm not finding a way to extend the length of a held note either. The ATTACK alters the SPEED of the attack and the DECAY alters the SPEED of the decay but I haven't found any way of telling the thing to not decay too soon after letting the note bloom, just a slower decay once it has. I'd like to be able to dial in a slow attack, plenty of held note and then a quick decay but I've not found that to be possible. I can't see it lasting the week with me! Shame, it promised so much.
THANK YOU! Thank you! Thank you! THis is the next thing I get. I got the "Philosopher King" but this is far better. The envelope of an instrument is fundemental to its sound.
Damn, great demo. This is more informative than anything EHX puts out. They should keep Bill Ruppert doing the playing demo's, (because he's amazing) but hire you to do an informative companion video.
There are so many decent effects pedal companies out there doing great things. But EXH have always stood out to me since I was a teenager. They're just getting better and better at innovating and giving muscians the tools to make interesting music, without ripping them off with boutique pedal prices. Really good demo too by the way. Too often pedal companies just get a middle of the road rock/blues guitarist to demo pedals without even scratching the surface of what the pedals can really be used for.
No words for the demo and explanation, all is well said. Just wanted to note OMD's great lost track that starts around 09:00 haha. Stay strong, creative, inspired, untamed!
I bought mine yesterday, and have been exploring its "morphing" possibilities. The send-return loop allows one to adjust the blend and attack times such that whatever is in the loop gets faded in over time. You don't get any sort of swell effect, but rather a gradual morphing from clean to whatever the alternate is in the loop. One possibility is inserting a pitch-shifting device of some kind, whether a simple octave-up or octave-down unit, or a full on pitch harmonizer that can insert a different interval. Adding some attack time allows for that other pitch to "join" you as you play. I also found that it could make sitar emulation a little more realistic. If you use an analog octave-up fuzz, and pick near the bridge using the bridge pickup, it can sound like an old Coral Electric Sitar. Adding just a small amount of attack time softens the "strum" and sounds a little more like the real thing. I suppose one could spring the dollars and buy the EHX Ravish pedal, that probably does a better job. But this unit will take you 65% of the way there.
Mark Hammer Great idea about the pitch shifter! I explore this type of envelope blending you’re describing at about 6:05 with a univibe, but I bet pitch shift would sound really cool. This pedal has a lot of utility beyond the obvious volume envelope “effect” sounds!
@@ElliotGKnapp That it does. I generally make all my own pedals, and have made a few "auto-swell" units. But this thing offers a lot more control and options, that justified plunking down the money for a change.
One of the other things it can do is a nice emulation of the old Gretsch Contrafuzz. The Contrafuzz yielded an interesting effect in that picked notes would start out clean and get dirtier as you held them. Gretsch used a pretty standard diode clipping subcircuit, goosed the bejeezus out of the signal and mixed it, out of phase, with a clean signal, but at a lower level. You'd hear the clean picked note, which would fade out as per normal, but the fuzzed signal would sustain longer, and come to be more audible as the clean signal faded. This can be easily mimicked by the AD by setting the attack time long enough, the decay time at max, the on-board fuzz set to whatever tone you like, and the Blend control set around 60/40 or so, depending on how you set the fuzz level. You'll hear the clean signal initially, and the fuzz will gradually fade in over top of the clean.
That background art looks like Roger Dean which makes me think of the cool sounds Steve Howe used on the Tormato album which further makes me wonder if he was using the original version of this pedal. Just wondering. This pedal would be amazing with a midi keyboard.
Robert Oschler Thank you! I actually have a running list of 20+ video ideas, it’s just a matter of fitting them in with full time work and making music. Demo production always takes so much longer than it seems like it should!
Amazing demo, thank you! Mine just came in and this is helping me dial in some different sounds very quickly. I'm also using it on bass, so your bass fuzz settings are suuuuper helpful. Also, what record is that in the background? It looks familiar but I can't place it. Thanks!
I really like using it with the Harmonix Blend, though I did struggle a bit to find the usefulness of that setting with instruments other than bass...I think EHX deciding to make the LPF tone stack resonant was a great idea, since it really adds to the synth flavor. Mum's the word on the record sleeve--I like letting people guess. This one's from a master and a very popular slab so I'm sure someone will get it soon!
@@ElliotGKnapp cooooool well I'm not going back to this video every day to look for the answer and I 100% do not know what it is so whenever someone figures it out, could they please do me a favor and let me know with a reply here?
@@ScottSchleiff Looked for contact info in your channel's About section to PM you but couldn't find it so....if you want to email me at mine I'd be more than happy to hook you up.
Elliot Knapp no worries, I asked a buddy and he knew the record! This will be my first dive into their catalog aside from radio single so I’m pumped to check it out
Scott S nice! It’s a classic. I try to make at least some kind of connection between the pedal and the sleeve...the guitarist does some killer volume pedal work...especially 2 albums later
Nice video ! I have one question , maybe you can help me: Can you use the EXP Port to control via midi Program change ? I want to connect an external midi controller to change Preset of my EHX attack decay.
Awesome work!. Quick question. I write electronic music, but use lots of Strymon, EH pedals. Mostly techno or slower dub techno. I'm intrigued by this pedal as I think it might play well with drum machines, samplers and synths... do you think so to, or is this one just for the guitarists??.
ponkor Yes, definitely! Generally speaking, anything with an attack/decay envelope, so any sound that has an initial onset and lasts at least a little while (brief transients like drum hits will have a narrower range of time to work with since they don’t last very long) can be affected by the pedal. Things that sometimes already have natural fade-in like vocals, wind instruments, bowed strings, will be less effective since they already kind of sound like what the effect does. I think many synths have this kind of functionality already built in, but if it has immediate onset, the effect can change that to a swell of any duration. I’m an advocate of trying any effect on everything-you never know how it might turn out and inspire ideas!
I don't have experience with the Hazarai but it seems like it's a delay that includes a reverse mode? The difference between a reverse delay and the Attack Decay is that it doesn't actually reverse any audio, it just simulates reverse by a fade-in volume envelope. Both are definitely useful! Thanks for watching!
