Top 5 OVERLOOKED Alt/Shoegaze Pedals You Should Buy Now! 

Hey! Which pedals would you add to the list? Drop a comment and we can discuss. A couple things I wanted to add: I was using my Dr Z Maz-18 Jr here with Settings - Bass 12.00, Treble 10.00, Middle 14.00. To my ears the DS-1 sounded much better through that amp! And the up close of the hog at the end I was using the first three octave up sliders, I must have knocked them down before filming it upclose.

you're gonna put me in debt with all those pedal recommendations

If anyone likes the Verbzilla but can't find one, the Line 6 M5 has all of the settings the Verbzilla has plus a ton more stuff. It's a good pedal to have in general just to try out a lot of different effects.

I think this May be one of the best pedal demo videos I’ve seen. You laid out some excellent ways to use these pedals! Thank you

Thank you for bringing up the digitech whammy. Ive been using it for every genre i play. Its a perfect pedal. I love using the dive bomb settings to replace whammy bar jiggling. It has that mechanical distorted sound. Its wonderful

Always great watching you and I love how your very informative while being entertaining 🖤

Thx for sharing these awesome pedals. It was very inspirational.

The fact that you told us what the five petals were upfront, is the main reason I’m going to stick around to watch the rest of it. Thank you very much. You have a new subscriber?

I appreciate every single upload of yours. Very inspiring riffs and gear!

Appreciate how you arrange your content and now dragging idea until the end of the video!

keep them coming, mate. these videos are killer!

Really enjoying this channel - will check out the Horrors, would love to hear more album recommendations too!

Great vids man! You made me damn curious about that Verbzilla and Neo Clone!

great video, love that organ sound at the end

The Op Amp Big Muff Pi is a fantastic fuzz for under $100. It has a lot of range in what it pairs with, which helps with signal chain choices. I have a Keeley Moon Op Amp Fuzz which isn't much different and love it.

That DS-1 sound you got @10:50, reminds me of The Breeders tone so much! LOVE IT!

Never heard of the hog, but it is literally the sound I’ve been looking for! Great video!!

The pedal that is on almost ALL of my recorded music is the Digitech FreQout. I record at home direct to my interface at very low volume, but this helps get sustain and feedback that sounds like I'm playing thru a hi-gain stack at full volume. I highly recommend it.

You sold me on that verbzilla! Sounds sick

Again, and as always, very cool video! Thank you very much! Have you dibs on the JPTR FX Bleach already? Super stoked about this one.

got an old ds1 from my aunt for christmas a few years ago and it’s been carrying midwest emo gigs

ive noticed what you are talking about with the ds 1 and how its hard to tame helps to have your amp already overdriven a bit by its pre amp or with a pedal, either way the extra compression on the signal helps to lessen how much it boosts the signal in ur rig.

The hog is so underrated as a synth pedal, its awesome

No way I just realised what band he’s in. I’ve been listening October drift for ages and love their sound and no wonder I love his videos

Great list!

I've got a DOD fx75b flanger that's the best modulation I've ever tried! Celestial chorus, very vocal flanger and some great in-between sounds. Stereo, too!

A super under rated delay pedal is the seymour duncan vapor trails, It's an analog delay that you can control the modulation and go very extreme with it. But it also has an fx loop that you can plug a split stereo trs cable into it and run like just the delay through a pitch shift. You can also just plug an expression pedal into the fx loop and it works as a volume pedal on exclusively the delay. It's a very fun pedal to experiment with that no one talks about.

Your whammy solo has something going on. Thanks for the great video.

Yeah man awesome stuff

I love the Whammy, I’m always using the octave up harmony to add atmosphere when I’m playing an E-Bow or I’m doing ambience. Edit: Got to the HOG part and I did something really similar using the Whammy for the outro of a song I did with my old band. Still one of my favorites we made.

Love it! 🤖 Subbed.

As a bassist I’ve used the verbzilla since it came out it was my first reverb I personally loved the cave setting in my old band I would use it to thicken up a song and make more atmosphere in the background. I also would use a dod fx72 bass flanger but more of a chorus sound it just sounds better and I would use my old friend the boss odb-3 bass overdrive. Used one since 2006! That’s pretty much it with effects minus the sans amp to bring things to life or to get a svt blowing up your amp sound.

Funny that for shoegaze I looove the 'Shallow Detune' on the v1 Whammy more than the small clone (and other most chorus pedals). It's the one and only thing I miss about it after owning one for 3 decades and then selling it a year ago...

Recignised that Longpigs sound straight away! One of my favourite bands.

The Verbzilla before the distortion was excellent

I would say those are closer to Progressive Rock pedals or Prog Metal pedals tha shoegazing. I own all of these and love them all!

Yo those line 6 module pedals are siiick I have the Uber metal, put the gate on 2 and the distortion type on “pulverize” so gnar lol

I have the line 6 Echo Park and its tge duvking mode that keeps me coming back to it

The Verbzilla is basically the granddaddy of pedals like the Meris Mercury 7 and LVX. Angelo Mazzocco (DSP engineer at Meris) used to work at Line 6, where he collaborated with Jeorge Tripps on the Tonecore series. If you've never tried the Mercury 7, I have to insist that you do! It includes the best reverb algorithms I've ever heard (including the ones from Strymon). It's a shoegaze-heaven kinda pedal.

Ds-1 is great because you can mod them pretty easily. I changed our the clipping diodes and the tone capacitor and it behaves a lot better. It's more responsive, like a well dialed amp. It isn't just wall of buzz. I can control it with just picking, rather than adjusting it all the time.half cocked Wah>ds-1>space chorus = awesome screaming tone.

What shoes you rocking in this vid? Looking clean!

God I love baby channels! Fantastic video man, keep up the great work and hope you take off!!

damn, love what you did with the HOG, awesome riff!

This is my kind of channel! :) I like the sound, even though I don't like any of those pedals, except for the Whammy. That one is a classic. I stumbled upon the Whammy sounds by getting the TC Electronic Brainwaves in 2021 when I started building my first pedalboard ever. Up until then I was only using digital modellers by Boss and Line 6. Those things are great, but digital modellers just gave me too many options. I got option paralysis. I spent more time tweaking sounds than playing. I also had no reference of the amps and the majority of the effects that they were modelling, which made it hard to know what the F to do. But when I built my first pedalboard with an overdrive, distortion, chorus, tremolo, delay and reverb, plus the pitch shifter... My world changed! I got the pitch shifter to tune down when practicing and playing songs by other bands that were tuned down, and I didn't have a guitar that was in C or D or dropped C... I had my standard, Eb and dropped D guitars. Well, it turns out the Brainwaves opened up a lot of things for me, and I used it more for layering octaves. The problem with that pedal, though, is that the dry sound comes through for a few milliseconds at the initial attack, which makes the thing I'm playing sound dissonant, out of tune with the mix turned to 100% wet. I recently bought a DigiTech Drop and it's so much better and more transparent, they're not even in the same league. The TC Electronic Brainwaves shouldn't even go to the mix 100% wet, because it just doesn't work. That pedal did teach me more about the whammy effect and bunch of other cool things, but the only reason I still have it is that e.g. the DigiTech Riccochet doesn't give me the possibility to mix in an octave up AND an octave down (or whatever interval) at the same time, and a mix knob to let me choose how much of the try signal I'm getting. I haven't tried the Electro Harmonix Pitch Fork, though. Maybe I could, and see if it does the same thing that the Brainwaves does, only without that dry signal leak with the mix at 100% wet. On the other hand, the Pitch Fork doesn't have a Whammy function and doesn't have the Mash function. If DigiTech made a Riccochet 2 with a mix knob, I would buy it in an instant, even if it didn't have two voices. Maybe I can contact DigiTech and suggest a product. :)

Thanks. Never seen your channel before. Happy accident discovering this video. Indie/shoegaze/alt bands are what most influenced me as a fledgling guitarist back in the day. You've utterly convinced me that I need at least three if not all five of these pedals. Refreshing not to have a shreddy noodly player but someone playing the type of sounds I want to make. What's your band called?

Love the sound of the HOG, i had an EHX Superego when they were first released and i think that came close, but was more of a one trick pony sort of pedal. The pedals i would add would be a Boss GE7, it can completely transform a guitar sound and it can really help with dirt pedals. The other would be a Marshall Guv'nor to my ears it just creates a gorgeous warm feel and is a great pedal to build up the sound from - particularly if you are not able to play at volume. I'm pretty sure i saw somewhere as well that Kevin Shields used two of them on the road when touring Loveless for alot of the baseline sound.

very interesting video!!

One of my favorite pedals is the Gamechanger Audio Bigsby Pedal, basically it's like a Whammy but with a twist, perfect for those glide guitar sounds!

Mathew followill from the Kings of Leon uses the verbzilla in some of their old records. You can hear it on the track Arizona.

That video of the rat vs ds1 is why I bought the rat and love it

Man I haven't thought about the horrors in like over a decade haha primary colours is awesome

Joff from wolf alice also used the hog in the studio and said it was cause the horrors as well. Also that reverb into the distortion was awesome, I’ve never heard anything like it

My favourite pedal is my Electro Harmonix Graphic Fuzz, (I have the OG one). I got it when I went into a local guitar store looking for a nice overdrive, and the guy working there came up to me with this. I think it was a second hand they just got traded in. And it just absolutely NAILED the sound I was looking for.

Had a Verbzilla for 10+ years. Love it.

Shoegaze is the perfect genre if you don't want to over obsess on pedals 😂 Nice Whammy, had a look around few weeks ago yet I might go for an EXH Cock Fight Plus wah/fuzz or get a cheap SkySurfer reverb and a Big Muff. All pedals you mentioned are worth a look. And anything Boss, EHX,MXR is at least a quality product.

cool vid, i had the Whammy 4, love it so much. but i replaced it Boss PS-3 due to its size. but Whammy is way better sounding. had the Line 6 Verbzilla as well, that too replaced with Line 6 M9. its a solid reverb pedal. rests are how you use them with any drive pedal (currently im using Boss BD-2)

Great content. I stopped watching guitar RU-vid (apart from Eric Haugen), as all the videos were so repetitive and never touched on the genres I enjoyed. Excellent to see content that is relevant to current alternative music. Cheers

Cascade is kind of still in production, the original owner of Cascade passed away and they stopped business. I believe the family then rebranded and started production again as “Pinnacle.” They even still do repairs on the old Cascade models since it’s literally the same mic just with a name change. Cheers!

I think that the whammy was developed with kevin shield for my bloody valentine. If i remember correctly, he asked for a pitch shifter with a expression pedal attached to emulate playing with your picking hand on the guitar tremolo, but without fucking up the tuning of the guitar.

What a killer channel, what band do you play in pal?

Fuzzwar in the backup drawer is crazy to me lol. Those pedals are crazy expensive in australia

I think the Verbzilla and the rest of the Line 6 'tonecore' series pedals came out in about 2003.

i fucking love the hog, one of the greatest sounds i’ve ever heard

I'd always fancied a Whammy. I thought it might make me sound more like Corgan, but never had the spare dough for it or the Boss Harmonisers I had my eyes on.

BOSS - PS-6 Harmonist , a bit does the same job of hog/whammy. What you think?

Another relatively modern band that used the Whammy was The White Stripes. Jack White used it for the "bass" lines on songs like Seven Nation Army with the octave down function & on plenty of solos with the octave up. Not shoegaze or even all that alternative, but a well known band which many have probably heard & might not have known it's the Whammy making those sounds.

The whammy pedal is really cool right? When I play come as you are I have the harmonies up an octave!

These are all kinda pedestrian for shoe gaze. Morley Echo Volume, Ross Stereo Delay, boss Slow Gear. and if yo are going to add a DS1 you might as well say the Boss Feedbacker Distortion which is a D1 with a harmonic sustain function.

Aaaaaahhhhhh the Verbzilla. I can’t begin to explain how massive this pedal was when I discovered it. I found a video on RU-vid of a guy recreating the intro to Where the Streets Have no Name. It was dreadful in terms of recording quality but boy it took me to the Verbzilla and now here I am. Combining that with discovering lowercase noises (Andy Othling)and I was awayyyyyyy.

@6:17 immediately makes me think of the cure 'pictures of you'

The whammy is not polyphonic which adds to the charm. Basically, the wet signal can only latch on to one tone at a time so chords cause the pedal fight against itself adding a random glitchy, warbly tone to it. You can hear it in Subterranean Homesick Alien by Radiohead on Johnny’s guitar parts right when the band comes in on the intro. POG/HOG pedals are much cleaner and don’t give you the weird glitchy effect that’s iconic in the whammy.

You should try out the screen violence pedal from old blood noise!

Just picked up a Digitech Whammy v4 for $40 and a pack of sm0kes Quite stoked!.. now I just need a power supply lol

I was using digital verb, and more in the 90’s I’m 47 you had to be there I guess. It wasn’t bad back then, you could use them fine today actually, get them cheap its junk to most people now, you could get some cool tones, but they weren’t as versatile or compact.

you should check out how the dude in cymbals eat guitars uses the digitech whammy, like a shoegaze take on the morello way

The Source Audio C4 can do almost all of what these pedals do inidividually. Just another option to consider.

"Need it, got it, got it, need it, got it, got it, need it..." just like flipping through baseball cards in the movie 'Big' 1988

🤘🤘

You might have mentioned it, but I didn't hear it. iirc Jack White used the whammy on seven nation army instead of a bass guitar.

Greenday, foo fighters and blank 182 Alt Rock?

the Small Clone has a deeper sound in the flanging. very big difference to my ears. might be a settings thing, mind you, but still

Try connecting your whammy pedal to your wah pedal so they move together in Unison. 😲 actually awesome. 👊👽🤘🛸

I’d have to say very cool vid esp opposed to all the boutique type pedal videos out there by so-called experts lol. (After all it’s all personal taste)

I Think the verbazilla was used by one of the guitarist in Caspian, - listen to the album ‘Tertia’ - it’s used on a lot of Tracks, on that album - also Behringer made a clone of verbazilla which was called RV 600

I have a hog but I’ve never found a good use. Thanks for the tip!

I used a Neo clone and big muff for my first shoegaze band, along with a cathedral reverb and man, that sound was something special

Out of curoisity has anyone else heard of Faunts? There not exactly a shoegaze band but they definitely have awesome clean riffs. Both their albums M4 and Left Here Alone have amazing tones on them.

Longpigs! I saw them live opening for The Dandy Warhols here in the USA!

Seems to me like the Nano Clone has a pretty severe volume drop?

Primary Colours.....what an album !!!!!

came for the pedals stayed for the Primary Colours shoutout

as soon as word got out that kurt cobain used the boss DS-1 it seems like everyone making alt/shoegaze thinks they need one

Whats your band called?? Id love to check your guys music out

Wonder if I could use those with a bass…

Swap the Line 6 Liquaflange module in after the Verbzilla for maximum mayhem. It's naughty.

Tom Morello = One Trick Pony - Drop D and Whammy, yay groundbreaking! 😀

Digital reverb pedals started in the 1980s

KK used the DF-2 ..... BASS player out !!

You mean the most sold pedals of all time?

A lovely reminder that showcase is the most expensive genre to play