@@doofwopit’s clear he doesn’t care about the fit of his shirt. Or anything about how he looks. Clearly. By the way, how’s that ratio hitting you two butt buddies?
You were right about everything except the Fuzz Factory. To me that’s one of the greatest fuzzes out there. All the harmonic feedback with the pedal is what turns me on the most to it. Most people hated the original Whammy pedal until Tom Morello showed everyone how to use it. I believe the same is true with the fuzz factory
TheHunterTeen we know that. Would just have been good to hear him demo them, to show _his_ reasons. Some people WILL like these pedals. That's how it is. People don't like stuff that other people do
My 2 worst pedals are both Behringer. First is a bass D I that makes its own noise. 2nd is a Vintage Tube O D. Didn't like the sound so I Bitmo modded it. 1st pedal I ever did my own modding to. Still don't like the sound. Changed the tube to a 12au7. It's not horrible but not for me. Maybe it's cause I got 2 Butler Tube drivers. Both with bias knobs. Kinda spoiled by great sounds. Still own both and if these are the worst then I can live with some junk. Gotta have some filler for my own JHS pedal wall. L O L
I'm proud owner of one of the original Fuzz Factory pedals. I believe this pedal is intended to be a quirky character pedal, not for every situation. It sounds the way it sounds by design, that doesn't make it *bad*. Lame that it's on this list.
I expect if you asked Zackary, he'd say it was never intended to be practical. I know I didn't buy mine for any sort of "go-to" use. I bought it as a wacko sound to have in the studio.
@@mvyper The Metal Muff is a great pedal but I believe it is way too muddy and fuzzy for people who play metal. If you choose to release a high pedal for metal, it should not be fuzzy at all. I believe one would expect a metal pedal to sound like a MI Audo Megalith, Empress Heavy, Wampler Triple Wreck, Amptweaker Tight Metal... Even the new Boss Metal Zone Wazza. But it is a good pedal for sure !
@@MCHiphopotamus well, if you dial it just a lil crunchy and boost it with a ts, it can sound a lot better. You don't need to get all your distortion from it.
I got to get a Metal Muff! I definitely want that “thousand bees trapped in a tin can” sound!!! A plus is that the audience will scratch their own eyes out!?!?! Freakin how metal is that! 🤘🏻
Black metal. I said that with a thick Scandinavian accent. While sipping wine in a dark room, lol. Seen LORDS OF CHAOS? check it out. Those wacko's actually want and try to sound like crap, spooky.
Well this is a completely subjective matter. Golden cello for example is meant for playing those lead lines in the style of Eric Johnson etc. so no wonder if it gets muddy with chords. IMO its wonderful sounding pedal with the right setup. A really cool mix of fuzz and distorion. And so is the fuzz factory, one of the most versatile, crazy and innovative fuzz pedals of all time WITH the right setup. It is a very hard pedal to use indeed. But as you mentioned not being fan of fuzzes I get why you're not liking these pedals.
I actually LOVE and USE the Digitech Crossroads Clapton pedal. The trick, to me, is that I use the (mixer) out instead of the amp out (while plugged into an amp, not a mixer). I tend to use the Sunshine of Your Love Tone and am able to get a nice approximation via my Claptonized strats (partscasters with the EC midboost kit). It is definitely something you need to spend time tweaking and arranging on your board. But, I have been able, to my ears, to get a nice tone and much use out of it. I've found some on Guitar Center's website and considered getting another one so I can use it in tandem and use it for the Badge (rotary speaker) sound while keeping my other one set on the Sunshine of Your Love mode. I will admit, you probably need to be a Clapton diehard to find this pedal useful. To each their own I guess!
But I will mention two pedals that I loathe and won't EVER buy/buy again. 1.) Digitech Metal Factory. They had a used one at a Guitar Center I frequent. It sounded like shit and, despite endless hassling by the sales guy, I couldn't find any reason to buy this. I found ONE decent/okay tone but when I kept tweaking it, I lost that one good setting. The guy kept trying to get me to buy it, but he ended up pissing me off more than anything, and I was ready to chuck at him after 10 minutes! 2.) Ibanez TS9DX. I bought this after seeing my Guitar Teacher use one. I even found some not so bad tones, but once I put it in my pedalboard/set up, I found those tones that were pleasing became muddy and "fluffy" in the pedalboard mix. I spent hours trying to find a better place for it and ended up selling it, ironically, to my guitar teacher (after he sold his). I have since bought the 40th Anniversary TS808 (the sparkly red one) and love it! I use it with my Les Paul, which sounds great!
Daniel Stephenson that Digi Clapton is used in studio by arguably some of the best players in the world. I have pictures to prove it. " of them use in a rig. $ ain't the problem for them, soooo i have no clue why people spit on hat pedal. IMHO someone say something on forums or YT and other repeat it aka don't give a chance to pedal at all.
99.9% of the time it's the guitarist and not the pedal. I spent years with bad tone. Even with acoustic guitars that sounded horrible. Then I sat down and started studying effects. Trouble shooting, Night after night video after video. I can get the amp sounding great but now recording it is another hurdle. My worst pedal .. boss metal zone maybe one sweet spot for guitar. Made any tube amp sound like solid state hell. Probably because the volume gain on it was so loud you could probably hear it with a pair of headphones connected to it.
Maybe it’s because you could of called your shop anything and went with Roberts guitar Dungeon (what the hell were you thinking) or Maybe it’s because the guys who’ve commented like a product which some people can get screaming and you kind of shit on it by calling it one of the worst pedals ever but hey I’m not an expert.
I agree most of it, but the Golden Cello. That pedal was not made to play chords. It is made to play solos, where a cello sound wanted. It does it so amazingly man! I have about 30 pedals, including some high end ones, but the Golden Cello is among the first 3 favourite overdrive pedals!
Woah... I love my metal muff... I don't ever bring the top boost over 9 o clock. It does sound like ass over that 9 o clock point I will agree. It has an active EQ which gives you a lot of tweakability. It was my first real distortion pedal and I still have it. Putting a tube screamer in front of it also helps. It won't be replacing my 6505+ or 3120 anytime soon. But it was a bargan at 50$ to get my metal on. I still have ancient vids of me on my channel getting decent tones out of it. I heard it was based off the metal zone (I could be wrong) which is another pedal that gets a lot of beatings online. I would also argue that the MXR fullbore metal is far worse than the metal muff. Give one of those a shot if you want a good laugh. Love the vid btw. Hope I don't come across as a bitchy internet troll.
@@CC-8891 www.backtrails.net/next/index.php/s/dQ4GDpBfpgMFXF6 that is my Metal muff when I first got it. I have it's tuned in a little bit now. It's running through a fender frontman 212r the mic is a Shure sm57
I hav the Z-Vex Fuzz factory and with the right settings it delivers very usable sounds. However some of the knobs are extremely sensitive and a one or two degree durn on one of those gets the pedal completely out of control. So you can get really cool fuzz sounds and some very experimental weird shit.
Sämi Moor it does a pretty good approximation of a Fuzz Face if you know what you're doing. This guy gives away his bias when he admits he doesn't like fuzz pedals to begin with.
Just want to clarify something since you were quick on the comment and it may confuse newer Pedal heads, True Bypass isn't necessarily a good thing -it depends on the type of effect, where it sits in the signal chain and the over all pedal chain sequence of the artist and where quality buffers are located in the chain -and avoiding noisy and tone sucking buffers or using switching to keep them out of the normalized chain. A pedal board of all true bypass pedals will be have a host of tone thieves to contend with -you don't want all true bypass pedals in most scenarios -so it's not really an argument of this pedals good because it has true bypass or not -it's case by case
Have to disagree with you on the Metal Muff. I love mine. I’ve had to fiddle with the settings, changing a little with what guitar I’m using (usually Fenders). I’ve learned you have to dial it back, particularly the boost setting, but it has worked for me. Again, it’s generally working with a Fender Mustang or Tele and to a crappy amp. I’ll say this- when I’ve run it into a Marshall, I needed to adjust the amp settings, and the pedal settings, which is a pain but doable. I think it can hang with my classic Big Muff, and is much better than other distortion pedals I’ve had (the DOD Grunge, BOSS Metal Zone).
Metal zone sucks and is nothing but a noise box compared to the metal muff.nothing but unwanted feedback and in th recording studio it gets lost in the mix to where u can't hear anything of the technicality of th guitars...very shitty..a modded metal zone I agree with but not the stock metal zone.
The Metal Zone is a better pedal than people think. There’s the camp that loves it in the effects loop, but I use it on my regular board, and can get some decent sounds out of it, especially stacked with an OD or a Muff. Right now I have it set to where the distortion dial is almost all the way down. I pair it with my TC Tube Pilot (a poor man’s Tube Driver, with no EQ), and I get a tone that’s similar to the one found on the middle solo of “Money” live from the “PULSE” album. Speaking of that album, using the same settings, paired with my old Sovtek Big Muff, and I get that awesome guitar tone you hear on “Sorrow”. It just takes quite a bit of patience to dial that thing in, and it’s one of those pedals that, depending on your amp, your guitar and pickups, might not ever work well. I’ve found that with some other really good pedals- even the Big Muff and Boss DS-1 sometimes just go better with some amps better than others.
I personally have to disagree with the Metal Muff on the list. Although the fuzz element in its tone may not appeal to everyone, but the gain and the EQ overall is nicely controllable. It has a nice amount of mids. I must albeit admit that the top boost is voer-sensitive, and definitely not the best boost for solos, but I find it good fora dding upper mids if dialed in correctly in moderation.
I owned one for about three years when they first came out. I tried it in every amp that I owned during that time period and tried every setting that I could think of, and it was completely unusable. Finally I gave up and sold it.
So glad the Digitech fixed the whammy pedal in latest version. I love my Digitech DT Whammy gen 5 pedal and with true bypass zero lag and sounds amazing!
Robert's Guitar Dungeon Digitech’s new stuff is pretty nice, in my opinion. Great performance to value. I own the Polara reverb and the Cab DryVR and both do what they do very well and the pedals themselves feel like quality pieces of gear. The silent switches are awesome too. I also plan on getting the Obscura delay in the near future. For what it’s worth, the Cab DryVR tames the headphone out of an Orange Micro Terror very well, turning it into a DI recording beast!
I agree on all but the Golden Cello . I’ve used it for lead tone many times It was basically built for that use . You really have to dial both effects back to get a good rhythm tone .
I agree with the boost function of the Metal Muff, completely unnecessary, and the treble, even on the "normal" side, needs to be dealt with care, but having said that, you can get some really good tones out of it
Digitech forgot too say that the Eric Clapton that this pedal was paying homage to was actually Mr Eric Clapton from Surrey, England, a painter and decorator !!!
Personally I think that EHX Metal Muff has a good sound in terms of rhythm, but the high frequencies used in the "boost" sound bad in the solos. I understand that you do not like it, it is difficult to find the correct configuration on that pedal (with so much configuration knob). I have never used the Whamy IV.
I have a Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo. They are still highly regarded by most players. i treat it gingerly, as it has a plastic housing and the controls can be easily broken if used as a "stomp box".
6/7 I agree with, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ZVex Fuzz Factory- you just have to know what you're doing with it. It's INCREDIBLY sensitive, so even the slightest tweak can completely alter your sound. Just takes some practice- you can get some very good sounds out of it.
Arion Metal Master was so bad I gave it to a friend decades ago. But I now realise many distortion pedals are better off in a low gain setting of the gain channel, rather than the clean channel. Never tried the former option. It was tinny and bright I recall.
Owned a ShimVerb briefly. Played one gig where the sound-guy was having a helluva time finding a strange hum coming out of the FOH - Kind of like feedback but under the mix. The next gig I played a musician friend came up and told me that there was a weird hum that was coming out of my rig. Did some troubleshooting. Yep ShimVerb. Garbage pedal.
Funnily enough, the sound at the start of Plug in Baby by Muse are Matt just fucking with the ‘Stab’ feature lol. He used it all throughout Origin of Symmetry and later albums and it sounds pretty good to me. I think his guitar has the pedal built into it, along with a phase 90.
You had me laughing for almost the whole video. It was priceless. Some of your dead-pan looks still have me laughing as I type. Special thanks for this one.
If you're someone that isn't into gated fuzz and oddball fuzzes, i can see not liking Fuzz Factory. I'm not a huge fuzz fan. I use a fuzz face, but i use that more of less to get that Eric Johnson glassy, sparkling clean by keeping the FF on and rolling my guitar volume back to clean it up.* I use an old triangle muff too, but i use that exclusively with an EQ or TS808 into the front of it as a lead tone for my Strat. It sounds nothing like a Big Muff (or any fuzz for that matter) the way i use it. I'm not into the sputtering and spitting fuzz thing, but a lot of people do. *I can't use the Fuzz Face this way since i dropped a set of Fishman Fluence single coil into my Strat. If you use a buffered signal into a fuzz face and roll the guitar volume back, it cleans up more gradually like an amp or OD pedal. Id wager the majority of players would prefer that, I'm just not one of them.
I remember when I first got my Fuzz Factory... It was so SHIT, a huge disappointment tbh. However I kept working on it! The beast is now tamed, and I'm proud to say it's my favorite pedal in my current set up. I use it with or without compressor, wah, stacked fuzz, and even a phaser. I wouldn't change it for any other pedal in the world!
Most people think that higher revisions of hardware means it's better, but many hardware revisions are to either save money or because there are logistics issues - like a chip shortage.
I use shimverb for a years, i realize the only problem is the excessiveness of the wet signal, especially in spring mode. Just use it Dry in level at 9'o clock And all the problem much perish.
Haha @ the Metal Muff! I love that pedal but yes it can sound absolutely garbage with the wrong amp/guitar combo. I bought one last year for nostalgia effect and it sounds absolutely horrendous through my Marshall Valvestate but it was amazing through my hybrid-Randall. Any fuzz pedal is garbage to me as it the Boss DS-1 is garbage but that's my personal opinion (doesn't mean they are garbage). Entertaining video cheers :D
The "Golden Cello" was a custom version of the Amber Overdrive with built-in reverb. It was Bjorn Juhl's attempt at nailing the Eric Johnson lead tone and is a mighty fine fuzz-overdrive if you don't mind the analog noise - just stick keep the drive control low.
Its my favorite pedal. I really want to try it directly into a celestion greenback IR. I'll bet it really does the EJ thing. And I'll also bet into a fane-loaded hiwatt 4x12 it will do Gilmour.
A couple points. I know this list is subjective, because there are some popular pedals that I don't think sound very good also, but the metal muff sounds good when you turn the top boost under 9 o clock. For the fuzz factory, you have to turn the stab all of the way up and use the gate and compressor to get rid of those squeals. It's a difficult pedal to figure out how to use, but once you spend some good amount of time with it I think you'll find that it can get some of the best fuzz tones...however, it does kind of stink that if you turn a knob a little bit off of where you want it, it can mess up your whole sound.
SA2BRK1993 couldn't agree more about the fuzz factory. It's kind of easy to get rid of the squeals, though, so I'm not sure why he couldn't. Definitely not a user friendly pedal, but once you find your tone it's just about the best fuzz on the market.
The Z-vex Fuzz Factory is one crazy ass pedal, capable of making some pretty outrageous sounds, but it's hardly one of the worst pedals ever. I happen to be buying a used one right now just because they're so unique and wild!
i have a metal muff running into my digitech rp 500. it sound great the one he had must have been broken,,,turn the top boost on turn the top boost dial to 4 or 5 sounds great iv notice if the top boost dial is too high you will get a bad tone
Who the hell are YOU to determine if I’m a metal guy or not? Seriously? Just because I hate your shitty distortion pedal? This is the dumbest comment I’ve seen yet.
Thanks! I can’t speak for everybody else on RU-vid, but I enjoy doing “Best of” videos because they’re fun and easy to do, and people do enjoy watching them, so it makes it easier for viewers to want to engage with me as a creator. I did this video partially because I thought it would be kind of funny, and partially because like you said there’s not too many videos like this one out there. And I believe in just shooting straight from time to time. Thanks again for the kind words!
This was hilarious!! I have been catching up on all your videos and pedal demos. The golden cello was especially funny. Tell us how you really feel. Thanks again for the laughs! Keep us rocking!
"right out of the box, it's a noisy, gnarly beast." I know. I still love mine too. FX69 4 life. Edit to add: I was hoping to hear the "American Metal" dod pedal. EVERYONE I know who played hard thrash ditched the AM for the Grunge. NOBODY turns up the grunge all the way and lives...
I own & use a Fuzz Factory on a regular basis. The harmonic squeal you talk about is pretty easily dialed out if you don’t want it (I don’t use it myself) & there are tons of useable tones on tap if you’re willing to twiddle some knobs. That being said I’ll admit it’s not for everyone, you really need to have a love of raw, nasty fuzz sounds to get off on it. I’ve also owned 3 different FF’s & found them all to sound slightly different; one was noticeably wilder & more chaotic than the others while another played better with buffers.
Robert.... totally agree on the Golden Cello. I acquired one, and boy was I disappointed. I think everyone thought they would be getting an EJ type tone with it. And with mine, the volume was ridiculous. Even @ 9 o clock, way too loud. I adjusted the trim pots and everything. I even emailed my professor, and he said he's never heard of such a thing, and I think basically wanted me to send it back so he can look at it. I traded it in towards a Tumnus. No regrets.
Well, I have a Zvex Fuzz Factory and I gotta say; it's a wild horse, very hard to tame. I think I wouldn't use it live cuz it can give you a lot of surprises but it can be very handful in recordings and it's a nice tool to anyone who likes to make some experimentation like me. I was even able to use it as a very good noise gate once!!! I took a picture of the knob positions but unfortunately I lost it, I was able to use two overdrive pedals (one as a boost) to create a heavy distortion without getting noisy or lose signal. It's really a box of surprises, if you don't wanna have one and work too much to get your sound done stay away from it, if you like to dig something crazy and different, go for it. As for me; I don't plan to get rid of it so soon. =)
Great list! I have one to add. The DOD Gonkulator ring modulator. This fucking thing is *WORTHLESS* There was one at Sam Ash used for like $20. I was like "what the hell, for that cheap you can't go wrong" I am not even sure what it is supposed to do, let alone what it does. It makes weird sci-fi noises and that is it. It is the least musical pedal ever. I took it back and they told me to keep it. It had been sold and returned 11 times! They gave me my $20 back and gave it to me. I then walked over and put it in their trashcan. Worthless
And only one carrier wave set to e or a..Update..so unpopular that they became rare..then sought after..300$ on ebay..so they have reissued it with one more knob.300$ in the bin.
I had a question on pedals. I can buy 8 cheap pedals for 120. Or I can save and get one pedal for about 200.00 I am just getting back into guitar, and wanted to know your opinion on cheap VS high end. The pedals well some of them anyway are the monoprice blues driver, Nux chorus pedal, there is a delay pedal cannot see the brand, monoprice distortion pedal, gravity overdrive pedal, kokko booster pedal, rowin looper pedal, and a harmonized pedal brand is Tom something. I just dont know if it is a waste of money to buy theses pedals.. any opinions? Thanks
Actually, a lot of the inexpensive brands like Joyo, Mooer, NUX, etc. are actually really good. I don’t look at pedals as cheap vs. high-end (just about ALL of the parts come from Behringer anyway), I look at them as “Does it sound good or not?” I don’t know what $200 pedal you’re looking at, but all of those other pedals for $120 sounds like a pretty good deal to me, even just to get something started. You can always add to and upgrade down the road. I buy pedals all the time. LOL
Well, to be fair, neither one of them are exactly going down in the Pedal Hall of Fame. But the Metal Zone has at least proven useful as a preamp. (I did a video on that awhile back. Here it is if you haven’t seen it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-C7m0DNsvQxI.html) The Metal Muff isn’t even good for that. I owned a Metal Muff for several years when they first came out, and I tried it in every amp I owned on every setting I could think of. Never could get a good tone out of it.
I've just come home from purchasing a Digitech Hot Rod Rock Distortion and you, Robert were on You Tube bagging pedals luckily my new pedal wasn't included. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
My Katana 50 has a metal zone patch. With careful, low settings it can sound brilliant, a unique distortion is useable. It is not identical to the pedal, mind you. I used to have the pedal and it was shit.
I have a modelled one in my Helix, and I can actually get some decent 80's rock/metal tones with it. Use the subtler side of the settings and it can sound quite good.
I like the comment on the metal muff- "Paid $88 for it, don't think it's worth half that." It's worth zero if you can't use it. I like these posts though, at least he's honest about his thoughts.
me and couple of my friend too..seem not bad..but never very happy in real situation..it's hard to find good metal pedal..the metal muff have good power, pure tone but not enough bottom..the mxr fullbore have just mid and gain..no bottom..too much power on the gain and not enough on the frequency ..metal zone have bottom and power but no purity.. it's razord and plastic...the only one i find with all the frequency, the bottom, the gain and the pure analog scratchy tone is the amptweakr tight metal
I hated Rat pedals for most of my life, but after I got the EHX Flatiron Fuzz, which is their Rat clone, I started to convert. I now have the Flatiron Fuzz, a RAT2, and a Rat Roadkill from the 90’s.
The Danelectro black licorice is not a great pedal, however, I picked one up yesterday for $20 just for fun. If I could disconnect the distortion, it would be a cheap and unadjustable Poly Octave Generator.
Robert's Guitar Dungeon Yeah it's like were just hanging out talkin gear,which is what I like to do, especially accessories which modify your sound.Thanks man.
Also mooers pitch algorithms just suck the pitch box wasnt just bad but wasn't in tune who wants a 7th up if it sounds like you have a string out of tune.
DoD death metal, man in my times I put it behind a zoom 505 , so the chorus and slight delay softened the distortion and that sounded reasonable. Otherwise it sucked.
The fuzz factory is extremely versatil once you understand how the knobs work with eachother, I've been able to get dozens of unique and fantastic tones when you dial it in right
I agree! It can sound like you’re playing through a blown Vintage 30 cab, a blown Greenback cab, a blown Eminence cab, a blown Greenback cab whilst picking up an ungodly amount of RF interference... It’s got a whole myriad of horrible guitar tones that I wouldn’t be caught dead using in a serious application. LOL 🤣🤣🤣 In all seriousness, I get why it’s popular, but it’s not for me. It’s an overpriced noisemaker on its BEST day and nobody will ever change my mind about that. (And MANY have tried! LOL)
@@RobertWJackson it's got that weird feedback thing, but I'm telling ya it's my main distortion, by far the most versitile fuzz pedal,you can get big muff, fuzzface, tone bender and vox tone machine fuzz tones out of it, plus a ton of other unique tones, plus the tunable feedback you can harmonize with, extremely usable and versitile when you spend a good hour or so on it
I think pedals being good or bad is subjective and I agree with your review on some of the pedals but certainly not the Zvex and mooer. I have never really been a fan of the fuzz except using it on the bass but over the last few years it has crept into my pedal board and I like the zvex and again it's not a sound for everyone. I think hands down the worst pedal to ever be made was the BOSS metal zone, I despise this pedal and never understood why anyone used it but then again it was a sound that my ears hated, I have never been a fan of super high gain distortion anyway, my sound is what everyone has termed transparent OD and that's a sound my ears like and you are absolutely right about Danelectro, the black licorice sucks but aside from that I'd use Danelectro pedals anytime, especially their pride of Texas pedal.
I bought the EHX metal muff mini, It has a toggle with two scoop (tone) settings, distortion and volume... cheap and nasty. But EHX does make some lovely and whacky gear.
I'd love to get every one of these pedals & put them on a board just to see what horrible monstrosity it would make. Also, oddly enough it's a good thing that you didn't include the BOSS Metal Zone. That one has a horrible rep, but sounds pretty badass when hooked up to the correct gear (preamp).
I actually love the Metal Zone. I still have mine that I bought in 1991 when they came out, and that was really my only distortion for about the next 10 years or so. I geeked out like a Boss fan girl when they came out with the Waza Craft version. LOL
I was just playing my MT2 the other day, dont understand the hate. I take the time, dial a good tone and run it right into my 1989's Peavy VTM60. Sounds great. I dont get the hate.good rockin pedal.
OK, I was going to fight you on the GOLDEN CELLO but I SORT OF agree with you. Single notes is where this unit really shines - No doubt, and I further agree with you that when playing chords with this thing you get ALLOT of noise EXCEPT when you keep the DRIVE knob at 12 o'clock or less.
Definitely agree with the Whammy IV. I found one used at GC for $70, & I wouldn’t have paid 75 cents for it; just sucked tone out of my amp like a vampire 🧛I resold it & got the Whammy V instead, so I can concur Digitech rectified the issues of the IV.
What a friendly comment section. Funny thing about Danelectro... I had a FabTone distortion pedal. Ordered it before I heard it. Since it was called a FabTone, and had tail fins, I thought it would be a nice vintage OD kind of pedal. It was like a freight train of gain stages. Only usable for the heaviest tones, but actually pretty good in that regard. Always thought it might have caught on if they called it something heavy metal. Like Black Licorice LMAO...
Hahaha I own that whammy pedal! It sucks! The DOD red distortion pedal from the early 80's is still the worse one I ever owned. Probably didn't help that I was running it through a peavey bandit, it just sounded horrible! Even when I ran it through a Marshall it sucked! Like nails on a chalkboard!
Bought it in 1985, just said distortion on the pedal, it prob was the one before they started putting the fx55 on it? All I know is that it was tough to get anything good sounding out of it.
My first distortion pedal was a DOD American Metal. It’s sat in storage for the better part of 25 years because it absolutely was NOT a metal distortion, but because of the magic of RU-vid I found out it’s a great fuzz pedal... huh, go figure.
me too! I play synth-like sounds with it (in addition with a protostar filter) I find it very easy to control when you discovered the trick. I put it on a table in front of me, so I can quickly change the sounds "on the Fly". It´s not a usual fuzz sound, especially people who don´t like fuzzes hate it. But if somebody tells the world which pedals are bad, one should keep an eye on quality, not on personal taste....
If you gotta “know how to use it”, it’s garbage. It’s 5 knobs, it’s not brain surgery. The Fuzz Factory sounds best in bypass mode or in a dumpster somewhere. Preferably one that’s on fire. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’m into old style distortion like the MXR distortion plus, and for all the crap it gets the Smashbox is an excellent pedal, with most of my distortion pedals they’re just turned up all the way so the knobs don’t really mean anything to me, but that pedal I actually get some use out of them, I’ve got the regular big muff,, the old one, and it’s a unique sound, and I think that’s the problem and the benefit with a lot of these, unless you’re in a cover band and want to sound exactly like someone else’s rig you want to make your own sound, so one persons crap is another ones gold.
Chris fromIowa Very true Chris. Sadly I am a bedroom guitarist. (Yes I know... It's very similar to someone admitting one uses auto tune. Or like Glenn Fricker hates... Someone cupping the mic) All I can play is covers so I would like to get close to sound like what the band sounds like.
Morley Wah pedal - I bought that in a store and went straight to a concert. Even turned off the pedal destroyed the Sound. I unplugged the Thing live on stage and was sure either the pedal or power supply were broken, went back to the shop. They claimed to Change it but the pedal I went home with was as bad (and People in shop unfriendly). Never went back to the shop and never bought anything from Morley again.
Have you used it hooked to two amps for true stereo? I hated in blend mode, going into one amp, but using it with two separate amps I couldn’t believe it, for Prog type sounds it was one of the greatest pedals Ive ever used, I would buy another one, just in case something happens to this one
I have to make a mild objection to the Danelectro Black Licorice being THAT horrible. I think it depends on what one is looking for. Played through a simple Fender amp set very clean, and with my Mexican Tele, I can get some nice sounds that give some deep, tight distortion for punk/rock sounds. It doesn't have gain control, but the bass level control does allow some control. I'm not arguing about the octave switch, though. That's not too impressive. You can get these for 20 bucks, so it's somewhat relative.
Oh man... I love pedals from all kinds of different brands. I’ve been really impressed with just about all of the TC Electronic pedals I’ve played, I hated Digitech for years, but they’ve suddenly stepped up their game and the stuff they’re now putting out has been awesome, for the most part. Wampler and Keeley don’t have the slightest idea how to make a BAD pedal. Some Boss pedals I’ve used for decades, and the DD-7 is still my favorite digital delay. Outlaw Effects are great. (I REALLY like the Deputy Marshal and the Vigilante Chorus.) But it I HAD to pick a favorite pedal company, it would probably be Amptweaker. Those things are nothing short of phenomenal.
