WMD Geiger Counter

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James
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WMD Geiger Counter

Post by James »

Damn expensive, but my god is it good. It's ridiculously versatile. It's a little smaller tan I thought it would be. A smidge smaller than a T Rex pedal.

There are 4 different modes for each of the sample and bit rates, and you can combine them in any order you want. The wavetable knob is a turn to select deal and it's well calibrated so although there are 252 wavetables you can quickly get wherever you want but still control it to cycle through one at a time. But if you press the wavetable knob it cycles through the sample/bit rate modes (indicated on each by the LED using red/green/yellow/off). It also reloadsthe wavetable you last used when you turn it back on.

A lot of the wavetables are simliar (as you'd expect) but they ecah allow for different reactions from the controls. I think if you were to a do an demo of this that showed the range of each of the wavetables and skipped over the similar bits you'd be looking at a couple of hours. I might try and do one, but I am notirious for being shit at bothering to do them.

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I wasn't going to do a gutshot as it's so well designed and they probably deserve to keep the design to themselves, but it's gooped so fuck them. Things of note, input grounding on the stompswitch. SMD resistors (except one), weird little cube shaped caps.

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Mike
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Post by Mike »

ROLF @ Fuck Parcelforce.
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James
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Post by James »

I uploaded a few not so great gutshots for that FSB site, and the image without the parcel force comment.

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Doog
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Post by Doog »

Did you get screwed over on import changes then? :x

Such a cool little box, some proper ridiculous sounds on the ProGuitarShop demo.
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Post by kim »

james you got it ? fuck i hate you ! ok if you get sick of it sell it to me ok thx.
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Post by James »

Doog wrote:Did you get screwed over on import changes then? :x
I found out yesterday that Customs charge VAT on the postage costs and on their own customs fees. That doesn't even sound legal but I guess you can't really contest it. The only customs charges I had were for VAT but Parcel Force slapped the comedy tax on top of that for an extra £13.50. They didn't even deliver it. The setup was going to be that I'd get sent a letter, have to pay the customs charges using the invoice number on the letter and then they'd deliver it after that. So I probably wouldn't have got it untli the weekend, maybe early next week. I called them and found I could go down and pay the charge even though I hadn't got the letter yet, but I still got the comedy tax.

In total it worked out an extra 26% on the price of the pedal. :cry:

Cycling back with it I was wondering if I'd done something silly. It'd probably be quite difficult to sell over here given the price, even with no UK distrubution, and it's a mighty expensive dirt box. Having had a while to play with it I'm quite happy I bought it. I haven't tried it with other pedals yet but I think it's going to be quite messy with a boost before it.
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Doog
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Post by Doog »

How much, dare I ask, did it cost overall?
benecol

Post by benecol »

I may have that "fuck parcelforce' image as my forehead tattoo. Looks ace James.
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James
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Post by James »

Doog wrote:How much, dare I ask, did it cost overall?
To be honest, I haven't added it up because if I do it goes from being 'quite a bit' to an actual number. I think it's in the £210-215 sort of area. £50 cheaper than a new one from Belgium or Switzerland (those are €300/£265 exc postage although being EU there'd be no overpriced customs charges) but I still feel like it's a bit much for a pedal.

My previous limit was about £110 or so. I would have made it a flat £100 but quite a lot of nice things seem to go for a little over that so I figured £110 is reasonable. If I wasn't working a week of overtime I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere near justifying it.
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Post by aen »

harrumph. Rich man's Great Destroyer.






















jk, this thing is immense.
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James
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Post by James »

I maded an demo. I did a couple of noob mistakes though. It's not really a demo, more me testing if I can manage to upload things or not. I didn't plan anything in terms of riffs or settings. No talking either. Really it's quite a botch job, but I thought I'd try I'd do something perhaps a little useful and give a quick 'this is what it sounds like when you're arseing about with settings' sample of what it does.

It's too dark and low quality to tell much of what's going on (visually) and the red and yellow LED colours look pretty similar on the sample and bit rate indicators.

I'll do a proper one sometime now I know I can do it. The main hassle was converting from .mov to a different format (so much software is absolute wank). There might be some sort of wait while it clears too. I'm not at all familiar this sort of thing.

[youtube][/youtube]
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Post by endsjustifymeans »

I love noise.
I love clanky metallic sounding pedals.
But I don't quite get that pedal. At least not as a guitar effect.
Just seems like so many options with such little functionality.

With a contact mic I bet you can do some great stuff with it though.
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James
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Post by James »

I'll do a demo that shows it in a more guitar-based way.

It's quite odd because the waveforms can sound quite similar in some settings but have wildly different reactions to changes in the settings. You definitely need to dial stuff in quite carefully to get useable tones.
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Post by robroe »

can you bring this with you to america when you come so i can mess with steal it ?
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Post by James »

robroe wrote:Let's just say it moved me.. TO A BIGGER HOUSE!
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