ShortScale.org

not sure if this topic has been done before, but..what's the worst pedal everyone here's owned?

I'm sure as great collectors, we've all owned a few stinkers.

For me, it's my DOD Death Metal. I bought a Zoom Ultrafuzz off ebay, and the guy sent me this pedal along with it for free, as he said "it had a problem with the power supply" and i could have it. Now i suspect he just wanted to get rid of this steaming pile of sh#t.

It has 4 knobs, helpfully labelled "Rip", "Guts", "Pain" and "Scream". These translate to "bass, middle, treble" and "level" respectively. Notice something missing - yup, it has no gain control! The distortion is contasntly on 10 - actually 11, maybe even 20.

Sound-wise, it just sounds like my Boss Metalzone with the gain fixed on 10 - except it's also more solid-state and shrill and harsh - yes really. I can't imagine this pedal being useful for anyone, even death metallers!

Anyway, would like top hear other people's stories. Have a feeling Behringer is going to feature heavily on this thread

fuck the behringer hate i have owned 2 and they were great.(trem and acoustic modeler )

i think i have been fairly lucky with pedals, mostly because i always make sure its what i want. hearing as many samples i can and reading as many user comments. unless i take a risk on ebay with some old ass pedal. i bought some weirdo 70s phaser on ebay that didnt inspire me much, not because it was shit though....just it was just a phaser.

I bought a ds-2 last year because it went really cheap on ebay, just so i could check it out. and instantly hated it. but i pulled it out my unused pedal box a few months ago and instead of turning it up full blast, ive got it really low down, and use it as a crunchy od. sounds fab.

I've never not liked a pedal I've bought, although I guess the Zoom1010 I got as my first FX wasn't all that great, but it doesn't count.

Behringer acoustic simulator.

I never worked. Think mine was broken, but it was only $15 and I bought it online so I figured it wasn't worth the trouble of returning.

Although hardly the worst pedal (I used it on the WK EP), but I found the Jekyll & Hyde pretty dissapointing for the money. Not enough scope on the tone control (too trebley for me even with it all the way down and Sharp/Blunt switch set to Blunt) and a horrible wooly resonant low end on to Distortion side. And the "TS9/808 style" OD side sounded like a mild distortion mixed badly with the clean signal, it never sounded natural and every OD pedal I've ever had sounded better.

So yeah, not one of my faves.

Hurb wrote:fuck the behringer hate i have owned 2 and they were great.(trem and acoustic modeler )

I think Behringers have a bad rep mainly cos of build quality problems. The biggest complaints ive heard is of noisy pedals, and pedals where the effected signal bleeds through when it's in bypass.

Seriously, the latter issue is unforgivable, especially as it affects a number of their distortion units and their line selector pedal!

sd-1, stock rat (before the ruetz mod) and DOD flashback fuzz have all been awful

say what you will, i actually liked my ds-1

i couldn't be happier with my modded rat though.

ds1.

talkin' 'bout pedals, i got the holy grail!!! teh awesomeness. but i seem to have a volume drop on the spring mode?

Welcome to Electro Harmonix.

Mike wrote:Welcome to Electro Harmonix.

i bought a muff a year ago... so not really welcome?

I'm just saying that they're well known for Volume Drop on some of their models.

Any auto-filter I have ever used for me is a nightmare. It's just an effect I can't jive with at all.

Guess I've been pretty lucky too, having always had the opportunity to try out pedals I have bought, so don't really have a "worst" pedal. My least used pedal is the Muff, but that's just due to musical style at the moment.

Halifax Fuzz pedal.

Some of you may remember me winning this off of Ebay about a year ago. Cost me a whole 10 bucks. The sides are made of wood. The tone knob is more of a "turn me up and things will get quieter and go all octave-fuzzy".

I do actually use the stupid thing sometimes, though. haha

that looks hot!

Mike wrote:I'm just saying that they're well known for Volume Drop on some of their models.

ohh okay.

Even the innards are hooooooot.

Jesse wrote:

Even the innards are hooooooot.

you got any way to record that steez?