Gain at your feet

[treyhaislip]

Re: Gain at your feet

Ok so I got the AKAI SHRED-O-MATIC thing in the mail yesterday, and took it to the practice space to mess around with it.

Just to give you an idea, when I bid on this thing on Reverb, it was listed at $50 with $10 shipping. I bid $40 and the dude immediately accepted. When I got the package, the shipping cost was $17 on his end; so he paid $7 extra just to get rid of the thing.

After troubleshooting the crap-o power supply (not original, barely working) that he provided and giving it decent power, I concluded that the tone options varied from "can of bees" to "can of really, really angry bees". And that was on the tube overdrive setting. With the "high" tone control turned ALL THE WAY DOWN. I was afraid to even really try the diode setting.

The sensitivity of the treadle was such that you went essentially from "slightly too much gain" to "way, way too much gain" -- even when the gain knob was turned all the way down. As a volume pedal, it seemed to work OK but with a weird taper.

I can see why they stopped making them; more than likely out of pure humanitarian considerations. Good concept, really poor implementation. That having been said, someone who is really into super-high gain might like it. I guess when you call your pedal the "Shred-O-Matic", you are announcing your intentions pretty clearly....

Thanks for the update! Based off of your Avatar I would have assumed you would want as much gain as possible! jk!

There are probably a few diodes in the circuit that could be gotten rid of to make it more palatable...

Yeah, I think that the basic idea of the pedal is pretty solid, but its tone and gain stack is so over the top with treble and saturation. Probably if modified by someone who knew what they were doing, it could be pretty cool.

Could probably build something to do that, seems like it wouldn't be too hard to hook the distortion to a foot pedal rather than a knob.

[Securb]

Re: Gain at your feet

the tone options varied from "can of bees" to "can of really, really angry bees". And that was on the tube overdrive setting. With the "high" tone control turned ALL THE WAY DOWN.

Mmmm sounds like my kind of pedal....

The sensitivity of the treadle was such that you went essentially from "slightly too much gain" to "way, way too much gain"

.....SOLD!

[hydro]

Re: Gain at your feet

Thanks for the update! Based off of your Avatar I would have assumed you would want as much gain as possible! jk!





Could probably build something to do that, seems like it wouldn't be too hard to hook the distortion to a foot pedal rather than a knob.

It's funny, over time I have slowly reduced the amount of overall gain that I use, even for heavy riffing stuff. And realized that a lot of my favorite guitar players used less gain in their sound than I had initially thought. Sometimes you gotta just slam it though, just for grins!

I'd love to see a tube screamer type pedal with the gain knob routed to an external expression pedal jack. That would be interesting to try. I got enough of a feel for what it would sound like, using this Akai shred-meister thing, to where I do think it might be useful to some players.

[treyhaislip]

Re: Gain at your feet

It's funny, over time I have slowly reduced the amount of overall gain that I use, even for heavy riffing stuff. And realized that a lot of my favorite guitar players used less gain in their sound than I had initially thought. Sometimes you gotta just slam it though, just for grins!

I'd love to see a tube screamer type pedal with the gain knob routed to an external expression pedal jack. That would be interesting to try. I got enough of a feel for what it would sound like, using this Akai shred-meister thing, to where I do think it might be useful to some players.

I completely understand that! The past three years has seen me go from a high gain and pointy headstocks with floyds to more warm overdrives and traditional strats. lol But I agree about just slammin it for grins, I have the Suhr Riot on my pedal board for a reason

How are you with electronics and soldering? Would be cool to take apart a tube screamish pedal and put it in a VP or Wah frame.

[BriGuy1968]

Re: Gain at your feet

It's funny, over time I have slowly reduced the amount of overall gain that I use, even for heavy riffing stuff. And realized that a lot of my favorite guitar players used less gain in their sound than I had initially thought. Sometimes you gotta just slam it though, just for grins!

I'm right with ya on that one. I keep getting closer and closer to clean! Maybe it's a matter of aging!

I'd love to see a tube screamer type pedal with the gain knob routed to an external expression pedal jack. That would be interesting to try. I got enough of a feel for what it would sound like, using this Akai shred-meister thing, to where I do think it might be useful to some players.

Love this idea, but you still need to have a way to counteract the volume swell... at least somewhat.


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[hydro]

Re: Gain at your feet

I completely understand that! The past three years has seen me go from a high gain and pointy headstocks with floyds to more warm overdrives and traditional strats. lol But I agree about just slammin it for grins, I have the Suhr Riot on my pedal board for a reason

How are you with electronics and soldering? Would be cool to take apart a tube screamish pedal and put it in a VP or Wah frame.

Well, holy posole look what I found!!

http://missionengineering.com/?product_cat=boost-pedals

The Mission Engineering guys make what look to be really high quality foot pedals. The V-Boost Red is almost exactly what I am talking about. Now I just gotta find the dough....

[treyhaislip]

Re: Gain at your feet

Well, holy posole look what I found!!

http://missionengineering.com/?product_cat=boost-pedals

The Mission Engineering guys make what look to be really high quality foot pedals. The V-Boost Red is almost exactly what I am talking about. Now I just gotta find the dough....

Dude! That is awesome! I like the sound of both of them, I'll take two please!

[jtougas]

Re: Gain at your feet

Oh hey, looks what's coming out...

Ernie Ball, Expression Overdrive...

https://www.ernieball.com/guitar-acc...effects-pedals

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Ernie-Ba...drive-Pedal.gc

[Mincer]

Re: Gain at your feet

The Mission stuff is well-built, but they aren't so great at communicating. And they also seem to disconinue some of their nice expression pedals for no reason. I haven't tried the EB pedals, but the videos look really cool.

[Blille]

Gain at your feet

Oh hey, looks what's coming out...

Ernie Ball, Expression Overdrive...

https://www.ernieball.com/guitar-acc...effects-pedals

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Ernie-Ba...drive-Pedal.gc

Thread back from the dead!

Chapman demoed it last week, not too sold

https://youtu.be/qXfvG_VuI14

[treyhaislip]

Re: Gain at your feet

Oh hey, looks what's coming out...

Ernie Ball, Expression Overdrive...

https://www.ernieball.com/guitar-accessories/pedals/effects-pedals

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Ernie-Ba...drive-Pedal.gc

So if I buy this pedal they will replace my defective strings?

[jtougas]

Re: Gain at your feet

[ThisDyingSoul76]

Re: Gain at your feet

This may be a stupid question, but does anyone know of a gain/OD pedal that has a wah-like treadle?

Like a volume pedal, but at heel position it would be at unity gain; at toe position, some max threshhold of gain/overdrive.

I realize people do stuff like this by using their volume knob or volume pedal to clean up from some max gain setting X to X-Y. So this is more like an ergonomics thing. Imagine a tube screamer with the drive knob hooked to an expression pedal, for example.

George Dennis did some years ago, not sure if they are still making them. Also, I think Ernie Ball recently came out with something like
this.

[jtougas]

Re: Gain at your feet