Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

Well now I'm on the fence. Seems like everyone really likes them for the most part and it's possible that the switch problems are just sporadic. I may take the dive on one of them. Still not sure. I've never been one to like spending that much on a pedal.

UberMetalDood said:
I've played them all and owned the red one before buying an actual Ecstasy. They are all great pedals. The Blue is a fantastic pedal and a bit more open than the red. The Red pedal has LOTS of versatility as it can go from a pretty mild boost to any amount of distortion you need. The Uberschall has a great sounding distortion but it is capable of lower gain sounds as well. I used to think the red was my favorite, but I honestly wouldn't be happy with just one. I'd have to have all three.

They have plenty of knobs and switches that do a lot to adjust your sound. Depending on the amp and pickups you are using, you can manipulate the controls to get just the right combination. They are a lot of fun to play with.

I have an XTC. I have owned the 101B and the 20th anniversary versions. The pedals have incredible preamps built in to them so you can probably fool any Ecstasy or Uberschall owner with their sound. However, there is a difference between them and the real amps. After using all the pedals, I just had to own and XTC. It's the best amp I ever owned.

In my opinion, the pedals are much more useful than just trying to get an XTC or Uberschall tone. They are quite versatile pedals and a lot more useful if you want to inject some Bogner preamp flavor and distortion into your amp to come up with your own killer tones.

As for Bogner customer service, they have always been good to me. I have never experienced anything of the kind described by Mr9Finger. Maybe that's because I only ever contacted them for amp support. I'm happy as long as they take care of my amps. In any case, the pedals sound incredible.
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Huh? I think you got me confused with someone else duder. I've never dealt with Bogner's CS. Someone else mentioned problems on some of the units with bad switches and not being able to get Bogner to help them much.

JOLLY said:
Anyone used them with a power amp through a 4x12?
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This is an excellent question! I'd probably be more apt to buy one or 2 of them IF I could use them as stand alone preamp units into a power amp. I don't know enough about rack equipment or power amps in general to know if this possible.
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

Mr 9finger said:
This is an excellent question! I'd probably be more apt to buy one or 2 of them IF I could use them as stand alone preamp units into a power amp. I don't know enough about rack equipment or power amps in general to know if this possible.
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You can use ANY pedal as a preamp.

 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

the guy who invented fire said:
If they can't (or won't?) do any better than this on the customer service end of things then they shouldn't have gotten into the pedal game anyway.

The size of the company is NO EXCUSE...I've gotten great customer service from very small companies all the way down to 1 man operations, Bogner has enough resources to get these pedals out in MASSIVE numbers to retailers all over the world and to take out full page colour ads in almost every mag I've gotten in the past few months but they can't return an email?!
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Thank you; that's been my sentiments exactly. There's no excuse why they can't take care of some lemon units that they've shipped out. I know I'm not the only one with these problems and I realize I'm probably in the minority. Nevertheless, people don't like hearing negative reviews of things and I'm here to showcase Bogner for what they are now.

I've spent a lot of years on here and I'm not here to BS anyone or sugarcoat things. I got screwed by the same company I've praised for years. They helped me years ago with changing a bias resistor on one of my Shivas to get one of the EL-34 tubes within proper range (since it had drifted). I LIKED their customer service back then, but a month and a half with over a half a dozen e-mails and no reply leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Are the issues critical? No. I may have to open up the pedal myself and buy a new 3PDT switch and replace it (because I'm going in circles here with them). The power issue, while not 50-100mA as specified does work on higher current and sounds identical to the battery so there is a workaround. I don't like it, but the bottom line is that with a little work the pedal will be usable.

So, long story short is that while my unit isn't right, they're not going to make it right because they're too busy selling trillions of these things even at $300 a pop. For every person that speaks up about it, there'll be 10 people piping in about how much they love theirs and that whomever has the problem must not be hitting the switch the right way or some bull like that. Their 3 year warranty is nothing, but lies and deception as I've found first hand.

If you learn anything from my situation, find a really good nearby retailer who will let you try before you buy to make sure you've got a good one and make sure they'll take care of you if something goes awry with it (which if there's been several accounts of issues with these already, may have more issues develop with time). People on TGP have decided to use 3rd party footswitches just to avoid wearing theirs out and I think that's silly. There's no excuse why a $300 retail pedal should have shoddy footswitches. I understand there are bad batches, but there should be customer support in place to rectify those batches. I think the pedal sounds great, but I'm officially done with the company after this experience.
 
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Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

I would expect that whether it was a pedal from DOD, or Bogner that I bought new that

A) it will function properly

B) The company would repair or replace immediately if product is not functioning properly.

I do not see how any excuses or pardons could be made on behalf of Bogner in this situation.
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

I've had my XTC Red pedal for two months now. It's a great pedal. Sounds and responds just like the Red channel on the XTC Classic that I had. Sounds just like the Red channel on the XTC 101B that my buddy has (I loaned the pedal to him for a week to try out). And I'm not running the pedal into some little practice amp, it currently sits in front of my Straub 2X6L6 head (the wood headshell seen on the right -- haven't taken pics since the Bogner Red and a few other pedals were added). The Straub is a very clean, muscular amp that does the pedal justice. I go back and forth between the Carl Martin Plexitone (original) and the Bogner Red on the amp. The Bogner pedal has TONS more tonal dialing options than the Plexitone. But the PT has something the Bogner doesn't. Sounds a tad "bigger".

Having said all of this, when I A/B my clean, pedal-driven rig against my Lickliter Rage prototype (seen on the left -- it's a modded plexi ala Splawn)... the Rage just has that huge plexi tone that the other rig doesn't. Gets closer when I'm using the Plexitone for OD instead of the Bogner pedal. I put most of the difference on the fact that the clean rig is 6L6s and the Lickliter is EL34s. There are some muscular mids there that just aren't there with a 6L6-based amp... PERIOD! In fact, my buddy (the 101B owner) never plays his Bogner head anymore after he ordered a brand new Splawn Quick Rod last year. I went over and spent a day A/B'ing the two heads and felt the same. The Splawn just sounded so much bigger than the Bogner. More massive, muscular, etc. Made the Bogner sound thin in comparison. And being a former Bogner fanboy, I tried to prove him wrong by spending all day tweaking. Couldn't.

In short, if you want/like/prefer the Bogner sound, the Red pedal NAILS it. It really is a wonderful pedal and even though I don't use mine much at the moment, I still plan to keep it. It's got that Bogner sound in there and it's a very refined, smooth tone. But when I switch over to my Lickliter head and play few notes/chords... I always end-up switching the pedal-driven rig on standby and just staying on the Marshall-based head. I will say that I'm NOT saying that just any Marshall-based head will do the trick. My buddy also has a JCM800 head that sat at my place for a few weeks and I also had a DSL50 (until a few weeks ago) head. Those heads were a more "even" match for the pedal-based rig. Didn't have the muscle that my Lickliter or buddy's Splawn had.

If you're looking to turn your little EL84-based rig into a massive-sounding Marshall stack-in-a-box... then the Bogner Red pedal won't do it. If you're looking to add the XTC Red channel to the clean channel of your tube amp... the pedal just NAILS that. No question.

The above has been my honest opinion.

2012-12-03_155529_zps7cbb12e9.jpg
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

I remember you had the bogner rig, nice write up! I love the 20th anniversary settings on the red and blue pedals for there upper mids, gain and low end. Red gets that brown sound nicely.
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

ken361 said:
I remember you had the bogner rig, nice write up! I love the 20th anniversary settings on the red and blue pedals for there upper mids, gain and low end. Red gets that brown sound nicely.
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Thanks. Yeah, I leave the Red set on 20th and I don't like the Variac setting. Usually switch between B1 and B2 on the Excursion. And gain runs between 9:00 and noon.

I actually had both an XTC and an EL34 Shiva for a while. The XTC could do everything the Shiva could, but the Shiva couldn't do everything the XTC could. Having said that, if I miss one of them it would be the Shiva. But alas, every time I plug into my Lickliter (not often right now as I'm in total acoustic mode and about to record my second acoustic album)... I don't miss my Bogners, VHT, Marshalls, H&K, Engl, etc. The Lickliter is my sweet spot for rock guitar and has enabled me to stop GASing for other stuff. I realized that once you've been through most of "the good stuff" you realize that it's all mostly just variations on each other. So you find the one that seems to speak to you most and then stop wasting time always jonesing for other gear. Total waste of time and energy beyond a certain point. (Which is why I spend so little time on boards based on GAS anymore. :D )

In fact, I was reading an article on the web yesterday called "The #1 Rule of Home Recording" as I prep to record again... and after I read the article I felt a little silly that I've been so busy acquiring new studio gear for the past six months to upgrade my studio. The guy basically says that once you've picked-up some decent (even CHEAP) gear... just hit "record" and focus on making great music. All the tweaking and dicking-around just confuses the issue and takes away from making great music. I think that can apply to guitar gear as well.

http://therecordingrevolution.com/category/the-1-rule-of-home-recording/
 
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Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

I actually like the variac for the sponginess and feel with the sag, know what your saying about all the gear and focas on playing
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

I gotta say, this thread got me to look into these pedals, they do sound pretty impressive, and I like the tweakability of the various switches to help suit the particular amp you are running through..so many gain boxes are designed around one style amp or another and do not sound so great with other amplifiers. Also love the built in boost..I miss that from my old CM plexitone.

There is a Ecstasy Blue in the GC about 2 minutes from me..hmmm.
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

blue is old school crunch, red more higher gain VH style 80's both awesome
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

Yeah, the Red sounds good, but I am not really into that 80s and beyond modded marshall type thing in my old age. The Blue is where my tone tastes lie.
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

Even though I hate the company for their lack of customer support, just go out and check them out. They're easily the best freakin' overdrive/distortion pedals on the market. I've owned a fair amount of dirt pedals in the past and nothing sounded more like another channel of an amp quite like these things. I don't miss my Shiva - so even though this pedal is temperamental and I have zero confidence in it anymore when it works it sounds great.
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

Picking 1 or 2 of them up is near the top of my to do list. I've got a few things that need finished up before I go sinking $600 on 2 pedals. Bought an amp and turns out it needs all new power tubes. Bought a rackmount preamp on a whim and I'm digging the sound, so I need to find a good power amp and a couple 1x12s for that. Still need a few odd ball speakers for the cabs I do have w/ empty spots so I can go back to having a cabinet for each of my heads. Just a lot of odds and ends stuff that needs done before I can justify spending that kind of dough on a couple pedals that may or may not work out well for me. I love the way they sound and the versatility. Dr. Barlo's demos on them sold me, I just need to empty a couple cans of worms before I go opening another. That $900 Springfield 1911 I just bought didn't help this quest too much either lol!
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

I have had nothing but fantastic support from Bogner. When I had an issue with my 20th Shiva, I contacted Charlie, one of the engineers and he hooked me right up with what I needed and got it done.
 
Re: Any honest rundowns on the new Bogner pedals?

Here's a demo I did for the Ecstasy Red:

 
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