OT- Whats the worst effect you ever bought? Play with?

[~arph]

Ah, the digitech space station comes to mind

Another one that's highly sought now.

The exact reason I bought one a few years back...
Looks like the price doubled since then

[R.G.]

This thread is another example of why I don't like threads that start with
"What's the best/worst/most/least/... effect/amp/guitar/tone... ?"
You usually get one opinion from each person, they're all different, and they all depend on the individual likes of the responder - which means they're of little or no value to someone other than the responder, because there is no guarantee that anyone else will feel that way.

I like broccoli, hate okra, and can take or leave cucumbers. What's the best vegetable? Who's the prettiest girl? What's the best car?

Human preferences are real, but they don't correlate with anything except the person preferring them.

[MoltenVoltage]

Human preferences are real, but they don't correlate with anything except the person preferring them.

I agree with respect to sound, but not with respect to build quality.

[R.G.]

I agree with respect to sound, but not with respect to build quality.

I had to attend a long series of lectures on quality and how to achieve it by some pretty highly-paid consultants back when the Japanese were the ones kicking USA's manufacturing  processes to shreds. I guess the lectures were successful, as some of the info seems to have stuck with me.

"Build quality" is a a meaningless term unless you also specify how to measure "quality".  It seems like a bit of sophistry until you dig in a bit, but I'll shorten up the lectures a bit.

Quality can only be defined as how well something conforms to the specifications for it. It's ingenuous to think it means "never fails" or "highly reliable" or "made out of very expensive parts". One could, for instance, make pedal enclosures out of gold-plated platinum sheeting over 1/4" steel for strength. The would very, very seldom fail, and they'd be impervious to environmental degradation. They'd also be very expensive, which the subjective audio enthusiasts seem to think is quality, and also very hard to work with.

Is that quality? It depends. If you really need pedal boxes that survive being run over by tanks and have to not corrode in atmospheres with lots of sulphuric and nitric acid vapors, yep, it is high quality. If what you need is the cheapest stompbox that will not fail if you step on it, it is NOT high quality, because you paid way too much for things you don't need. And it's hard to get paint to stick to gold, so that's a positive defect if your specifications include having a painted enclosure; it's also a defect if you don't want a box to weigh ten pounds.

It's interesting to note that the much-maligned manufacturing in China is actually of very high quality, in that it meets the specifications set for the goods, one of which was the very USA and European businessmen's demand that it be very, very cheap, and other things are negotiable to achieve that end. The people carping about Chinese quality are actually carping because they didn't get to write the specs and aren't happy with what they got - while still demanding that what they get be very, very cheap. And I find it funny that Western manufacturing was slapped around by *both* Japanese high quality *and* Chinese low cost.

But I'm wandering around again. The point is, "high quality" is a meaningless term better suited to emotional/political speech than it is to describing some real object or set of goods unless and until one can compare the goods against a list of criteria. They meet the criteria or they don't. This can be expressed statistically in terms of what proportion of the goods meet the criteria. In the Japanese quality days, 99.997% meeting criteria (you may have heard "six sigma") was considered the cutoff point.

[MoltenVoltage]

Regarding objective measures of build quality, 2 examples that come to mind are the Digitech Whammy and the DynaComp.

I've had Whammys sent to me from halfway around the world loose in a box without padding and they always work.  Very high quality build.

I have a DynaComp that had pots with plastic shafts that broke when they got stepped on.  Unreasonably low quality build.

The measure of their build quality is their fitness for the purpose of being kicked around on stage.


Now as far as sound goes, the Grunge pedal is objectively godawful.  I defy you to find a single professional musician with an unmodified grunge pedal on their board.  It sounds like somebody crinkling aluminum foil in your ear.

[mistahead]

Now this is a good way for this topic to progress... especially on a DIY forum...

I have a reasonable understanding of QA processes in non-effects industry - is DIY "High quality"... well I can say that a OD built by myself or a reasonable amount of the people here, laboured over, tweaked and fiddled - every measurement taken in relationship to each component and those that are most critical to the magical tone we are trying to create - boxed in hand finished aluminum using an $AUD8-10 3PTD true bypass is still not "High quality" according to professional standards.

The $30 purple plastic cased, mass produced, Aldi bought OD I grabbed a month or two ago is.

Don't mistake me - I know, love and aspire towards the (often vocal) minority here who do build to the standards that make my QA gland all misty... but lets face it most of us are more or less quietly making one-off's that will fail every check the industry proper would put us through.

All that said - bring up the topic of bad experiences and you'll get an eight or ten to one response rate, good for conversation and good for internet conversation especially... and as much as I hate to say it the sharing of disliked or bad experiences builds a community empathy - if we had a "Favorite stomp box ever" thread it would probably degenerate into this sort of conversation anyway, someone would post how much they loved a pedal and there would be folks jumping in to explain why they were wrong.

Hopefully we all enjoyed the intermission - lets get back to bagging out our pet hates and bad experiences!!! 

[R.G.]

Regarding objective measures of build quality,

In my opinion, there are no objective measures of quality beyond "conformance to specifications". Anything else is entirely subsumed in "that makes me happy", which is, on the face of it, not measurable.

There can be no disagreement about matters of taste. If you cannot measure quality, which requires some yard stick beyond personal preference, it is entirely subjective. If it cannot be measured, there is no valid, objective way to rate the quality of one over the other.

This is an extension of my opinion on hifi tweako subjectivist thinking in general, by the way. The tweakos have had to retrench into "well, it sounds better and I can hear it; and furthermore it **can't** be measured in any way, so you can't nail me down on the issue." It's almost like they become proud of their ignorance. Weird.

I've had Whammys sent to me from halfway around the world loose in a box without padding and they always work.  Very high quality build.
I have a DynaComp that had pots with plastic shafts that broke when they got stepped on.  Unreasonably low quality build.

Let's take the same test on another product - chicken eggs. In the case of a hen's egg, being able to be shipped around the world unpacked without breaking is a detriment for the intended purpose (i.e. breaking and cooking) and breaking easily but not too easily is an advantage. The moral is that if you can't specify what you're trying to get, you can't measure quality as anything other than how much it makes you say "Kewl!"

Certainly I think that general toughness is a virtue, and I demand that in both my personal an professional designs, but I can promise you that given the choice between a generally tougher design and one which does the same audio function and is notably cheaper, but more fragile, most customers will choose the cheaper one. And customers will mostly choose the item with more bells and whistles over the tougher, more rugged but simpler item. Well, actually I guess that it's been proven that customers will preferentially buy the one which has been more heavily advertised, but the money for advertising comes out of the budget to produce the goods, too. 

So - what's quality again? Is it measurable?

I admire a pedal that doesn't break easily, but beyond a certain threshold, diminishing returns sets in with a vengeance, and you start exceeding what a customer will pay. And that leads right back to specifications. It *would* make sense to say "all pedals must survive 80 drops from 3 feet to a concrete floor when packaged in a single layer cardboard box with at least 10 landings on each surface without breakage or loss of function" as a quality criteria. [Hmmm.... how did I come up with that one??  ]  If you can't convince other people to accept that as a measure of quality, then it's back to being your personal preference.

The measure of their build quality is their fitness for the purpose of being kicked around on stage.

As I mentioned, it's a small minority of pedals that ever get on stage. Are there two standards of quality? Professional and then everyone else? Do the amateurs have to pay for pro quality? Would they rather pay the same for more function and less ruggedness? Is what people will pay for a quality measure? Or a yardstick of how much was spent advertising?

Interestingly, the phrase "high quality cosmetics" is almost a contradiction in terms. 

On the professional side, I design stuff which is tough - we did some videos of running over an earlier model of one of our pedals with the front tire of a van, and then the new model, after which the new model worked properly - but being fresh off a trade show demoing the pedals for the public, I promise you that the public is largely uninterested in paying for that toughness. They really only care if it will make them sound like [insert guitar god here].

Now as far as sound goes, the Grunge pedal is objectively godawful.  I defy you to find a single professional musician with an unmodified grunge pedal on their board.  It sounds like somebody crinkling aluminum foil in your ear.

There can be no disagreement about matters of taste. I'm pretty sure that some musician somewhere liked that pedal. Why otherwise did anyone ever buy one? Did they buy them while on a bender and wake up next to them in a cheap hotel? If they all came to hate the Grunge, why are they still on pedalboards and not in the city dump? How did the maker ever sell the second unit out of the first production run?

In fact I do agree that *I* don't like the Grunge pedal, and that professional musicians may not like it, but their existence says that someone did.

And then - how do you measure foil-crinkliness? 

[tuckster]

Behringer SO400....

[bluesman1218]

Perhaps the implied title of this discussion was, "What is the effect you were most unhappy/disappointed/dissatisfied/PO'd with that you ever bought?"
My answer is still the Dano Fab Tone.

Wow, THAT is the most succinct I have ever been. Beat that RG, TFIC (Tongue Firmly In Cheek)!

[R.G.]

Perhaps the implied title of this discussion was, "What is the effect you were most unhappy/disappointed/dissatisfied/PO'd with that you ever bought?"
My answer is still the Dano Fab Tone.

Wow, THAT is the most succinct I have ever been. Beat that RG, TFIC (Tongue Firmly In Cheek)!

I wouldn't even try. Actually, I agree completely with the logical approach. If that had been the title, I would not be carping about it on quality/best/worst grounds. It's honest, and accurate.

However, I would then be carping about it being a waste of time energy and storage in what is arguably the most informative forum on the topic. What sets this forum apart is that there is real, valid technical information here, and lots of it. Dilute that will irreconsilable arguments about who's got the biggest, er, what's the best/worst/least/most, and it may be fun for a while, but it cheapens and dilutes the venue. Worse, it attracts more juvenile wannabe arguers on the issue.

Once down to that honest question, it's only fair to assume you'd get about one unique opinion per person on average. After all, opinions are like [insert most humorous singular body part here] - everybody has one, and generally thinks theirs is the best. Agreements on best/worst/most/least are rare. It's a question much better suited to places with a vastly poorer signal to noise ratio than this one. The replies say at least as much about the replier as they do the thing replied. It's very much like saying "what's the most beautiful (insert your favorite gender specific pronoun here) you've ever seen?" I find that polls about best/worst/most/least are even bigger time and bandwidth wasters.

I've been part of forums that degraded to pottymouth name calling by the 14 year olds in spirit before. I hate to see it here.

[Paul Marossy]

Ouch, Paul!  ...Then again, I hated my Parker Fly and you love them.  We're just not from the same cloth.  

The reason why I hate compressor pedals is because the suck all of the dynamics out of my playing. I hate that. And that is why I hate compressor pedals.

I actually finally got a 1995 Fly Deluxe a couple of weeks ago, and I LOVE IT. And I still totally love my 2005 Nitefly Mojo, too. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it! 

We're all different and we all have different preferences. I'm OK with that. 

[Paul Marossy]

It's interesting to note that the much-maligned manufacturing in China is actually of very high quality, in that it meets the specifications set for the goods, one of which was the very USA and European businessmen's demand that it be very, very cheap, and other things are negotiable to achieve that end.

Yes, I agree. We should be learning something from the Chinese, they can do high quality for inexpensive. Why can't Americans do that?

[bluesman1218]

I wouldn't even try. Actually, I agree completely with the logical approach. If that had been the title, I would not be carping about it on quality/best/worst grounds. It's honest, and accurate.

However, I would then be carping about it being a waste of time energy and storage in what is arguably the most informative forum on the topic. What sets this forum apart is that there is real, valid technical information here, and lots of it. Dilute that will irreconsilable arguments about who's got the biggest, er, what's the best/worst/least/most, and it may be fun for a while, but it cheapens and dilutes the venue. Worse, it attracts more juvenile wannabe arguers on the issue.

I don't disagree....completely. RG, since most info in subjective. However, once I get to know a person, through their posts and interacting with them and they are often very helpful. Take my initial response (no one  I'm picking on them). While I didn't refer to another thread, I did post what I was able to mod the pedal to do. Helpful? Dunno, depends what someone is looking for.

I feel truly blessed to have such a "sharing of knowledge base" available here, so as long as folks are civil, a thread like this can just be fun read. If I find something I can use, even better.

BTW, love philosophical conversations with a  humorous lean, and if it heads toward Firesign Theater or Monty Pyhton, I have to jump in (not saying yours did).

[petemoore]

  Understanding allows mind over matter: statistically speaking, "the bad pedal is probably fine". It's just in a bad spot there/at the time of expectation disappointments.
   There's ample peer review for those interested in understanding most/all these current/older designs we're discussing. They all seem though through and extensively reviewed/rethunk...a zillion options.
   Akin to blaming the transmission [which is working as expected/to specifications] for making the car lose a race, ''this pedal is 'bad'' fails to make a valid point.
  Some disappointments may be expected when discovering what doesn't dissapoint..somewhere between guided-intuition [recommended] and the elimination-process.
   I was a tabula rasa-newb reading: ''Will convert your amp to raging Stack" foolish for a time, I repeated eliminating and adding the ''spice ingredients'' [lotsa dirtboxes] I Was able to afford at the time, when it was the ''organic meat 'n potatoes'' [the larger rig parts] I could have been saving for.
  My messy'd tabula-page eventually expressing many of the 'right' ingredients for a fairly wide variety of specific sound-recipe's, ~cleanly.
   Some dashed expectations & frustrations may cause contemplations which build a knowledge base where the user understands roughly what to expect, and the ability to ID what to eliminate [nothing passes inspection without being researched/inspected].
   It's just stuff, with a zillion ways to think about it.
  If a pedal is causing more trouble than it's worth, you don't need it.
 

[Hides-His-Eyes]

It's interesting to note that the much-maligned manufacturing in China is actually of very high quality, in that it meets the specifications set for the goods, one of which was the very USA and European businessmen's demand that it be very, very cheap, and other things are negotiable to achieve that end.

Yes, I agree. We should be learning something from the Chinese, they can do high quality for inexpensive. Why can't Americans do that?

Higher rent, higher bills, more educated workforce and an expectation of a better quality of life

[thedefog]

Boss PH-2 is up there, along with the DS-1. Still don't know how I came to own both of those. I must have had my earplugs in at the store.

Nirvana days?

Hahaha, nah during those days I had a multi-FX unit. Some plastic Zoom thing. That was probably THE worst sounding thing I've ever used. Makes the DS-1 and PH-2 sound heavenly. Damn that was like 10 years ago. I feel old now.

[Paul Marossy]

It's interesting to note that the much-maligned manufacturing in China is actually of very high quality, in that it meets the specifications set for the goods, one of which was the very USA and European businessmen's demand that it be very, very cheap, and other things are negotiable to achieve that end.

Yes, I agree. We should be learning something from the Chinese, they can do high quality for inexpensive. Why can't Americans do that?

Higher rent, higher bills, more educated workforce and an expectation of a better quality of life

There was a time when American made was better AND was affordable. If you ask me, we have slipped backwards and given our wealth to other nations, like China. U.S. citizens could be doing the work that they do now.

[tuckster]

If you ask me, we have slipped backwards and given our wealth to other nations, like China. U.S. citizens could be doing the work that they do now.

For the same amount of money these poor chinese guys earn? With the same working hours? Which american would do that?
I don't want to start a bad discussion, your opinion is really honorable but I don't think that it is possible.
It would be better if people stop buying every cheap stuff that gets out of china and start buying stuff from their own country maybe then it would be possible.

[Paul Marossy]

If you ask me, we have slipped backwards and given our wealth to other nations, like China. U.S. citizens could be doing the work that they do now.

For the same amount of money these poor chinese guys earn? With the same working hours? Which american would do that?
I don't want to start a bad discussion, your opinion is really honorable but I don't think that it is possible.
It would be better if people stop buying every cheap stuff that gets out of china and start buying stuff from their own country maybe then it would be possible.

I know what you are saying. But you left out this part: "There was a time when American made was better AND was affordable." When I was a kid in the 70s, made in Japan = junk. Chinese made was even worse. Not the case anymore. So what the heck has happened since then?! If you go to Walmart, Target, places like that, pretty much everything in the store was made in China.

[tuckster]

It's all business management. Produce it where it's cheap. They knew they had to increase the quality because no one would buy this stuff today.