Blind Pedal Shootout on YouTube

[tiges_ tendres]

The amp used was a Visual Sound amp if I recognised it correctly.

What sort of amp is it ( forgive my ignorance ) , a tube amp or a solid state one ?

So far I haven't found information on the amp or did I miss it ?

My point is certain pedals don't respond good to a solid state amp while others don't mind so much.

And the whole chain is important : a good sounding pedal on one amp can sound not so good or downright bad on another amp , it all has to do with the voicing of the channel used ihmo. 

Who is gonna  shed some light ?

Alf 

It's a tube amp made by visual sound.  I think it is now discontinued.

[Mark Hammer]

FrankP..."These guys are playing two roles at the same time.  Can it really be sincere ?"...
Absolutely not.

Could you prove that assertion, please? 

I'm reminded of a sweet little sequence in the current season of "24" where the president asks the Jack Bauer character "How do I know that I can trust you?", and Bauer replies "With all due respect, Madame President, ask around."

As for the usefulness of pursuing the "ideal" comparison/shootout method, I think there is some usefulness with respect to effects development, and with respect to effects mythbusting, but I think I agree that pursuing methods to find out which pedal is better is a waste of time. 

I tried to consider which of those two good reasons is the more critical, but I can't make up my mind.  If one strives to improve an effect in some manner, that intended improvement should matter in an audible and expected way, and blind testing can confirm it, and sometimes even define the limits of improvement.  For example, just exactly what sort of modulation is preferred by phaser users at different speeds?  Worth asking if you ask me.  Conversely, perhaps it is important to test whether assumptions about what contributes to "note definition" are accurate, just to be sure one is not franticly pursuing designs or components that really have less impact than one thinks.

[R.G.]

There's a lot of philo-psychobabble in this thread that goes over my head. But I think these videos are really intended to be more "demonstrations" than "tests". If that makes you feel better, I would suggest adopting that perspective of it. In the end, the subject matter is completely subjective. Trying to "objectify" it or arrive at a "more better" "legitimate" scientific test of it is really a waste of time AFAIC.

What they do accomplish is they show a typical group of "tone fest" or "tone party" attendees that things are not always what they seem, or are led to believe. Gear site forumites who feel they have to establish a group consensus before any purchase decision would do good to see these. If nothing else, the videos encourage people to try things and make up their own minds before following any established "convention", i.e., think for themselves. That's a good and healthy thing, and the vids provide a good service. Whether they are or aren't a "legit" scientific test or etc is beside the point IMO.

Thank you. That's probably a much better way to look at this.

Ditto  .  This was not a laboratory test to find the end all supreme king of guitar pedal tone.  It was simply to showcase that Visual Sound pedals are comparable to some of the mojo pedals out there.  I think they accomplished that very well.  Whether or not people's opinions were swayed by those around them seems irrelevant since there seem to be quite a few guitarists out there who buy gear because the people around them have convinced them to.  Visual Sound made no claims that their pedals were superior to Klon or Fulltone or anyone else's but they did show us that they have a couple cool tricks up there sleeve (noise suppression, buffer) while still sounding great.  I think everyone's reading a little too much into the "test" aspect of it.  Just my $.02

Thank you. That's probably a much better way to look at this.

... Absolute comparison is impossible so why bother.

I think I'm rapidly coming around to this viewpoint. 

The amp used was a Visual Sound amp if I recognised it correctly.
What sort of amp is it ( forgive my ignorance ) , a tube amp or a solid state one ?
So far I haven't found information on the amp or did I miss it ?
My point is certain pedals don't respond good to a solid state amp while others don't mind so much.
And the whole chain is important : a good sounding pedal on one amp can sound not so good or downright bad on another amp , it all has to do with the voicing of the channel used ihmo. 
Who is gonna  shed some light ?

I'm guessing that's going to be up to me. 
It's a Visual Sound Stallion, a 60W 2x12 combo, with the inside speakers disconnected and sitting on an experimental 4x12 cab. The 4x12 is a prototype of a cab we were going to build, but have delayed. It's 4x Celestion Seventy80s in a cab that's very much like every other 4x12 on the market, excepting only for having the hubcap treble diffusers on the speakers to spread the treble around. The audio path is three 21AX7s driving 2x 6L6 in an entirely conventional arrangement. The only thing novel about it is that it is designed to be effect friendly by having no channel switching, master volume, overdrive channel, etc. etc. The amp just barely hits breakup with the volume at 10 and a single coil strat with volume at 10 driving it. It's a tube amp optimized for hearing what your guitar or effects sound like, but still retaining tube amp characteristics in the clean range. It's the most transparent (ugh! I hate myself for using that word, but it's accurate in this case) tube amp I know of at volume, excepting perhaps some early Fenders from the day when they tried to get amps to do just this. Voicing is entirely conventional. Except for the sound level, any early Fender amp would have been very much like this through the speakers.

I'm sure we'll get some replies saying that some of the pedals tested only sound good through Marshalls or AC30s or BoostAgoGo amps set to 4/5/3/5 on MV  because that would put those pedals at a disadvantage, so that shows the test was nobbled.
We used our amp because (a) we had one handy and (b) it's designed to show off effects of all kinds well, letting you hear the effect, not the effect as blenderized by the amp.

As for the usefulness of pursuing the "ideal" comparison/shootout method, I think there is some usefulness with respect to effects development, and with respect to effects mythbusting, but I think I agree that pursuing methods to find out which pedal is better is a waste of time. 

Trust you to have something accurate and to the point to say!  Maybe a perfect comparision process isn't possible, for reasons having nothing to do with experimental method.

I'm going to rely on reverbie to come up with a good, solid, methodology which would be scientifically and statistically valid. And meanwhile, I think I'll go spend a few moments thinking up an UNfair, NONobjective, entirely self-serving method of testing pedals.  Bwahh-ha -ha!

[afrogoose]

Thanks a bunch for doing this!!  I really enjoyed the level of professionalism and the time and money it must have taken to put this together.  It was fun to see all of these pedals next to each other. 

I have to admit that I have a bias in that I really, really don't like focus groups.  I've done them a few times for quick money.  I find them to be pretty comical in a non-intentional sort of way.  They are like a combination of crass market capitalism and that young high school teacher you had who tried really hard to be the "cool" teacher from 'Dead Poets Society.'  But I digress... I also have to object to the "science" of this experiment.  I only watched the overdrive and distortion comparisons but I noticed that the Visual Sounds pedals were last in line (not including the turd that is the Boss metal zone).  While this didn't garauntee anything, it certainly put the pedals in the most probable position to "win" the "competition."  Also, in the overdrive set, all of the pedals sounded 99% the same except that the Visual Sounds one was noticeable louder.  Most people hear louder as "better."  I'm also not sure how the opamp chip myth was busted since it seemed most people were able to tell that there was some difference.  The focus group leader led the group to think that the difference was "small" (admitidly very small) but a combination of small things could be medium things, and anyway I'm not sure what the myth is in the first place? 

   

[GREEN FUZ]

It`s obvious the amp was tweaked to make the Visual Sound pedals sound best. I bet all the attendees received free Visual Sound T-shirts + beer and biscuits too. If you slow down some of the sequences you can clearly see Bob winking and giving the thumbs up whenever the Visual Sounds pedal is played, in a blatant attempt to influence the audience.*







* Where`s the irony emoticon gone.

[gez]

The audience look glassy eyed to me.  Either someone put something in the mince pies or they were all hypnotised beforehand.[/David Ike]

[reverbie]

 If Danelectro threw together a blind "which is better" shootout video comparing their cool cat pedals to their cloned boutique ones, would anybody object or be skeptical? Would that be appropriate? And what's the difference?

If RG worked for F-tone and they did a "blind" shootout against an Orman booster, would anyone question it? What's the difference here? Presentation? Why even make it a matter of who is "best" or "wins" unless you are trying to sell something???


"50 of Nashvilles Top Musicians Have Decided. Now It's Your Turn".  Bwa ha ha!

[Projectile]

I guess everyone is more interested in arguing on and on for pages about the validity of the process than answering my legitimate and simple question about the chorus pedal shootout. It seems the only way to get my question heard is to attack the validity Visual sounds method, but since I don't really care about that, I'll just ask my simple question again:

Why was the full chorus pedal shootout not included on youtube? I am very interested in seeing the comparisons with the other chorus pedals. I don't really care if the other pedals were eliminated by the audience, because I rarely agree with the audience anyway. The only way I find these shootouts useful is if I get to hear the blind tests for myself, so why wasn't the full chorus pedal shootout included like all of the other others? Might there be a chance that it will be posted in the future? Thanks.

Also, thank you Visual Sounds for doing these tests. They are very informative.

[Mark Hammer]

Why was the full chorus pedal shootout not included on youtube? I am very interested in seeing the comparisons with the other chorus pedals.

From what RG indicated, what is posted is a) a bit of a surprise to him, and b) part of what will be on a DVD.

As I have posted on numerous occasions, chorus pedals are one of those cases where the core technology itself (BBDs) virtually demands some degree of uniformity in design. Having just emptied the dishwasher, I'll use a pertinent analogy: How many ways can you design a knife?  It has to have a sharp edge that is long enough to be useful yet not so long as to be either dangerous, heavy, or floppy.  It has to be rigid enough, and it has to have enough of a handle to grip that you can actually hold it securely and apply pressure.  Everything after that is cosmetic.  Same deal with chorus pedals.  You HAVE to have a clock generator.  You HAVE to have some anti-aliasing/anti-clock-noise lowpass filtering.  You HAVE to have a splitter and mixer stage.  You HAVE to have an LFO.  Everything after that is simply cosmetic choices in clock range (and that tends to account for a LOT of the seeming sonic difference between different brands), LFO speed range, lowpass filtering parameters, noise control, etc., and of course, the controls implemented.  Not surprising at all that so many sound so close to each other.

[deaconque]

Why was the full chorus pedal shootout not included on youtube? I am very interested in seeing the comparisons with the other chorus pedals.

From what RG indicated, what is posted is a) a bit of a surprise to him, and b) part of what will be on a DVD.

As I have posted on numerous occasions, chorus pedals are one of those cases where the core technology itself (BBDs) virtually demands some degree of uniformity in design. Having just emptied the dishwasher, I'll use a pertinent analogy: How many ways can you design a knife?  It has to have a sharp edge that is long enough to be useful yet not so long as to be either dangerous, heavy, or floppy.  It has to be rigid enough, and it has to have enough of a handle to grip that you can actually hold it securely and apply pressure.  Everything after that is cosmetic.  Same deal with chorus pedals.  You HAVE to have a clock generator.  You HAVE to have some anti-aliasing/anti-clock-noise lowpass filtering.  You HAVE to have a splitter and mixer stage.  You HAVE to have an LFO.  Everything after that is simply cosmetic choices in clock range (and that tends to account for a LOT of the seeming sonic difference between different brands), LFO speed range, lowpass filtering parameters, noise control, etc., and of course, the controls implemented.  Not surprising at all that so many sound so close to each other.

Absolutely agree.  I've yet to hear a chorus pedal that made me say "Wow, that's different!".  After a certain position on the speed or rate knob they all become too wobbly and unusable anyway, so the range isn't even a factor IMO.

[petemoore]

  I saw the chorus segment on Youtube.
 
 

[Projectile]

  I saw the chorus segment on Youtube.
 
 

Where? The only segment I could find just showed the final two pedals in the shootout, but there is a comment that explains that there were more pedals involved that were eliminated. The video does not show the entire shootout and just comes across as an advertisement for the VS H2O. I don't understand why this shootout was chopped when the others were so excellently displayed.

[petemoore]

  There was some talk and the comparison soon focused between the TC and the V2.   
  They sounded great and pretty darn close, Chorus-wise.

[liquids]

I just watched all the videos last night.  I found them really interesting.

One thing I always say is - can the audience tell the difference?  I think the player, the feel, the response to picking (etc) creates subtle differences between quality gear that will mostly be lost to any audience. Roomful of musicians included!  this confirmed that a bit for me.

I'm one of those guys who has come to love good buffers.  But I also notice certain pedals (overdrives etc) respond slightly (read: I'm anal) differently to a high impedance signal than a buffered signal. I put a buffer as early in the signal as my ears will let me.

So I was bummed about the in-line buffers too, but what can you do...without them, then you can say pedal 5 in line is seeing more capacitance than pedal 1, etc.  There's no eliminating all the variables for naysayers.

Nevertheless, I liked how the similarities between the 808 style overdrives were mostly negligible.  I heard some differences, but agree they were so slight to the listener.  the VS route 808 clearly seemed to have more 'bass.' It was the clearest difference among them.  Keep in mind though, these are all basically the same circuit.  But I agree that the hype for subtle differences is often way too overpriced!     Glad I know how to solder now.

While the distortions all sounded different, I thought the BoR sounded the nicest and classiest, clearly. I couldn't believe they guys chose the modded RAT over it. But I guess I've always been a fan of 'less' mid scoop than the average guy. The Hyde was a good second, and the best 'modern' sound (less mids) but that is personal preference.

The video didn't note that the Hyde has 'noise reduction' circuitry.  It's a gate, right RG?  Otherwise you'd think the lack of noise was a revolutionary thing...all high quality gain pedals are going to amplify noise.  The Hyde actively combats it while the other's dont...I'd liked to have heard the noise gate off, or an explaination that that is why it was dead silent, if nothing else. 

I was surprised by the audience saying the choruses sounded the same.  To me the TC's settings sounded faster and more warbling.  No one else seemed to think so.    But they're both great pedals, clearly.

The op-amp thing--I was disapointed by this, while likewise I smiled. I find that one of the biggest differences when I've switched op-amps is in relation to the way the pedal responds to input 'dynamics' and recovery from clipping.  Strumming a full G on chord with humbuckers, i think yeah, op amp differences and pedal differences between 808 will be basically negligible.

My op-amp experience: Before I started building, I heard op amp swaps would affect tone a bit.  I have a Barber Small Fry, and ordered a $3-4 op amp.  When I got it, I a/bed them.  I heard a difference in the way my low E string 'broke up' and overall clipping.  I actually WANTED to like the one I bought, but though the stock one sounded better.  I was sad.  No listener would hear it, but I could feel it, and I knew I wasted $4. I decided to trust Dave Barber's choice chip over everyone swearing that some other chip would be an improvement - also because I figured it sounded plenty good already.  At least now I have other uses for that $4 chip. 

So I really don't think all op amps sound the same, as this video may lead most to conclude (I think, incorrectly). But I also don't think they are the end all be all to a pedal...subtle differences only add up in large numbers.  A good life principle: don't major on the minors.       

In the end, I will definitely be adding VS pedals to my short list of gear to recommend to guys who want good stombox tone at good prices and don't want the hype and tone chasing I've been going through for years..

[DougH]

While the distortions all sounded different, I thought the BoR sounded the nicest and classiest, clearly. I couldn't believe they guys chose the modded RAT over it.

I didn't care for the RAT much myself. But there was another one, can't remember which one, that just sounded horrible to my ears. It sounded like it wasn't biased correctly or something.

[Mark Hammer]

There are a LOT of things that make an audible difference, or CAN make such a difference.  The only problem is that those differences only exist in audible fashion under very specific circumstances.  If you are an adamant user of a particular setup and settings, and a particular factor makes a consistent difference for YOU, groovy.  But there is little guarantee that it will necessarily make a difference for anyone else.

I'm reminded of all the frenzy that exists/existed over pickup phase-switching, coil-tapping, series/parallel coils, yadda, yadda.  All of that CAN make an interesting tonal difference in a pristine clean context, but plug the instrument into distortion X, crank the amp gain until the speakers in your 4x12 cab break up, and all that subtlety simply doesn't exist anymore.  You can switch from neck with the tone off to bridge with the tone full up, you can push your wah forward OR pull your heel back, and you still can't hear anything different.

So, for my part, it's not that there IS no difference when people swap this for that, but rather it's whether a hypothetical difference makes a practical difference for me.  The tree fell in the forest, and 20 years later we can see the darn thing lying on the ground (and maybe even chop it up into some great slab bodies or simply necks), but if I wasn't there to hear it, it never made a sound.  Conversely, make yourself a big pot of chili, lace it with a fistful of scotch bonnets or habaneros, and an equal fistful of garlic, then ask yourself if it made a damn bit of difference whether you used sea salt or regular iodized salt from a box.  As I am so fond of saying: context is everything.

[Zen]

Am re-watching the videos after reading a lot of these comments.  The text notes that have been added on the videos help a lot!

If you have a problem with the fact that the person doing the test is the owner of VS, I understand.  Maybe they can get someone completely neutral like "gearmandude" to do it next time (i like his shootouts).   

I personally have some hearing loss in one ear, which makes midrange tones sound even honkier to me than usual--so I have never been a big TS guy.  My tastes are a little different than a lot of you.  I clearly am no golden ear, but I generally agreed with the decisions made in most of the shootouts.  But, I also know I would tweak the pedals differently, so I was really only being shown a jumping off point.

I think this experiment is fine for what it is -- a simple blind shootout.  It is not a scientific test to determine which pedal is the best.  "Best" doesn't really apply in situations where taste or lack thereof is involved.  You could treat it like wine tasting -- not comparing them head to head, but each one rated on its own, and then tallying the votes, but that wouldn't work either.

[DougH]

If Danelectro threw together a blind "which is better" shootout video comparing their cool cat pedals to their cloned boutique ones, would anybody object or be skeptical? Would that be appropriate? And what's the difference?

If RG worked for F-tone and they did a "blind" shootout against an Orman booster, would anyone question it? What's the difference here? Presentation? Why even make it a matter of who is "best" or "wins" unless you are trying to sell something???

Not really sure what your point is, but I'd like to see those two demonstrations myself. I think it would interesting. I really have no emotional/ethical/etc feelings about this whatsoever though, i.e. "I don't have a dog in this fight".

[Ripthorn]

I think I would rather hear all these pedals in these contexts than to never hear them at all.  Honestly, I dislike going to music stores to try out gear because I can't hear any subtleties when the dude three amps down in bringing down ceiling tiles with the dual rectifier and I don't build circuits that I don't already have some idea what they sound like.  Honestly, I have never played a RAT, TS, etc. and so I think that at least I get to hear some of what they can do as opposed to not hear anything.  There is always going to be bias, such is the nature of perception, but I like that these videos have been posted and think that, understood and used in the correct manner, they can provide at least some useful information.

[Auke Haarsma]

jumping in quite late... but I really like the vids and comparisons. Good stuff!