worst commercial stompbox design

[knealebrown]

heres a chance to vent

do any of you have any particular gripes with a specific stompbox design?
you know, the little things that company/designer could have added to a box to make it exponentially better for a few cents/pence more.

for example, i love my digitech whammy however my main gripe with it is that it doesn't have a wet/dry mix pot so i can decide how much effect i want in my signal. For me, even though its a classic pedal i cant take off my board, the designer really missed a very important parameter out. Maybe some of you guys have the same issue?

Go vent! 

Kneale

[philbinator1]

My chrome dunlop crybaby 535 (not 535Q) has an annoying dc jack location, positioned below the 'instrument' jack (i like the dc jack at the top of the pedal, less length needed for dc cable and neater), and also as we know the crybaby has a sloping side, so straight dc plugs fit ok (most times) but right-angle ones don't.  well they go in ok, but get worked free by the sloping side.   

waaa waaa waaa [<--geddit]   

[teemuk]

There was this one design that was overly sensitive for the transistors it used, every unit was widely inconsistent due to that. The transistors kept failing and if the thing was even heated moderately it seized to work.

I think it was called the Fuzz Face. 

[philbinator1]

There was this one design that was overly sensitive for the transistors it used, every unit was widely inconsistent due to that. The transistors kept failing and if the thing was even heated moderately it seized to work.

I think it was called the Fuzz Face. 

that would be the ger version right?  my silicon is fine..so far 

[petemoore]

  Trusty AC adapter with DC type plug, the destroyer of DC circuits .
 I haven't actually noticed a problem other than having to check every time], I just like to vent vicariously, this one's my favorite.
 SMT schtuff, especially the kind with the cheep, failing, embedded bypass switch..wha-d-ya gonna do with this now...cand get it to workin' again very easy, cand find many parts that'll come out easy or be worth saving...toss...looked all solid in the old style metal case and etc. too !
 

[Ronsonic]

There was this one design that was overly sensitive for the transistors it used, every unit was widely inconsistent due to that. The transistors kept failing and if the thing was even heated moderately it seized to work.

I think it was called the Fuzz Face. 

that would be the ger version right?  my silicon is fine..so far 

Yeah, that's the germy version.

My nominee is the Roktek Distortion pedal. It used just as many parts as a pedal that didn't suck the moose would have, but managed to sound indescribably hideous.

[jkokura]

for example, i love my digitech whammy however my main gripe with it is that it doesn't have a wet/dry mix pot so i can decide how much effect i want in my signal. For me, even though its a classic pedal i cant take off my board, the designer really missed a very important parameter out. Maybe some of you guys have the same issue?

You know, you can do that yourself by using a miniblender - it's basically a true Bypass looper that allows you to blend in the original dry signal with the wet signal from the loop. I think as the pot turns you go from completely dry signal to completely wet, and anywhere inbetween is a blend between the two.

I've found that with most frustrating pedals, I can find something out there that either fixes the problem, or else I can find a product (or build one) that does the same thing without giving me the frustration.

However, sourcing some parts can be a stupid problem. Like, why is there no cheap, easy to use, volume/expression pedal enclosures out there for sale!?!??!?

Jacob

[kungpow79]

uh, the Danelectro Cool cat Pedals with the knobs on the top/back of the pedal.  The Trans OD even has a stacked toned knob.  Horrible unless you have dainty lady fingers 

[TimWaldvogel]

Seriously every damn tremolo pedal that does not have a tap tempo (nearly all of them) and every treolo without a wave shape knob. They really missed the while versitility thing. Like bbe came out with the tremor pedal which has two trems in one pedal, yet still not wave shape

[d95err]

Every pedal with more than three knobs... 

[jacobyjd]

One gripe with the Whammy: the bypass is terrible.

Seriously every damn tremolo pedal that does not have a tap tempo (nearly all of them) and every treolo without a wave shape knob. They really missed the while versitility thing. Like bbe came out with the tremor pedal which has two trems in one pedal, yet still not wave shape

I think you'd be in the minority there. I can't stand tap tempo for LFO-based effects, since they go wrong exponentially over time, unless you're a perfect tapper AND have a perfect drummer.

Just a general gripe about the industry--with all the midi controllers out there, I still have yet to see a polyphonic midi interface for guitar that doesn't involve a hexaphonic pickup. Someone please make it happen.

[Hides-His-Eyes]

How come the tracking technology from the HOG has never been used for guitar-> midi?

The polytune and melodyne were a step in this direction i guess.

[Br4d13y]

well, i have seen a few steps forward in non-hex pickup polyphonics. the pog/hog of course, but also the new poly-phonic six string tuner, and i have also seen a few pedals on musicians friend lately where one gives the effect of a capo on the guitar, and the other can do alternate/drop tunings, with just a stompbox.   its out there....

i still get annoyed everytime i look for hours at my board looking for the source of a silent setup. only to find that my russian big muff has the jacks plugged in the opposite way. i mean really come on, just make it a normal jack layout!

[Taylor]

As I've posted before, I'm fairly certain that there is no pitch detection going on in the POG or HOG (except for the glissando function, which isn't really tracking in the usual sense) I can elaborate further but check out my posts in this thread:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=81999.0

Polyphonic pitch tracking without a hex pickup is insanely complex. This means that it can't be done in real time. It works for a tuner, because you don't care much about latency with a tuner. It also works for Melodyne, because it's not a real-time process. With the tech currently available, it would be possible to do a pedal that you play into, and then 30 seconds later it spits out the stream of MIDI notes, but I don't see many people being satisfied with that.

That said, this is kind of the holy grail of audio processing, which means there's huge incentive to make it happen. It'll happen within our lifetimes. Maybe within this decade.

[Renegadrian]

Every pedal with more than three knobs... 

[Hides-His-Eyes]

As I've posted before, I'm fairly certain that there is no pitch detection going on in the POG or HOG (except for the glissando function, which isn't really tracking in the usual sense) I can elaborate further but check out my posts in this thread:

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=81999.0

Polyphonic pitch tracking without a hex pickup is insanely complex. This means that it can't be done in real time. It works for a tuner, because you don't care much about latency with a tuner. It also works for Melodyne, because it's not a real-time process. With the tech currently available, it would be possible to do a pedal that you play into, and then 30 seconds later it spits out the stream of MIDI notes, but I don't see many people being satisfied with that.

That said, this is kind of the holy grail of audio processing, which means there's huge incentive to make it happen. It'll happen within our lifetimes. Maybe within this decade.

Pretty interesting, thanks.

I never thought of the BBD style pitch shift idea going on in two chips at once and alternating between then. Whoever came up with that and got it working must have ended up pretty smug.

How does the freeze gliss work then?

[Taylor]

Well, keep in mind that all this is just my best guess, so I can't say definitively that this is how it works. But I had a HOG for a while, and the gliss function kind of fell apart when you did a very slow glide. Based on my experience with it and some of my own experiments with this kind of DSP, I think it works by doing a very vague pitch-detect, basically just figuring out "is this new note higher or lower than the last one?". If it's lower, it creates a downward pitch shift combined with a pan from the currently sustaining note to the new one. If it's higher, it does the same but with an upward pitch shift. But it's not that smart. When you set it to go very slow you can hear that it's basically just shifting down and fading out the old note, like a whammy+volume pedal, rather than truly bending from the specific old note to the specific new one. It's very convincing with fast glides, though.

Since it only needs to figure out "higher or lower" and not an actual pitch, it's not as computation-intensive. Also, it gets wrong a lot.   I would try to do a slow glissando downward, and the pitch would kind of wander up for a while, then realize it got it wrong and plummet downward quickly. So that's not the kind of tracking you guys are looking for.

[Processaurus]

The Tech 21 Tri-OD sounds good on any one setting, but is unusable live because it has a single footswitch that sequentially switches through three channels or two channels and bypass, and even if you're using just one channel the electronic switching mutes things for a noticeable gap while it is switching.  There's one global EQ but you probably want to change it channel to channel, as the tweed is super bassy, and the others need bass.  Also the marshall setting (my favorite) adds some kind of sub transient to high notes that just make the speakers visually flop around.  Also it has an 1/8 inch power plug right next to the output jack.  And you can't take it apart to service it without desoldering the jacks.

That thing is a nightmare.  But it's the best sounding distortion pedal I've played through my JC-120...

[R.G.]

Re: worst commercial stompbox design

Worst?

Just like "best" - define "worst" and we can tell you. 

[superferrite]

I had a fabulous sounding "civil war" Sovtek Big Muff that had the jacks solely supported by solder and the circuit board.   I replaced them twice, and sold it last year for five times what I paid for it in '93!