worst commercial stompbox design

[humptydumpty]

The Danelectro FAB pedals, the pots are kinda confusing, I never know which way to turn em, plus, they're on the back.

Not too mention the enclosure is plastic and so is the switch, which isn't a big deal, but with the way the switch is setup, sometimes stomping on it isn't enough to turn it on.

They have two PCB's.

And they're cheap, I almost have the full line 

[jkokura]

All respect to RG, but I find the shape of the Visual Sound pedals to be stupid. I don't like their shape at all. They're individually creative, good pedal sounds and a great company, I just don't like the pointy bottoms and raised part at the end.

Another stupid idea was the 7 series from Ibanez that featured the push in knobs. I knew some guys who had them permanently stick in the down position.

Also, I like my jacks on the top of the box - I consider all pedals with side orientated jacks to be bad design. 

Jacob

[phector2004]

that cheap SPDT on my v847

don't mind the lack of an LED, cause you can easily tell if its on or not from the sound, but to get a better (IMO) sound, i have to unplug my patch cable from the previous pedal, and shift the guitar cable over every time i stop using wah

[knealebrown]

that cheap SPDT on my v847

don't mind the lack of an LED, cause you can easily tell if its on or not from the sound, but to get a better (IMO) sound, i have to unplug my patch cable from the previous pedal, and shift the guitar cable over every time i stop using wah

The V847, i have only come to realize, is a terrible design. (or should i say old). Problems? it has many.

-No DC jack, on mine anyway.
-The whole treble sucking non-true bypass thing
-no status LED

apart from that it does sound ok and has a spot on my board (until i can buy/build something better). Am i a hypocrite?


Im surprised nobody has said this yet but how about EVERY behringer pedal? they guy who okayed the production of those clearly wasnt a guitarist. Using plastic as a case is dubious but that plastic is from recycled yoghurt pots or something. Yeah they are cheap but you get what you pay for.....three months use and £20 down the drain. I wouldnt even buy the tuner.

[bluesdevil]

Probably those old Dan Armstrong boxes with the input plug connected directly to 'em.

[kupervaser]

The Behringer tuners are so bad. Totally worthless if you try to tune into B. It doesn't recognise that low B.

[Hides-His-Eyes]

Im surprised nobody has said this yet but how about EVERY behringer pedal? they guy who okayed the production of those clearly wasnt a guitarist. Using plastic as a case is dubious but that plastic is from recycled yoghurt pots or something. Yeah they are cheap but you get what you pay for.....three months use and £20 down the drain. I wouldnt even buy the tuner.

I know sticking up for behringer isn't the done thing, but tbh I think some people are ridiculously harsh.

-People complain about the plastic enclosures; there are plenty of good reasons to use metal enclosures and I do, but I have never seen a behringer pedal with a broken enclosure
-The quality control is very poor and lots of 'lemons' get shipped; you might have to send one back
-Some of them sound like shit; some of them (the boss-size analogue delay, the vibrato, the super fuzz) sound great
-with a rehouse to get the weak points out of the equation (the switch and jacks) you can get a few gems for very cheap

OFC I think everyone should follow Danelectro's example when it comes to cheap pedal design, but I don't think most behringer haters are prepared to accept that like most companies they have some crap and some alright stuff... Yes, I've had behringer pedals break, sadly not at a time when i was in any place to diagnose, but I've also owned plenty that didn't break.

[deadastronaut]

anything by slade..lol lol lol....


only joking!..........ha ha ha...

[Jarno]

The Behringer tuners are so bad. Totally worthless if you try to tune into B. It doesn't recognise that low B.

I always tune with the harmonic at the 12th fret, because tracking is so much quicker with both my Rocktron and TU-12. I have yet to come across a tuner which tracks low B and E lightning quick, I do remember (from a long long way back) that the tuner on the IPS33b harmonizer was pretty quick, even with those low notes.

[ghostsauce]

I've got a boss TU-2, which is chromatic (whatever that means) so it can go lower than you.  It's just as fast tuning my low B as any other string. (Which is to say lightning fast)

I had to laugh at the 535q dc jack gripe, because I've had the same trouble. I think the behringers are decent considering they are budget tone pedals...  I've seen a lot of people using them and enjoying them.  But yeah I don't think I'd trust a cheap tuner.

[Processaurus]

All respect to RG, but I find the shape of the Visual Sound pedals to be stupid. I don't like their shape at all. They're individually creative, good pedal sounds and a great company, I just don't like the pointy bottoms and raised part at the end.

I didn't like the pointy bottom when I first saw them, but I thinking more, the 45 degree angles may be to serve a mechanical purpose, to be able to more accurately switch one of the two footswitches off easier, by coming in at an angle, without hitting the other one.  The switches being so close together is for being able to get them both with one foot (on purpose).  I personally would have put a ridge between the footswitches and the knobs (so knob settings can't get messed up by stray feet), but any ridge is a pretty good design if it takes impact from being stomped or dropped away from the pots.

I thought it was interesting they made an indent for the jacks, that makes the mold more expensive, because it requires having a piece slide in from the side.  There's something going on there, maybe it makes the jacks less likely to come unscrewed?  I like the rocker switches rather than toggle switches, which are definitely the daintiest, worrisome part in my DIY pedals.

[Processaurus]

Electronically great, but mechanically challenged, because of having 6 jacks all scrunched together on the sides.  It's terrible trying to get it on a pedalboard, you can't use most right angle jacks patch cords for the middle jacks, unless they stick up weird, so you have this giant waste of space with straight plugs sticking out from both sides.

[Quackzed]

dod fx-53   classic  ...tube
funny, it's basically a hybrid tube screamer/ds-1. and actually sounds pretty good after either cutting the feedback diodes to remove the ts side clipping, or cutting the diodes to ground to remove the ds-1 side clipping.
with both left in the circuit it is both and neither and sounds muddy and dull or flabby and overblown
if they had turned right towards soft clipping, it would be fine
veered left towards hard clipping, good too...
but no.  this pedal rides the line straight into the n.j. barrier

[R.G.]

All respect to RG, but I find the shape of the Visual Sound pedals to be stupid. I don't like their shape at all. They're individually creative, good pedal sounds and a great company, I just don't like the pointy bottoms and raised part at the end.
...
Also, I like my jacks on the top of the box - I consider all pedals with side orientated jacks to be bad design. 

No offense taken. We do get some strong reactions to the "home plate" style design; we get both of them, some people love it for being unique and different, some people hate it.  

The raised part has provoked both reactions, too. When they first see it, some people are struck by how unutterably ugly it looks to them. A number of those people change their minds when they are shown that it makes breaking the knobs a lot harder to do. Some don't.

We also get a number of people who insist that the double pedals are "too big", something about not fitting on their pedalboard well. Sometimes it's that they only want one of the pedal functions and not both of them that are in the doubles. That's why we brought out the singles. But for others, it's that it's just too wide. They want, and will flatly say that they want the same functions in single pedals that they'll use the same way as the double. What's funny is the look on their faces when I get out a ruler and measure the doubles, which are measurably narrower than two more normal sized single pedals.   It always reminds me of Nigel saying "... but these go to eleven," as a reason for why the dials are numbered from 0 to 11.

As a personal matter, I make a strong distinction between "works" and "looks good". To me, for my electronics, I've worked with too many lab-made boxes over the years to demand that every box have a slick appearance. For me, "works" vastly overwhelms "looks good". Not that looking good is not part of the equation, it's CRITICAL to getting people to actually pay money for the stuff that they need to do the work. Customers need the "works" part, but they will every time buy the unit that looks good and has better intangibles than the competitors. I make a very odd customer, and confuse sales people a lot.  

Then too, I'm all too aware that the placement of jacks, switches and buttons is primarily advertising and "trade dress". The jacks work the same no matter where you put them, as long as you can get cables to them.

F'rinstance: jacks on the bottom of the box. Good idea, or downright dumb? It might start seeming clever if you are putting the pedals on something like a Pedaltrain pedalboard where the bottom is accessible. In that case, the jacks and plugs simply vanish, as does the rest of the cable mess.

Is jacks on the bottom of a box bad or good? How it works always depends on the context. How it looks always depends on what's inside the head of the person looking at it.

I sometimes frustrate the other guys at the office when I say "OK, where do you want the controls placed with that?" To me, it's almost completely neutral where things go as long as you can get at them to work with them. Yeah, there's human-factors considerations, in that knobs have to be a certain distance apart so you can get at them with fingers to adjust them; switches and knobs have to be where they don't interfere or make usage clumsy. But with those limitations, it's all relatively arbitrary. I once proposed a system where the user could put knobs in whatever order they wanted. Can you imagine how hard that got shot down?  

This is one of the reasons my stock answer to "What's the best|worst|most|least|yada|yada...?" posts is "how do you define best/worst..?" There's no point to the question unless it's further defined with something other than personal preference. Do you like broccoli better than you like lawn mowers? It depends on what you're defining as "better", and has no meaning otherwise. If you can't define "better", it's like asking "what's the best color?" or "what musical note is the saddest note?"

[philbinator1]

All respect to RG, but I find the shape of the Visual Sound pedals to be stupid. I don't like their shape at all. They're individually creative, good pedal sounds and a great company, I just don't like the pointy bottoms and raised part at the end.

I didn't like the pointy bottom when I first saw them, but I thinking more, the 45 degree angles may be to serve a mechanical purpose, to be able to more accurately switch one of the two footswitches off easier, by coming in at an angle, without hitting the other one.  The switches being so close together is for being able to get them both with one foot (on purpose).  I personally would have put a ridge between the footswitches and the knobs (so knob settings can't get messed up by stray feet), but any ridge is a pretty good design if it takes impact from being stomped or dropped away from the pots.

I thought it was interesting they made an indent for the jacks, that makes the mold more expensive, because it requires having a piece slide in from the side.  There's something going on there, maybe it makes the jacks less likely to come unscrewed?  I like the rocker switches rather than toggle switches, which are definitely the daintiest, worrisome part in my DIY pedals.

what a beautiful stompbox!  love every bit of it, the shape, finish, rockers, and esp. the footswitches and colour.  makes a nice change from the same old rectangle    

[philbinator1]

RG, when you say 'we', are you a worker for Visual Sound pedals, or do you own it or something?

I never thought of jacks on the bottom!  it would be awesome if you're as pedantic about neatness as me.  I can't wait to get a pedaltrain, or make one based on their design, and when i do i'll consider putting the jacks on the bottom, imagine that - no cables!  just pedal after pedal     thanks for the idea.

re: your last paragraph, there are some really good valid points there.  I'm not saying that to 'get on your side' or something, i just think it's sensible.  I actually read through the whole post twice, just to retain it (esp the last paragraph, i think that it applies to much more than just stompboxes)!  food for thought.

[R.G.]

what a beautiful stompbox!  love every bit of it, the shape, finish, rockers, and esp. the footswitches and colour.  makes a nice change from the same old rectangle    

Thank you - it's always nice when someone says your baby is pretty. 

But really, Jacob's comment is just as valid - some people like the way they look, some people hate them. Both are valid viewpoints about the same thing. Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder.

RG, when you say 'we', are you a worker for Visual Sound pedals, or do you own it or something?

No, I don't own it. I'm just the hired help. I'm the "Chief Engineer", so I direct all engineering. Which means I get to tell myself what to do - I'm the only engineer. 

I never thought of jacks on the bottom!  it would be awesome if you're as pedantic about neatness as me.  I can't wait to get a pedaltrain, or make one based on their design, and when i do i'll consider putting the jacks on the bottom, imagine that - no cables!  just pedal after pedal     thanks for the idea.

You're welcome. That one just struck me while I was typing.

[Paul Marossy]

I don't own one, but Morley wah pedals. They are GIGANTIC!

[jacobyjd]

I don't own one, but Morley wah pedals. They are GIGANTIC!

Add most of the older EHX line to that pile. Wasted enclosure space means wasted board space to me. They did it with gusto.

[ibodog]

Also, I like my jacks on the top of the box - I consider all pedals with side orientated jacks to be bad design. 

This was one of the main driving factors for me getting into DIY'ing stompboxes in the first place.