pedal advice - LFO

antichef

antichef

pornk rock
I picked up a "Moog MF-102 Moogerfooger Ring Modulator" on sale last year - significantly, it has a low frequency oscillator (LFO) function. I use it (briefly) on a couple of songs, and it's just the ticket. Trouble is, it takes up a third of my pedal board and it's not true bypass and it does impact tone when 'off' (and so I use a separate bypass pedal, taking up even more space). I think I want to move it to my mixing room where it can have a new life as an outboard effect.

But does anyone know of a reasonably sized true bypassable pedal that could do something similar?
 
When the ring modulator's carrier input is an LFO, it's pretty much just a tremolo. I was pretty happy with my Boss TR-2, but there are plenty options out there.
 
Thanks guys. Broken_H - I will look into those. Ashcat - you're right, and last night I scrambled to find a replacement and wound up using a tremolo (Black Cat Mini Trem), which was in the ballpark. I also have a Cusack Tap-a-whirl which comes closer but is not true bypass. Both of those are great. There's something about the moog that cuts through my band's racket that the other pedals don't do right, though
 
Also, if you want to keep the pedal, look into a White Loop or similar that gives you true bypass in an effects loop (you don't have to use both channels, just the on off) so you can keep the pedal outside the circuit when it's not being used, they're only like $45

Edit: sorry, I see you're already doing that. Never mind.
 
antichef said:
There's something about the moog that cuts through my band's racket that the other pedals don't do right, though
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Might just be that it's got some gain. It might not be too hard to hack in some gain on one of your other pedals. You could also add a booster after the trem, but then you'd need a third TB looper to turn both on and off at the same time. By that point, I don't think you've really saved any space on the old board!
 
I dont understand, but my knowledge is limited. True bypass and buffered pedals both can change your tone when the effect is turned off, its the the nature of the pedal and its components I thought.
 
You know, I think I was wrong above. I have one, but I don't actually use it very often, and never really used the LFO function. Turns out the LFO controls the Frequency of the internal Carrier wave. That is completely different from using the LFO itself as the carrier (which can be done, too, but you have to patch between those jacks). Sorry for any confusion. I don't know of any other pedal that will do this the way the MoogerFooger does.
 
The DOD Gonkulator was a ring modulator wasn't it? That might do part of what you're after. You'll have to check whether it's true bypass though
 
Wow - I've never heard of the Gonkulator. It doesn't look like it's true bypass, but at least it's a lot smaller than the fooger. Since I posted, I have moved the Mooger Fooger off my board, freeing up room for like 4 pedals, but I haven't used it all yet. I plugged the fooger through a converter loop in my DAW and hooked an expression pedal up to it -- really cool for sort of analog effects automation.

liv_rong said:
I dont understand, but my knowledge is limited. True bypass and buffered pedals both can change your tone when the effect is turned off, its the the nature of the pedal and its components I thought.
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When I've converted pedals to true bypass (which I won't do to the fooger), I can say that the signal gets shorted across a piece of wire that's less than a half inch long when the pedal is off -- that is to say, it would modify the sound about as much as adding a half inch to the cable, which should be way below noticeable -- at least that's how I understand it.
 
antichef said:
Wow - I've never heard of the Gonkulator. It doesn't look like it's true bypass, but at least it's a lot smaller than the fooger. Since I posted, I have moved the Mooger Fooger off my board, freeing up room for like 4 pedals, but I haven't used it all yet. I plugged the fooger through a converter loop in my DAW and hooked an expression pedal up to it -- really cool for sort of analog effects automation.

When I've converted pedals to true bypass (which I won't do to the fooger), I can say that the signal gets shorted across a piece of wire that's less than a half inch long when the pedal is off -- that is to say, it would modify the sound about as much as adding a half inch to the cable, which should be way below noticeable -- at least that's how I understand it.
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Just had a read about the Gonkulator - apparently its mainly a really heavy distortion pedal based on the DOD Grunge but with the Ring Mod as an extra, so if you had have the ring mod on 0 its basically just a heavy disortion pedal. Could be just what you need... + its called a Gonkulator; which is excellent!
 
antichef said:
When I've converted pedals to true bypass (which I won't do to the fooger), I can say that the signal gets shorted across a piece of wire that's less than a half inch long when the pedal is off -- that is to say, it would modify the sound about as much as adding a half inch to the cable, which should be way below noticeable -- at least that's how I understand it.
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I think you may be slightly mistaken or maybe I am in regards to what you are trying to accomplish. I used to think along the same lines then I watched this and everything made a lot more sense. If you have a bunch of true bypass pedals in line you may be hurting the original guitar signals frequencies. Like I said, this video opened my eyes.

 
Hope the OP doesn't mind a mild threadjack. I am happy with DS1 and Jackhammer but watch to switch out the HM-2 for more of a chilled drive pedal. I never use the HM-2. Want a pedal that can do a nice creamy crunch on its own but will also be a good boost going into my crunch channel.

I've seen very good reviews of the plimsoll and hottone blues. The hottone particularly seems to be a rip off of an old tube screamer.

Anyone got any experience of these or any more recommendations?
 
JDOD said:
Hope the OP doesn't mind a mild threadjack. I am happy with DS1 and Jackhammer but watch to switch out the HM-2 for more of a chilled drive pedal. I never use the HM-2. Want a pedal that can do a nice creamy crunch on its own but will also be a good boost going into my crunch channel.

I've seen very good reviews of the plimsoll and hottone blues. The hottone particularly seems to be a rip off of an old tube screamer.

Anyone got any experience of these or any more recommendations?
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I'd avoid the Hotone pedal... I have a few and sent back the blues pedal after trying to get it to sound better than mediocre. Played with it using an SG, Les Paul, Strat and a Jaguar through a few different amps (all tube) and it really didn't ever wow me. With that being said, Hotone has some decent drive pedals - I kept the Chunk (heavier AC/DC type sounds are easy to get with it) and the Grass (works good for a boost, really kind of lacks when it comes to good sounding OD on its own though) are the only drive pedals I kept out of that order - they sell for pretty cheap over here in the states and were a GAS-satisfying low cost purchase...:D (For what it's worth, their Verb and Eko pedals are cool, too - you can fit 5 or 6 of those little pedals in about a 5" x 5" space making for a small pedalboard.)

As far are the plim soul, you're talking about the Fulltone right? A quick google and that's all that came up... If you're considering a Fulltone OD, having never used the plim, I would say check out their OCD pedal - it's freakin' amazing.
 
Yeah. Fulltone Plimsoll. Heard great things about it and the guys from Andertons rave about it. They're always good for a gear review but they're going into serious quality amps and mics.
 
liv_rong said:
I think you may be slightly mistaken or maybe I am in regards to what you are trying to accomplish. I used to think along the same lines then I watched this and everything made a lot more sense. If you have a bunch of true bypass pedals in line you may be hurting the original guitar signals frequencies. Like I said, this video opened my eyes.
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OK - I confess, I didn't watch the whole thing, but I'm aware that if you're using a 10 foot cable straight in, you have a certain amount of capacitance (which tends to cut high frequency) and if you go to a 20 foot cable, you have more capacitance, and so you loose some high frequency. Because when you use *any* pedals, you're very likely to use two long cables (one from your guitar to the pedals, and one from the pedals to your amp), you're probably dealing with more capacitance than you would going straight in, unless you happen to be using a cable going straight in that's as long as the two you were using before put together. A buffer can definitely help with that - but it's not that the true bypass pedals are changing the sound. I guess I'll watch the rest of the video before I say more, but at the very least I'm comfortable in my ignorance at the time being :) -- I stopped listening at the point where he said to stop listening if you're happy with your sound because I am -- I get less happy when I put a buffer in the line.

JDOD said:
Yeah. Fulltone Plimsoll. Heard great things about it and the guys from Andertons rave about it. They're always good for a gear review but they're going into serious quality amps and mics.
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I use a Fulltone Fulldrive 2 sometimes - love it. Also a Timmy - from what you described you're looking for, I would recommend you look into the Timmy.


Oh yeah - and I should say I switched over to a Black Cat Tremolo that I had -- it's a fine tremolo, imo. It really doesn't have the same 'wtf is that sound?' impact that the mooger fooger has, but it's filling the bill
 
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