review the most recent cheap guitar pedal you bought

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bobbydj

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To help quell gear lust and general avarice I buy affordable pedals. Cheap ones, even. Some are good, some aren't.

The best one I ever bought, and the one I use most (overuse, in fact), was a phaser, badged as Daphon (also seen it as "Chord"). It's a standard pedal size, but very heavy. Three knobs - rate, depth and mix (irrc). I've since tried in the region of ten other phasers and disliked them. But this was all a long time ago (best part of fifteen years). Since then, what with AliExpress and Chinese clones, etc. there's now a massive range of dirt cheap pedals. Which are hard to resist.

So, more recently, I think the best pedal I bought was maybe the M-Vave Elemental (digital) delay. It's good because it has a tap tempo, and at circa $35 (£30-ish) is one of the cheapest with that function. I also rate the Movall Falling Star delay, which is good for its modulated repeats. "They" say the Movall is analogue - but I highly doubt that.

Over to your good selves.
 
Earlier this year I picked up a new Ibanez Mini Chorus. I'm not really a chorus guy - but I was trying out for a band and at least one song called for that sound - I've been pleasantly surprised how good sounding and useful this little pedal has been. Nice, lush, thick.... or just subtle. And inexpensive at $119. And, of course, these mini pedals are great for saving real estate on a pedal board. I've found it to be a great bang for the buck.

Ibanez Mini Chorus
 
Old Music Guy said:
I picked up a Behringer Centaur clone (2 in fact) for $80 each. Really nice pedal for sure.
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Speaking of Behringer - your post reminded me of this hot tip. Which I've shared before. These things are GREAT - new for only **$29.00**. If you need a quick, cheap direct refined electric bass guitar tone DI/driver - you cannot beat this guy right here:

Behringer BDI21
 
I bought an SP compressor pedal used, then lent it to a friend and really missed it. I basically use it as a break-up button for my amp, and it works great for that. It also lets more of the transient through than other compressor pedals I've used, which can leave the attack feeling very flat.
 
Last pedal I bought was a JHS NotAKlon and a Series 3 compressor. The compressor was on sale, I think it was under $80. The NotAKlon it better than my Soul Food. Sound is good and noise level is lower than the Soul Food. I don't know if it sounds like a Klon, I've never had a Klon. It's close enough for me. The compressor does some nice stuff, I just haven't exactly nailed my settings yet. I've never really used compressors in the past.

The other thing that I grabbed was a JOYO power supply. Runs off Li batteries, and after a 3 hour jam, it still had about 50% and that was running my Strymon Iridium, which uses the 500mA output. No more extension cord for my old OneSpot. That's a plus.

Joyo.webp
 
I haven’t bought one, but a buddy of mine got one and I tried it.

Glary noise gate. One knob and a switch.

25 bucks via Amazon.
Best noisegate I’ve ever used at any price.
 
TalismanRich said:
An oldie but goody from Josh.

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When he was first playing the two Klons I could clearly hear the differences - the Moskey was Brighter and slightly Thiner - when he upped the gain they were simlilar although the Moskey was still brighter (not in a good way) - a $6970 difference though? Not on your life,
 
One fallacy in some of these comparisons is "set all the knobs to 12:00". That assumes that the various pots are using the same taper. It might be a 100K audio taper, but is it a 15, 25 or 30% taper? That's going to make a big difference. You would need to measure the pots, then mark those points as starting points. At least Josh did blind tests. If you set the high dollar as the target and see if the cheapo is the same, you've instantly biased the entire test.

I said a similar thing in a microphone comparison. It wasn't "is A good as B". It was "is A or B better". It was very surprising how the opinions changed. A few people actually started to backtrack after they picked the "wrong" choice.... well, it might not really do this or that as well. It was comical!

Someone posted comparison of a $20,000 Strat vs a $2000 Strat and a $200 Strat. My immediate thought was there are no $20,000 Strats. That 1957 Strat cost was $275 in '57. If you put that in one of the inflation calculators, that translates to $3150, which is about what their Artist series runs today, but less than the Custom Shop guitars.

I saw someone trying to sell 2 rolls of wheat pennies on Ebay for $25. If I have 2 rolls of Lincoln wheat pennies (100) will that get me a steak dinner at Texas Roadhouse? I bet it won't.
 
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