What brand of effects pedals has the best line of stomp boxes? Boss? Digitech?..others?
There are a lot of companies making them, you can even make them yourself. The sound will very often just be "different" instead of better or worse: you determine if that kind of different makes it good or bad. That being said, Boss and Digitech offer a rather budget line of pedals. The Digitech RP pedalboards get some good response (I have one myself), and the Digitech bad Monkey Overdrive pedal is also pretty well-liked. It seems nearly every guitarist has some pedal by Boss, and everyone seems to hate them, but they're cheap and get the job one. I wouldn't know enough about them myself.
I like the pedals that are made of more metal than plastic. Boss and Digitech are most common and fairly good. Zoom, when theyfirst came out were not very good. things have changed.
once a stomp box gets in the 200$ range expect more effect and reliability.
eventually, you may want to look into boutique pedals. I had Analogman modify my Tubescreamer. it is an awesome pedal now.
he has an informative web site. www.analogman.com
Cool! thanks for the info and the responses guys :)
I gotta disagree with dogbite on the reliabilty boost over the $200 mark. I have a chander OD that works half the time - My moog freq box is iffy and I have two emma ratzifratzer's that have flown back to denmark so many times they get miles. Yet, my PB and J, dod hyper phaser, TS8, Boss BF flanger, and everything EH... bullet proof.
Yeah i don't have a problem with boss pedals and i haven't tried digitech but i'd like to. The analogman bi-chorus pedal seems pretty awesome.
For quality, true bypass, tone and price / value I would go with fulltone generally. The more expensive boutique pedals don't seem to add much on top of that except the price.
for non-boutique, i like electro-harmonix just for the wide range of different pedals. but you can get some seriously souped up modded boss and other cheapie pedals for not too much. a used boss ds-1 or blues driver or whatever keeley modded, can sound like a monster pedal for under 100.
I use what gives me the sounds I want. Current utility lineup, input to output: Korg Pitchblack tuner -> Boss CS-3 compressor -> Digitech Bad Monkey OD -> (added for rock gigs only - 1981 MXR Distortion+) -> Marshall Regenerator -> Ibanez AD9 analog delay.
If we're in a really tight stage area, I substitute a Vox Tonelab SE modeler with the first bank of patches set to emulate my normal pedal setup, and run straight into the PA.
Playing guitar and never playing for others is like studying medicine and never working in a clinic.
Boss makes some great pedals but the best you can buy for the cheapest amount of money is either MXR or EHX pedals because they are true Bypass and are also great quality pedals. There are pedals that go up and beyond though.. I like Mjm pedals and Wampler pedals as well as Analogman. Those will run you a hefty sum however and if you are just starting off I would recomend EHX and MXR until you get a good feel for what effects you use the most. Then narrow it down to a few and get Boutique quality pedals if you feel the need to have them.
