Reccomendations for a good effects board/pedals

[General Tell]

Hey, i'm looking to run my sp's and machinedrum through something to give it more of a warm sound. I was looking into moogerfoogers but they seem overpriced(anybody here use them?). any other suggestions?

[tape smoke]

the 2 best FX machines I know , are line 6 pod. very very decent FX unit.

and the tweakalizer, I havnt tryed it, and only recomend it because its price. so if it sounds like a tin can dont blame me. but its cool anyway .

welcome to the forums !

I'm master Lo , your junior cult leader. we are awaiting the sp forums messiah, thanks for joining us. cool aid at 7

[cartesia]

depends what kinda sound you're going for..

the moogerfooger stuff is expensive cos of the moog name.. of course, there is a reason the moog name is highly regarded.

are you after compression? distortion? filtering? amp modelling? nice EQ?

[ellaguru]

boss has a long and respected history for that, the prices are low for its stuff...but i didn't understand if you're looking for pedals for guitar fx-like or...

[hurlingdervish]

i have a morley pro wah that has a nice analog sound to it

[fauna]

if you are looking for multi-fx there are a lot of cheap options. for example Zoom make four or five different lo-end multi-fx. my advice is to avoid any fx pedals that involve buttons (rather than knobs) to change settings. this usually causes a nano-second of silence or a digital glitch.

multi-fx pedals w/ knobs for settings allow you to smoothly roll thru things, which allows for more interesting live play (even "live" during the recording process).

my recommendation, though, is to simply build your own fx board, by picking up pedals and chaining them together. that way you can swap distinct sounds in and out as you pick up new gear.

as far as 'warming' up your sound, yr best bet is just an EQ pedal and compression on the recording.

my two cents.

[Chuck]

my recommendation, though, is to simply build your own fx board, by picking up pedals and chaining them together. that way you can swap distinct sounds in and out as you pick up new gear.

This is great advice. Also, if you went this route you could sell off effects that you don't use instead of trying to sell a whole board.

[reignbear]

any guidelines on budget?

the only mooger fooger pedal that i would consider to warm up my sound would be the filter, but i believe all of them can have the input driven to add a little bit of analog saturation/overdrive (i have the ring mod, although i might have to sell it to pay for moving+school ) . also consider that they are all mono, if that's a deal breaker or not.

a good resource for this is the elektron-users.com forum, every month or so a thread gets started about warming up the machinedrum sound.

don't know if you are really going to find much hardware that will add analog warmth for less than the mooger fooger lowpass pedal @around $220 USD new and around $150-180 used if you shop around.

don't know if software is an option, but the PSP vintage warmer plug-in works really well.

a side note is that analog warmth just amount to lots of small distortions and imperfections caused by sound being generated by converting electricity to music.

there are also lots of tricks like the one that fauna mentioned that can bring out those things from digital signals.

also having said all that i think that you can use the tools at hand with the machinedrum and sp's to get you there better than any cheaper digital mfx unit (such a great combo, i have the MD UW mkII, sp-404 and sp-505).

sorry for rambling, bored out of my skull at work...wishing i was at the studio.

[General Tell]

thanks to all for all the replies. i'm going to look into some of the stuff mentioned here.

[fauna]

another great way to warm stuff up is to send it to tape. the harmonies added are generally below what humans can consciously recognize, but they are still heard and make for (what we generally regard as) a pleasing sound.

having said that, i still maintain eq to be the best route for warmth.

[crayon]

when you eq for warmth, what frequencies do you boost/cut?

[hurlingdervish]

when you eq for warmth, what frequencies do you boost/cut?

that could be from 250-500 hertz
could be a bit higher but i think that will do

[fauna]

when you eq for warmth, what frequencies do you boost/cut?

i just roll it off by ear, taking off the higher end and / or sometimes boosting the mids a bit.

[CULP]

tape
vhs
record to analog