Stupidest effect

The auto-wah, when used well, is a hell of a lot of fun and can sound pretty damned cool.

The talk box, though pretty limited, may be the silliest effect, but boy can it be fun to mess around with. "Fun to mess around with" often means "stimulating creativity," and in that sense I very much like the talk box.

There's quite a bit of chorus that screams "1992!!!" isn't there? I seem to recall the popularity of one Small Clone just exploding after some fellow from Seattle was discovered to use one.

It's been done people!

but look at lightning bolt... attach a gajillion pedals to the biggest bass amp possible and he gets a really wacky sound that works alongside some catchy riffs. the riffs being crucial too. i think we can all agree that if the good part about the song is JUST the pedal, it's probably a pretty weak tune.

m.

Like, dude. Get one overdrive.

Stupidest effect = selected items from that year in the late '90's/early '00's when Dod went fucking insane, and released a bunch of effects in novelty packaging, w/wacky, "humorous" parameter names on the front panel. The "Grunge" pedal was the best known, I forget what the knobs were called on that one, but there was the related "death metal" pedal, where the knobs were labeled "R.I.P." "Scream", "Guts" and "pain", the "punkifier" which just sounded shit, the "buzz box", which was an octaver and a grunge built into one box - a novelty effect that you'd probably only use on one solo, the "gonkulator modulator", a grunge distortion, and a really sick fixed-frequency ring modulator, which was the same, but moreso, and others. I have the "vibro-thang" tremelo/phaser, which is actually really good, the controls are labeled "rpm", "drop", "intensity" and "image", which isn't too bad, in that the names bear some relationship to what the knobs actually do, but I also have the "Milk Box" (!) which in some respects is a pretty good guitar compressor pedal. The controls are labeled "quarts", "cream" (which goes from "skim" up to "whole"), "pasteurisation" and "spill". Which is worse than useless. You have to look at the manual if you want to use it. And if it isn't broken, like it is at the moment. OTOH, the pedal is painted white, with black patches like a cow, and the manual has pictures of people wearing cow masks on the front, which is awesome, obviously.

The Buzz Box fetches crazy dollars on ebay cause everyone thinks it was endorsed by Buzz from the Melvins. That's only sort of true though, since Buzz had nothing to do with it. Apparently the story goes that some guy at DOD wanted to make a pedal that sounded like Buzz's guitar on some of the songs on the Eggnog record. It so happens that Buzz used an MXR Blue Box (really unstable sounding distortion with two octaves down) on that record, which is I guess what the Buzz Box is inspired by. I just think it sounds like a chainsaw cutting the legs off of a pissed off bear, and that's really hard to work with if you ask me. (And I like over the top distortion.)

What's with all the hating on flangers, man? Get one Cure record.

I was kind of hoping they would make a phaser as part of the range, because I like phasers, but inexplicably, they didn't.

I can remember some others:
"Juice Box" (iirc a sub "tube screamer" type effect
"Supersonic Stereo Flanger"
"Deep Freeze" (bass chorus)

There was a regular chorus pedal called the "ice box" as well?

I remember seeing the Dod catalog for the next year, and they'd simplified the paint jobs on the pedals, and ditched the daft parameter names. Kind of dissapointing, but understandable.

I should really get my "milk box" fixed, but it'll probably cost more than the pedal is worth.

HEY GUYS obviously there's no such thing as a "stupid effect" because any effect is ok if you use it "creatively" but this is not a serious thread, so let's get back to voting on the STUPIDEST EFFECT PLEASE.

Too bad I don't actually have any effects pedals. :(

http://www.blacet.com/FD.html

It's fucking AWESOME. It has a mixer for squarewaves at 1/5 down, 1 oct down, and octave and a fifth down, and a rotary control that goes all the way to 12 octaves down. It does actually sound good on guitar as well! I played my guitar through it, and I was like, wow I'm the residents!

OK stupidest effect = talkbox. I like to keep my dental fillings intact!

I made a really lo-fi fuzz pedal that pretty much strips all the attack out of your playing. Makes everything you play through it sound like 8-bit videogame music. I never named it and only used it once, so I guess that was kind of stupid.

haha

ok, it's obviously Phase then.

Phasers are the best effects ever.

flangers are pretty stupid. especially w/ slow sweeps. swooooooooooosh swooooooooooosh!

I'm trying really hard not to launch into the physics lesson to which I'm making reference. ;)

and I think you may be right.

http://www.bonnersmusic.co.uk/acatalog/ac2.jpg

-- John Justen (johnjuste...), November 2nd, 2005.

if it's any consolation, i do own two flangers. and really, one of them is sort of not stupid. (digital ibanez flanger from early 80's)

I've never heard anyone get that thing to actually sound like a sitar though, so that's kinda stupid, yeah.

TL Drum Rehab provides engineers and mixers with precise enhancement of drum tracks in real-time, regardless of performance, equipment or recording limitations in the original track. The state of the art TL Drum Rehab interface offers a wide choice of processing, ranging from subtle enhancement of existing drums through to automatic replacement of entire drum tracks, creating a flawless masterpiece from a less than perfect percussion track.

The only problem with Drumagog is if you replace with samples across the board you obviously lose some nuance, especially if your drummer does a lot with ghost notes and stuff. (I guess you could replace very selectively with several different samples per drum to keep those inflections, but it'd obviously be more tedious.)

I've never used Drumagog because all the drums on my stuff are fake (done in Battery), but I know a lot of engineers who regularly use it in cases where the kit sound is less than stellar but the performance is good.

drumagog sounds interesting.

Bumping amazing thread that braeks my brain

I think drum rehab did end up coming out and got used by nobody

what would be the most inappropriate and fucked up thing to run a "sitar swami" through? (n.b. I do not own a sitar swami, but I like this idea)

the sitar simulator

this got made then?

https://www.avid.com/US/products/TL-Drum-Rehab

shit didn't see your post, es haha

I wish I still had the DOD Buzz Box.