For all you stompbox nerds like me :)

I just realized that I have done a ton of these demos, but they are all scattered around on my profile.  So I thought I would put them in a set for you guys.

Granted you must remember I record direct via USB into my PC, and my dry signal is not being fed through an amp.  Therefore it might not sound nearly as nice as it would were it to go through an amp, but nevertheless I made these to show off some neat stompboxes for you all to enjoy and perhaps even to aid you in your decisions to purchase them.  Be sure to read the descriptions for each one you listen to, as I made some notes on each one.

So as always, enjoy! :)

Pedal Demos (Description)

Testing out the Mooer Elec Lady Analog Flanger,  really neat and compact stompbox (which is really sort of Mooer's modus operandi).  With the Elec Lady, you have three simple knobs: Rate, Color, and Range.  You also get an added bonus toggle switch which toggles between the normal Flanger mode and Filter mode which gives you some really nice harmonic contrast, taking the flanger completely out of the picture and acting more like a Wah pedal that is stuck in the "Toe" position.  For this demo, I left the Elec Lady in the "Normal" mode and set all of the knobs close to high noon.  As you can hear, it is really dynamically responsive to the touch of your picking style.  For most of the recording I used my fingers to pick the strings, and then switched to a plectrum to show the responsiveness.

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Strat Session 11 - The Common Cure

It is FINALLY here! 

I have been wanting this pedal ever since Strymon unveiled it last year, and I can honestly say that it is without question a MUST HAVE for those of you who find that your pedalboard is rather naked without a decent reverb pedal.  Well let me tell you, this one puts them all to shame.  

Armed with one hell of a processor, 12 different reverb modes, and even a speaker cabinet emulator for those of you who (like me) record directly to their computers via USB instead of through a noisy amp and waking up your neighbors at 4am still trying to nail that solo :P

For this demo I focused on the "Bloom" setting, which makes a remarkable background underneath your guitar playing, padding your leads with incredible efficiency.

Enjoy! :)

Strat Session 13 - Eterna

Almost overlooked this fine little piece of gear I purchased the other day.  For a while now, my pedal rig has lacked one very important thing: a decent overdrive.  This pedal satisfied that need and then some.  It is modeled after the famed Marshall Stack amplifiers that have been gracing the tone of the major rock n' roll greats for decades and still continues to do so today.  I've had the pleasure of playing through a Marshall Stack owned by a buddy of mine in the past, and I remembered feeling overwhelmed by how unreal the tone was.  They have such a creamy, yet incredibly clean overdriven sound that can get mean and dirty at the turn of a knob.  I can honestly say that this pedal comes pretty close to that sound, though if anyone who reads this owns a Marshall Stack, let me know what you think.  After all, you are the only ones who would truly know. :)

Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret MKIII Overdrive demo (section from The Lotus Eater by Opeth)

There is a shimmer preset on the BigSky called "Weird Science"

Quite ethereal, gives off an almost synth-like padding underneath.  Very cool :)

Calm in Ecstasy

Oh man this thing is awesome! The folks at Catalinbread are very hard workers, as evidenced by their incredibly faithful stompbox recreations of classic amp tones, delay units, etc.  This falls into the delay units category: modeled after the Binson Echorec most notably used by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.  Knobs are as such: Mix, Swell (essentially the amount of repeats), Tone (goes from fully dark to fully bright), Delay Time, and finally what I have resigned myself to calling a "Head Selector" knob which has 12 presets that employ many different combinations of the four heads you would find on an actual Binson unit.  Internally, there are some more capabilities of the pedal you can tweak as well.  For instance, there is an internal switch to select between either True Bypass or Buffered Tails modes.  There is also an internal gain trimpot, as well as a trimpot to control the modulation for the repeats.   This pedal does not operate on battery power, however it can operate on either a 9v or even an 18v DC adapter for more headroom.  In this demo, you will hear all 12 presets demoed preceded by a single harmonic note to show you what each preset sounds like on its own before I play it in more detail.  Following the preset demos, I also did a volume swell test with my track "Asleep Through Infinity" as well as an oscillation test.  Enjoy! :)

Catalinbread Echorec Demo (Description)

The cool thing about this setting is that it provides your playing with an incredibly dynamic, vocal quality.  The harder you strum or pluck, the more prevalent the chorus becomes.  This setting has by far and away become my favorite from all of the available settings.  You'll hear the differences between the subtle picking and more aggressive plucks throughout this demo.  Hope you enjoy it! :)

Chorale Setting Demo (Pantera - This Love)

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Damned Fool

The Cloud mode of the Strymon BigSky sounds pretty much exactly like you think a reverb mode called "Cloud" would sound like.  Just plain heavenly.  It actually also happens to have the longest decay value of all the different modes on this thing (up to 50+ seconds of decay!  Great for swells/drones!)  For this one however I chose to go with a short-decaying factory preset called "Stratus", just to get a taste of those sweet reverb tails uninhibited by a lengthy non-decaying trail of reverberations and feedback with just a hint of modulation in the tails.  There is  another factory preset for this mode called "For Days..." which definitely abuses the 50+ second decay limit, I might demo that later for all you drone nerds ;)
Enjoy! :)

Bigsky - Cloud Mode Demo (Stratus Preset)

I had some Guitar Center bucks I had to use before the 23rd so I picked up a couple of micro pedals. This one was one of them.  Essentially what this pedal does is enhance the piezo microphone or external pickups for electric-acoustic guitars, however I'm sure it could also be used for a mic'd acoustic guitar as well. It has just a single knob designated as the "body" control, which appears to cause the tone of your acoustic guitars signal to fatten up quite substantially. I have found that I prefer it to be set at about 3/4 of the way up, as it gives my tone just enough thickness to get the lower notes in. In this demo, I have the BodyRez set at 3/4 for both samples and have not added any other effects or EQ/compression. Everything you are hearing is being recorded direct into my Behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD.

TC Electronic BodyRez Demo

just bought myself the Hardwire Supernatural Ambient Verb pedal last week, came in a few days ago.  Been in a bit of a creative rut lately, hence all the re-posting i've been doing, so i decided to wipe the dust off my old Galveston stratocaster and mess around with this thing.  this is the plate reverb effect.   i will also be posting a sample of the Shimmer reverb effect soon, which is pretty incredible as well.  all in all, if reverb is your thing, as it is mine, this is a damn good pedal for $179.

Strat Session 1,  Personae Con Stratae

This is the Shimmer effect on the Supernatural pedal, its essentially an octave-up effect that creates a wonderful sounding background for your track.  this was the effect that really sold me on this pedal, even though you can find it on other ones, though they were way more expensive. im thinking i may re-name this later and just keep it as an original track.

Strat Session 2, The Gathering of the Angels

This was an effort to showcase the Spring reverb setting on the Hardwire Supernatural reverb stompbox.  It was made to mimic the classic spring tank reverb you would get back in the surfer rock days when it was built into the amplifiers.  Enjoy :)

Strat Session 3, The Long Road Home

This was an effort for me to showcase the "Pherb" setting of the Hardwire Supernatural reverb stompbox.  It is essentially a hall reverb with a very subtle phaser running in the background to varying degrees depending on how you set the mix and liveliness knobs.  For this I didn't delve to hard into the phaser, but it is very distortion and overdrive friendly as far as I can tell.  Gives off sort of a David Gilmour vibe.  Enjoy :)

Strat Session 4, Reminisce

For this session, I emphasized the "Shine" setting of the Hardwire Supernatural.  It is a very gentle reverb that produces both a shimmering effect and a chorus effect simultaneously yet separately.  The chorus effect only affects the tone of the guitar notes, while the shimmer effect creates a beautiful background to accentuate whatever notes you are playing with an octave-up effect.  I must admit though on this one I cheated a bit and created a separate undertoned background as well using a 5th note octave-up effect and a deep spring tank reverb as well.  But I'm not exactly doing this for Hardwire, and I think when you guys hear the result you'll forgive me anyway :)  I have used this on other non-strat tracks as well, such as Sanguine Rose and Erased, so for more examples you can check those tracks out too. Enjoy!

Strat Session 5, Living Amongst the Shadows (Remastered)

For this session, I emphasized the "Plate Mod" preset of the Hardwire Supernatural.  This preset is a plate reverb that has a modulation you only hear in the tails of the reverb (again depending on how far you set the mix and liveliness knobs, otherwise it pretty much leaves the guitar signal alone for the most part). I decided not to mess too much with the background on this one like I did on SS5, so there was no cheating this time ;)

Strat Session 6, Nameless

This will be the final Strat Session for demonstrating the Hardwire Supernatural, as it is the final preset I had yet to demonstrate.   From now on I'll just be adding tracks that are all Strat-based regardless.  For this demo, I emphasized the "Supernova" preset (hence the title), which is a long decay reverb that employs a delightfully classic sounding flanger in the background as opposed to being in the guitar signal too much itself, also there does seem to be a hint of upper-octave in there as well.  To further emphasize the flanger, I have also used an analog delay that produces a very space-age sounding pitch-bend modulation when you kick the time knob back or forth (You may remember it from my track "Aliens") . You can really hear the flanger pretty well when I really get heavier into the modulation from the delay about half way through or so.  Enjoy! :)

Strat Session 7, Supernova (description)

Testing out the Malekko e616 LoFi analog delay pedal, this thing is really cool!  It is an analog delay with a built-in ring modulator, as well as a modulation toggle which adds the common vibrato modulation you'll find in analog delays.  In testing it out, I found that when I would pair it (with all knobs cranked, with/without vibrato turned on) with the Hardwire Supernatural's "Shine" preset with the mix knob set just about halfway up from fully dry, and the Liveliness/Decay set all the way up, it gives off a very eerie, atmospheric sound, especially when you leave plenty of space between notes.  Enjoy! :)

Pedal Demos (Description)

David Ackerman