The Watering Hole

Custom Shop
7 posts
http://astrondelta.com/charger/guitar/fx/

Here's a stack of my homebuilt pedal samples.  The advantage of these is that they are all through the same rig, guitar, and recording chain, on the same night, so I played similarly through all the pedals. The disadvantage is these are all old pedals, and mostly off-the-shelf kits (I also included my modded Marshall Guv'nor 2).  My new pedals are all built with parts I choose, I often lay them out on stripboard instead of on prebuilt PCBs, and I take more risks with them.  Also, the cost of a stripboard project with components I buy is less than a third of the cost of a BYOC project, for example.  I'll add newer gear samples as I get them recorded.

Nonetheless, I think these pedals sound excellent and give a good idea of what some of my early pedal builds sound like.

Guitar chain is homebuilt strat > pedal > HFS amp > 2x12 repurposed from a Peavey of some sort.
Recording chain is Heil PR40 + chinese ribbon about a foot away from the cab. I also mixed in some of our room mics for ambience (you can hear a little snare drum sizzle on the left), chinese large diaphragm condensers hung from the ceiling, approx 10 feet and 30 feet from the cab.  
all sound good.  For reference, any idea where the gain levels were at on the Gov and Shredder?  

Thanks for putting these up!
Shredder was pretty high, probably gain in the 3-4 o'clock range. It's not as high gain a pedal as the name would make it sound.  I think this is the all Germanium setting.  Guv'nor sounds like it was about halfway up, we usually have it set to half or a little past.
All sounds good, mostly owing to the recording technique.  Very good balance and blend with the room mics. That's how I like to hear a recorded guitar sound.  I don't like really close mic'd nasal/buzzing sounds.   Good job on this, nice big sound.
Yes. room sound is my favorite thing.  It gets pretty close to what the amp sounds like in the room to me, which is what I love when I'm playing.  It's interesting because I can hear all the components in this sample--the bright, direct dynamic mic, the soft, midrangey ribbon, and the room.  Turns out on checking the session it was really only one room mic I used, the one further from the amp.
I really liked that Vib pedal.  Thought it sounded pretty amazing.

But I tell ya the thing the really caught my ear more than anything was the answer to this question, "What would it sound like if Eric Johnson played with a country feel."  Answer....that stuff you were playing in the more noodley bits.  It was kinda like you were copping Cliffs of Dover, but yet making it your own thing, and at the same time sprinkling it with some country.  Which I thought was totally cool.
Really a good job !!

My favs are the 5 knobs comp and the FET...wow, what a sound!!