The Watering Hole

No clips, but I'm sure there will be some soon. This pedal is crazy...

outside... the LED is also pink, though a slightly redder pink than the top of the box.

badass!

Man those boxes are looking sweet!  :)

Not even sure what the Machine is... off to look it up.  

ok, I'm sure most will not like this sound... but this is what it sounds like through a '70 fuzz. gotta play quick to keep it "under control" before all the chaos floods in behind the pick attack - or just revel in the chaos. it sounds utterly awesome doing some other things (oscillation/noise/ring mod related)... I'll get clips of that stuff tomorrow probably... but I need to get more familiar with it first, the "In" knob is fussy! I'm having too much fun experimenting with this box of crazy - maybe I'll get it somewhat "controlled" (or at least more intentional) after I get a better feel for how it responds... good stuff, but probably not for everyone! (heh)

the box looks fantastic, works great and apart from it costing more to mail than expected (do I owe you a couple bucks?) arrived without a hitch. nice job charger!

holy wall of fuzz!  That was pretty cool!  

That's way better than anything I was able to do with it!  Is that fuzz > machine or machine > fuzz?  I know it does different things depending on the placement.  What I liked about it was that it could almost sound like it wasn't there for faster runs, but sustained notes just went wild.

I've spent most of the time with machine -> fuzz so far. mostly because it's flat out awesome at filling out a fuzz... with the In knob down a bit, it's a totally great pre-fuzz - almost like a treble booster. I'm kinda amazed at how much it improves a dark/muddy fuzz tone without it sounding weird. really cool! the freak out stuff (like this clip) is great too... but will be situational. I can't jam on a wall of 2.5k fuzz all the time... heh.

I've had a couple effects out in front of it (mojo vibe, wiggler, wah) but those don't seem to do much other than drive cool feedback sounds so far. haven't tried delays at all yet.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of "foundation"-type pedals: distortions, overdrives, boosts, compressors.  But I always have the most fun with pedals that are very situational... they do the coolest things.

the description of what this pedal does on Zvex's site is kind of baffling to me.  He says it doesn't distort the peaks of the wave, but it distorts the middle of the wave.  I'd have to get my head around how that would work, but it makes perfect sense given the remarks from you two.   Weird, but cool.  

Yep, it's using PNP/NPN pairs, with boosts in front, and the emitters biased with big resistors, way higher than typical and near their cutoff.  The result is crossover distortion like you get in an old tube amp, except this time you're emphasizing that distortion, where the old tube amp is really trying not to empahsize it. You can see it on a scope and hear it in clean samples... the peaks of a note come through almost clean, the distortion follows, kind of "blooms".  The front end of this pedal is an SHO, so it brightens things with that 10 Meg input impedance, and that's also why the IN knob crackles when you turn it with the effect on... just like the SHO it's got the bias voltage running across the pot.

ha, now it makes perfect sense.  I couldn't figure how the middle of the waves distorted but not the peaks.  Went back again 2 minutes ago and found the part about "crossover distortion."  This is pretty cool... and maybe even unique (maybe, don't know of any others designed like this) and the results are "out there cool!"  

The cool thing to me is what you are explaining.  Peaks come through THEN the crazy starts,  Lots of otherwise cool fuzz pedals mush the peak too much (which is why some say they are hard to make stand out in a mix or a band).  

This things makes me think Phrygian mode, snake charmer riffs from Yngvie or Blackmore!  

Since I keep hearing about this machine pedal working with fuzzes, should this circuitry be added to that "Super Fuzz" pedal we've talked about?  :D