Being a muso snob

RocknRollDave

Billy Duffy's not a great example of someone who plays with lots of imagination and invention, IMO...but point taken re reliability of Boss fx

richardhomer

You could say a board with say a Vox wah, a Fuzz Face and an octave divider was unimaginative in the 60s - as they were pretty widely available by the standards of the day.

If you were to add a Strat and a Marshall stack, the whole set-up would reek of cliché....

thisisguitar

With such a breadth of available pedals it suggests zero experimentation. Are MXR not as easily available, or TC Electronic, or EHX? When I buy a pedal I try as many varieties of the same type as possible so I can get the one I think sounds best. I never said they need to be boutique or expensive. Anyone who uses only one brand of pedals is showing they just haven't tried.

ICBM

thisisguitar said:

With such a breadth of available pedals it suggests zero experimentation. Are MXR not as easily available, or TC Electronic, or EHX?

All those break more than Boss.

thisisguitar

Fair play, but if that was the main criteria for buying pedals we'd all use them exclusively. Tone is the foremost consideration, although reliability is high on anyones list I imagine. Do any of the Fretboard's esteemed members use only Boss, or majority even? The fact is there is a vast choice of pedals, and almost nobody sticks with one brand. 

ICBM

I certainly don't stick to just one brand, but the majority of my pedals are Boss.

And if I was touring, reliability would be my number one requirement - ahead of tone... really. Something that sounds great is no good if it's broken - and with pedals, the problem with one bad switch killing your entire pedalboard is very real unless you have a full-on routing system. Something that sounds not quite as great but you can absolutely rely on is better.

All pedals with mechanical switches are inherently far less reliable than a Boss, and hence would be off the list immediately. OK, there are other brands that use reliable switching too. And you can get around the problem with a few LS-2s, I suppose!

Anyway, a lot of Boss pedals *do* sound great, it's not one or the other. I'll admit to my own bit of snobbery in that I generally prefer the older models, but not exclusively. They also have probably a wider range of effect types than any other maker, so it's not too difficult to find good ones. There's certainly no justification for expecting a player to sound bad just because they use only Boss.

imalone

I was slightly surprised recently to find that the Boss DS-1 is basically the same circuit as a Rat. Component differences do mean they sound quite different. Why bring it up then? Well, it means there is a Roland Rat.

ICBM

lol

Although not actually true . They're vaguely similar in that both use a single op-amp driving clipping diodes to ground, but no more than that.

Hootsmon

imalone said:

I was slightly surprised recently to find that the Boss DS-1 is basically the same circuit as a Rat. Component differences do mean they sound quite different. Why bring it up then? Well, it means there is a Roland Rat.

*irked*

it's not a rat...it's a HAMSTER

monquixote

Yeah the RAT and the DS1 sound completely different. 

The key thing with the RAT is the filter control. The tone on the DS1 doesn't work in the same way.

frictionfraction

thisisguitar said:

I went to see some bands on Saturday. There were three on the bill, the first was alright, second were good, but the headliners turned out to be pretty awful. 

I looked down at the guitarists pedalboard in the first song and saw a boss bcb, with 5 boss pedals and a boss wah, and straight away I looked down on him. Which I felt a little bad about. 

Anyone else find themselves making judgments based on gear?

Ahh. But we're they modded by keeley, monte allums, etc.? Simple .. If it sounds good it is good

ThePrettyDamned

Okay, I kinda see where you're coming from, but as @icbm said reliability is silly important to a touring musician surely?

I know I'd rather have boss and visual sound (newer ones) if gigging. I wouldn't use my route 66 being old and with mechanical switches. They're quality ones, but they will go and I've had my first issue with one already (after several years mind). I'd get a new one with the soft switching.

There would be issues though. Although so far it's flawless, my Nova Repeater has reliability reports online, and the ehx q tron sounds amazing, and I've not heard anything that does the same thing... But it's ehx, and it will fall apart. A cursory look inside, and I'm a bit concerned about the jack sockets, and I know the switches can be rubbish too.

So what would I replace the q tron with? The answer would either be a posh version of it (doesn't exist - not many boutique manufacturers stray into envelope filters), or a spare one. Which is a bloody hassle! So I'd get a Boss filter pedal instead. It'll sound close enough.