Pedal for weird sounds

[Doug Michaels]

I play out a lot and am one of those guys who likes effects on his acoustic guitars. Sorry if that offends anyone. I need some ideas for a pedal that will provide me in a live setting some sounds that are simply a bit more than chorus, vibe, delay or reverb or a pedal that takes these to new levels of creativity. I won't be using this pedal during songs, but rather during the space between songs that I like to fill with ambient sound from my guitar, not a keyboard. I like the Strymon Big Sky but the money is not quite there for that and I think its overkill for what I want. Maybe a simpler decent delay would do it, but I am wondering if anyone has used a pedal that most likely would not be used a lot during songs unless during an guitar solo break or refrain.
I play high end guitars with good equipment. I could just buy a Zoom multi effects pedal and tinker until I found good sounds. I like individual pedals though that focus on one thing with a lot of creativity and weirdness. The Blue Sky by Strymon is also a good pedal but costs the same as the Big Sky. The reverb by TC Electronics, Hall of Fame, is also a good choice but seems to focus on electric players needs for delays.
Thanks up front for any help on this. I am heading off to more gigs soon and would like to pick up a new pedal for those.

[bbrunskill]

check out the Line6 M5. It’s got lots and lots of great sounds in a small box. I reckon Line6 do a great job with ‘out there’ sounds.

[nrand]

Doctor: Oh, Mr. Holmes, I would love to tell you, but then, of course, I'd have to kill you.
Sherlock: That would be tremendously ambitious of you.
— Sherlock, "The Hound of Baskervilles" 1901

Boss made a lot of cool pedals and they are cheap!

[emmsone]

If you want weirdness of sound, check out Moog Mini-foogers. for reference, here is a great video review of them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlfxk856fjs

[Bob Womack]

Try the Nuenaber Wet Reverb. It offers five different programs that can be loaded from a computer. One of them is the Infinity Hold. Watch this:



He's got an expression pedal hooked up to the Neunaber to allow you to trigger and fade in the freeze. There are two modes to the Infinity Hold program: freeze with dry "through" sound and freeze with reverb on the through sound. The guy doing the demo also adds delay, which is really cool.

Bob

[Laughingboy68]

EHX POG2

Mike

[cat_guitar]

What about a EHX Freeze pedal?

[RockerDuck]

Wah Wah pedal
Digitech whammy
Boss OC3 for the fuzz
EHX Pog or HOG
EHX Freeze
Earthquake Organizer
Roland GR55
Tremelo,,go for the slicer effect.

[Methos1979]

Originally Posted by cat_guitar

What about a EHX Freeze pedal?

I second this guy. I have one of these that I used to use quite a bit for just that purpose. It's way cool. I don't use it much any more but when I did it was a lot of fun to solo around.

[briggleman]

I have to say, you are getting a lot of great recommendations. I will second some and add a few.

A TC Ditto looper
EHX freeze
EHX Ring Thing
EHX POG II

Also, SD just released the Vapor Trail delay. You can insert an effect into the wet or delay side to make the delays very interesting.

Have fun with this!

Brad

[Tarekith]

I mostly make chill out electronic music, so weird pedals are ALL I want for my acoustic (814ce). Here's more detailed rundown on what I'm using now:

http://tarekith.com/pedal-power/

But briefly I use Ep booster, Boss Multiovertone, Boss Tera Echo, Tc Flashback x4, and Tc hall of fame. They all work great on acoustics, but the favorite is the Tera echo of x4.

[hyenik]

for inspiration http://www.ehx.com/effectology
when you don´t know, better way is try some cheaper multieffect imho.
It can show your way much more exactly than only samples or advice from somebody else.

[BLUtunes]

Originally Posted by Tarekith

But briefly I use Ep booster, Boss Multiovertone, Boss Tera Echo, Tc Flashback x4, and Tc hall of fame. They all work great on acoustics, but the favorite is the Tera echo of x4.

These are good suggestions. I have the Flashback x4 and the HoF, but I really think the Tera Echo is what you're looking for in this case.

[Carbonius]

POD HD500 (or the newer one). It takes a while to get your head around (did for me) but it is rewarding! It's not as hard to get your head around if you already understand effects individually.

Start with a Synth sound, add octave, add some harmony, flick to some crazy amp for a distortion part, it's got a built in 48 second looper so you can just add parts endlessly and move on. It also has undo, redo, reverse, and half speed on the looper.

It can split your signal into stereo and have COMPLETELY different sounds going L and R. You can assign a pan effect to pan back and forth and mix them however you want to.

I understand that you want an individual pedal, but this has MANY individual pedals emulated in one case. When you find a tone you like, save it and then go ahead and fiddle with the knobs to make another crazy tone. You aren't stuck with one tone per pedal!

A BIG plus with the 500HD is that you can assign the effects to be in what ever order YOU want them to be. As such, you can run multiple delays and what have you.

You can also assign the built in expression pedal to control and parameter of an effect so you can morph things in real time. You can also add a 2nd pedal so that you can morph to parameters. Change delay time or feedback amount, change chorus time or swell... the options are endless. Good thing there's 512 banks.

[Tarekith]

I had an HD500 (and the desktop Pod HD) as well, definitely a great sounding and powerful set up if you don't mind a bit of menu diving. One downside is that the available input gain was just short of usable for my 814ce, just couldn't boost the signal enough without a lot of weird noise.

That's what drove me to check out the EP booster, and ultimately sell the Pod HD to go with dedicated pedals. Nothing against the Pod at all, I've just been using them for the last 8-9 years and wanted to try dedicated pedals for a change