Re: distortion, overdrive,fuzz,crunch,special sauce, secret goo

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

So,   Miko B was a total mensch and dropped off his
Experience pedal (along with a ZVEZ FUZZ probe and a wah wah pedal, 
which I"ve never owned)
for me to try out with my newly acquired Zvex Fuzz Factory, pedal.

It's interesting:   what I noticed was that if I used extreme setting on 
one,  that I needed to
use more subtle ones on the other (and I hooked 'em up both ways in 
parallel)
in order to get any kind of sound that wasn't just howling 
uncontrollable feedback.

The Experience is probably less radical than the Fuzz Factory and I 
imagine more guitar
players would find more useable sounds in it,  but  I prefer that the 
Fuzz Factory has
more range of tone and also more chaos implicit in all of it's circuitry 
(after all, there is
an onboard compressor, noise gate and comb filter on the Fuzz Factory).

I think after demoing the two of them that I am going to stick with one 
of my two
distortion/fuzz modelling pedals (the excellent BOSS OD20 and the Digitech
DF-7 DISORTION FACTORY) with the Zvex after all of it.

Both the BOSS and the DIGITECH have digital modellings of the most famous
distortions and fuzzes of yesteryear (Ibanez Tube Screamer, all the BOSS 
pedals,
The ProCO Rat, the BIG MUFF, the DUNLOP FUZZ FACE).

I like the BOSS because it also has the best OCTAVE FUZZ I've ever heard.
The low E string on a Stratocaster sounds like god when you engage this 
effect
that can be added to any of the models.   Additionally,  you can set up
four presets on this baby that takes up two stomp box pedals worth or 
real estate.

The DIGITECH , though , only takes up one stomp box space (Boss sized)
and has one salient feature that I love:

It has put all it's models in sequence from lo midrange up to brittle 
treble, so
that when you sweep the Modelling settings you can get lo to hi effects
(fantastic to control this as you are looping this or putting it through
slicing effects, digital delays or square wave tremelos.
Additionally,  it cuts out completely just extremely briefly between 
each one
so you can play it like a customizeable square wave tremelo.
I love play this game with single chords to generate rhythmic loops.

I'm in Fuzz heaven and will try out the ZVEX FUZZ Probe (and the wah 
wah) tomorrow.

I"m also relieved that I don't need to shell out the $300 USD for the 
Experience.