NPD x4: The Eastern Haul!

[laxu]

Returned from Japan with a 4 pedal haul!

Guitar stores had some pretty fantastic selections for guitars, amps and even modelers, but pedals ranged from "some Boss" to "any brand you can name" depending on the store.

I bought all of these used and saved a great deal of money. There was otherwise just too many brands that I would have had to research to find if they are worth buying, while some I knew were no cheaper than in Europe.

From left to right:

Strymon Flint V2​

A Tokyo find in the last days I was there, from the Shinjuku Ishibashi Music. They had some absolutely insane stuff over there. For pedals the only place better was Get Stomp in Ikebukuro, which had basically any pedal you could think of but little to no used gear.

I've loved the Strymon Flint for years. I had a V1, which I sold when the rumors of a V2 started going around. I've missed it, so when I found a used V2 for a very good price, I had to buy it. It's just a "no bad sounds found" pedal. I will have to put it against the SA Collider reverbs and see how it fares.

Initially the tremolo was reducing volume but a factory reset solved that, the live edit function for tremolo boost/cut was probably just set wrong.

Source Audio Nemesis​

Got this from a Hard Off in Tokyo, which is a sub-branch of the Book Off chain. They sell used stuff, with the Hard Off branch focusing on anything from smartphones and cameras to musical instruments and more. But practically everything was in nearly brand new condition.

I've barely put it through its paces, I really need to read the manual and try out the editor more. Lots of sounds that I was familiar with from the SA Collider, but I think ultimately this might end up being more than I need.

It also doesn't seem to play nice with my BluGuitar Amp 1's fx loop for some reason, resulting in volume loss when turned on. Need to investigate if this is just a settings issue. I upgraded the pedal firmware but didn't do a factory reset on it.

Boss EQ-200​

I've wanted to give this a spin for a while but never saw one for a particularly great price until finding one in a guitar store in Osaka.

It has some cool features, like being able to run a pre and post EQ separately, or two EQs in series. I'd say some of the lowest/highest EQ bands on it aren't that useful for guitar though, and not having any indicator for the exact amount of output level boost/cut sucks. The little display is good enough to show an overview but IMO LEDs on the sliders themselves would have been more elegant.

My main issue with it right now is that it doesn't play ball with my BluGuitar Amp 1's fx loop. There's a clear change in tone when the EQ-200 is connected, it seems almost like turning off a bright switch even with the EQ set completely flat. I didn't figure out how to fix this as just adjusting output level doesn't fix it. When it's connected guitar -> EQ-200 -> Amp 1 input, then there is no tone change when toggled on/off with the EQ set flat. So I have no idea what the issue is here.

Updated it to the latest firmware too, that took ages compared to the SA Nemesis and Strymon Flint.

Boss FZ-1W Fuzz​

It's Boss Waza Craft, with 3 knobs and two different fuzz sounds. Just a simple, delightful little pedal. I found this in Osaka's Ishibashi Music store.

So far this is my favorite of the pedals. It's not super gainy on either mode, but cleans up nicely and just sounds nice. The only thing I would upgrade on it is adding a low cut knob, but I can use the ones on few of my guitars for that. Both the Vintage and Modern modes sound really nice, I think I prefer Modern a bit but need to try it with more guitars. Feels like a keeper right off the bat!

 

[la szum]

Oh man! Sounds like a fun trip, with goodies brought home to further nourish the fun!

 

[laxu]

Oh man! Sounds like a fun trip, with goodies brought home to further nourish the fun!

Was very nice! Tokyo -> Okinawa (basically Finnish summer temperatures at this time of year!) -> Osaka (visiting Kobe for a few days) -> Tokyo.

Got a bit sick at the last Tokyo leg but otherwise a great success. Would love to go to Okinawa again, but definitely need a car to get the most out of it as things can be quite spread apart.

 

[Orvillain]

How was Soapland?

 

[laxu]

The top causes for why your fx seem to suck tone:

1. Bad cables.
2. Incorrect volume levels.
3. Your fx loop was set to parallel instead of series.

Flicking the Amp 1 fx loop back to series and the Nemesis now works totally fine and sounds pretty great. I need to give the Boss EQ-200 a proper spin too as its issues should also be fixed by going serial loop.

I swear, parallel loops on any amp cause way more issues than they ever solve.

 

[laxu]

Putting the Flint vs the Collider, they are just quite different sounding. I find myself preferring the Flint because it seems to just blend in better with my base guitar sound - instead of becoming its own thing on top of the sound, it stays in the background supporting my sound. Finding that sweet spot seems harder with the Collider Reverbs.

I need to test Nemesis vs Volante soon.

 

[laxu]

Boss EQ-200 musings.

It's just a straight up good, no-nonsense EQ pedal. Doesn't change tone beyond what the sliders do, can do stereo I/O, or dual mono.

To pick some criticisms, as I tend to do, I don't necessarily love the slanted footswitches, 1/8" TRS MIDI jacks (even the SA Nemesis fits full size DIN) and feel that there should be more options for how the sliders work. The 3 different center frequencies are a bit limited and it would be nice if there were e.g more granular options for lows/mids/highs, I think that would make especially the series EQ option more useful.

But it's Boss, so you better like what you get because that's all it will ever be.

I'm not sure if I will end up keeping it or not, as I'm pretty happy with my tone without any tweaks.

 

[laxu]

Boss FZ-1W is definitely a keeper. Like the EQ-200, it's just no nonsense, but since it's Boss that comes as no surprise. With 3 knobs and a switch there's only so much you can do, it sounds good in both modes and has enough adjustment range to work easily.

Only drawback seems to be that it defaults to ON when powered so I have to remember to turn it off every time.

 

[Achilles]

I will have to put it against the SA Collider reverbs and see how it fares.

I found the Collider's spring just a hair better than the Flint. Looking forward to your thoughts.

 

[laxu]

I found the Collider's spring just a hair better than the Flint. Looking forward to your thoughts.

I'd say so too. The Collider spring reverb has more "boing" and "drip" to the sound and more adjustability as well.

I've found the Flint's spring reverb to be a pretty decent match for a real 3 spring Accutronics tank built into an amp but I've never tried a real outboard Fender tank.

So far comparing the SA Nemesis and Collider vs Volante and Flint, the Strymons just blend in much easier whereas I seem to be struggling to find the sweet spot on the SA where it's not taking over the sound too much. The Strymons seem inherently a lot darker.

But it's hard to argue about the sheer amount of sounds the Collider or Nemesis can do. The preset switching is just plain superior to Strymon too.

I need to try the Nemesis Binson Echorec models vs the Volante. I need to replace some of the less useful reverbs on the front panel with those.

 

[laxu]

I think SA Nemesis is out. It's very versatile, it's very good sounding, easy to adjust with the editor...but it's not a Strymon Volante.

I hoped that the Binson Echorec models hidden in the Nemesis would do the things the Volante does in a smaller package but they just don't quite get there. They sound good, but always more "effecty", like the tape modulation etc isn't quite part of the tape sim but overlaid on top. Some of the features found on the Volante front panel are also buried in the SA Neuro editor, and the Binson Multihead doesn't seem to do more than two taps either.

The Volante is also so easy to just press a few buttons and adjust a few knobs whose purpose you don't need to remember. It's probably the best way to handle multi-head tape delay on the market.

In other news, the Volante and Flint V2 spring reverbs sound nearly identical. The Flint just has more adjustment range over its tone whereas Volante just has mix and decay. The Volante can be used as just a spring reverb by simply turning all the delay buttons off. Otherwise the spring can add a bit of sweetness to its delay sounds, turning the reverb mix up to 1/4 usually sounds pretty nice.

Comparing the Flint V2 spring to the True Spring on the Collider, they are surprisingly not that far apart so I don't really understand people complaining about the Strymon spring reverbs. Same deal for the Flint V2 plate and Collider plate. But I think the Hall reverb is better on the Collider and both plate and hall are much more adjustable on it. But even the Flint hall sounds really nice.

Overall the Flint just sounds right to me with minimal work, so I'll probably keep both the Collider and Flint and just put them into different boards.

As for the Collider, I think SA did pick most of the best delay sounds from the Nemesis. Personally I'd ditch the reverse delay for something else but I know some love it. I'd also swap the Tape echo for either the Noise Tape or Binson Multi-Head.

 

[la szum]

I love having multiple pedals of the same type to compare to side-by-side. I don't trust
my memory well enough to maker a sound determination otherwise.

Side-by-side tells no lies.

 

[Whizzinby]

Are you a big Trem guy? I’ve thought about buying the Flint before primarily for the simple verbs, but I always hesitate since it feels weird to buy a Trem pedal for verbs. lol

 

[laxu]

Are you a big Trem guy? I’ve thought about buying the Flint before primarily for the simple verbs, but I always hesitate since it feels weird to buy a Trem pedal for verbs. lol

Absolutely not. It's more of a nice extra. When I use it I mostly stick to the bias trem set to fairly low intensity so it adds a bit of movement to the sound. I'd love the Flint reverbs in the Cloudburst form factor.

To me the Flint's greatness is its combination of simplicity and it's really hard to get a bad sound out of it. I've got a Nightsky and it's just generally too much, as great as it sounds. I expect a SA Ventris would be like that too, the Collider is IMO just about right for reverb complexity but falls a bit short on the delay side.

 

[laxu]

Flint V2 is definitely a keeper. The reverb is just right to my tastes. Out of Strymon's lineup, I feel like the Flint and Compadre are the kind of "set and forget" pedals that just do their thing without having to tweak them much.

Boss EQ-200 pairs well with the Boss FZ-1W and gives it a lot of tone shaping options. Bumping the mids for example really gives nice girth to the FZ-1W's VIntage mode.

I will probably end up selling the EQ-200 because it feels overkill for my needs where my normal sounds just don't need any additional EQ and I'm finding it hard to figure out good uses for the presets. It's a really good pedal, just not the right tool for me.