[NB-SK]

I was fortunate enough to win Last Month's giveaway draw. One if the items was a Dot on Shaft pedal. I picked the flanger.


I tried it in the effects loop of my new tonelab LE at rehearsal and was so impressed with it that I decided to use it at a gig this past Saturday, even though the Tonelab has a nice flanger built in.


Well, in all honesty it's a VERY nice sounding flanger. I've had many of the well known makes and this is as good as any I can recall and in fact is much quieter than several I've had.

It reminds me a bit of the Electric Mistress or ADA, but is quieter than either.


I was expecting a piece of junk like the Behringer delay I bought on a whim.

I can't comment on any on the other Dos pedals, but this one rocks!

Hey, I know who makes that pedal. The design is unmistakable. 35$ or so for his pedals? Great price. That's about what these sell for here in Korea (prices from the largest Korean online music store: 32 for an overdrive, 39 for a flanger, 42 for a chorus, etc). Whoops...Maybe I shouldn't have said that. Sorry if his prices go up.

I love looking at the Dot-on-Shaft site because I can often guess which factory makes his gear (and it's the good ones, too).

PS. If any of you are interested in getting a guitar custom made, give him a call and ask about the Kraken guitars.

 

[NB-SK]

That is, I suppose, yet one more reason why any use of Asian manufacturing facilities/labour tends to necessitate a fairly standardized approach to design; if you had to rely on tuning a circuit by ear, you'd be kind of stuck. Consequently, pedals made by Asian jobbers tend to be conservative in design, and the sort of thing a completely unmusical person can paint by numbers, so to speak.

Sure... If you say so...

http://www.moollon.com/default_e.asp

http://www.ultimateguitargear.com/tone_party_reviews_moollon.htm

 

[NB-SK]

What I am intending to convey is that if you don't have a long enough culture of anything in a particular place, it is difficult to find people with the skill and knowledge who can tell when something needs refinement or a few design changes. I have yet to find anyone west of Winnipeg or East of Montreal who has the foggiest idea about how to make a decent rye bread, so it isn't just pedals, and it isn't just China.

European guidance, lack of refinement? That argument is a bit ethnocentric, don't you think?

Besides, some Chinese factories have probably made guitar pedals for over 2 decades.

PS. No decent rye bread west of Winnipeg or east of Montreal? You haven't looked very hard.

 

[NB-SK]

As for rye bread, I've looked. I have lived in St. John's, Fredericton, Montreal, Ottawa, Ottawa, Hamilton, Edmonton, and Victoria. I've even transported Ottawa rye to bakers in those outlying areas for them to learn from. I stand by my geographical boundaries of where decent rye bread can be found. It's not an ideological stance. Once upon a time you could not get decent bagels outside of Montreal, but the "knowledge" seems to have found its way out and extremely good bagels can now be found in many places. Sadly, not so for rye bread. (And for the uninitiated, a "real" bagel can be easily identified by not having a discernible top or bottom. If there is anything flat about one side and puffy about the other, it's essentially a roll with a hole. I'll set my biases about the only legitimate heirs to the throne being "white seeds" and "black seeds" aside, and graciously accept that something with - uggh - blueberries or raisins in it CAN be a bagel.)

I've lived across the street from a bagel bakery in Montreal (Cote des Neiges area). It had a wood oven and all, so I know what you mean about when you talk about what a real bagel should look like. As for my rye bread...I get mine from a Russian bakery (Vladivostok is closer to my home than Montreal is to Halifax, so there are some Russians in my area (had a few drinks with a retired Russian Colonel and veteran of the first Afghan War once...but that's a story for another day)).