[mister.zed]

So I haven't been seriously jonesing for any gear for almost a year. Just been playing to my heart's content. I've even pared down my pedalboard substantially after discovering amp dirt that I really love.

Then some genius has to go and develop this:

This ticks so many boxes for me. I often try to get some of these tones with a combination of pedals. I seriously gotta stay off the internets.

 

[vadsy]

Killer looking pedal and I loved the playing.

I'm in the same boat as you and just recently decided to go over the board and possibly add/switch pedals out. Something new would be cool and I've never owned any pedal by Duncan

 

[Merlin]

Have you checked out Henning Pauly's YT video on the Fooz? It's quite extensive.

 

[mister.zed]

No I hadn't seen that. I'll check it out.

 

[vadsy]

It’s way too long.

 

[mhammer]

They stole Chase Bliss's rear-skirt dipswitch bank.

A nice set of options that tend to really come alive when used with an expression pedal. The distortion itself is nothing particularly special, but simply provides fuel for the filter section.

I wonder if it's FV-1 based, like the EHX Holy Stain and the various Keeley multi-function pedals like the Monterey and Darkside.

 

[mister.zed]

They say it's analog, and the FV-1 is digital, no?

 

[mister.zed]

I just love that gurgling resonance on the filter. And to be able to have that sound manipulated either subtly or overtly by an LFO or envelope is just so sweet!

 

[mhammer]

They say it's analog, and the FV-1 is digital, no?

You're right. Mind you, can we even begin to count the number of inexpensive delays that say "Analog" on the chassis but use a PT2399 delay chip and justify the use of "analog" by virtue of the filtering they use to mimic analog delay?

So, SOME portion of the processing is analog, but much of what is going on inside is clearly digital, if only micro-controller-assisted modulation, tap tempo, and modulation assignment. It's the Chase Bliss strategy of digitally-controlled analog signal path.

 

[mhammer]

Andy Martin works his way through the Fooz and several other unstandard fuzzes.

 

[vadsy]

a bit of a miss for Andy on that clip

 

[mister.zed]

But I believe the FV-1 is a DSP (digital signal processor). Which means it is directly in the signal path - the analog signal gets converted to numbers(digital) , beautiful math is applied liberally, then the numbers are converted back into voltage (analog) so we can hear it in our analog world. So yeah, when folks use the FV-1 or the PT2399 and call it analog, because it may sound analog, it is not correct in my book either. Like the marketers who invented ice cream with chocolatey chips ('cause it's not real chocolate) perhaps we should coin the term analogey. (Not to be confused with analogy).

I'm with you on the Chase Bliss stuff being analog - in that the signal path is analog. I have no problem with microcontroller manipulation of digital pots or switches or other analog components and still calling it analog. This is what the Korg Monologue synthesizer does and it's brilliant. It's like you have a great analog tube amp, but you build a robot to stand there and twiddle the master volume knob for you to give you some tremolo - what you are hearing is still analog. As long as there is no A to D and then D to A on the signal, it's analog in my book. I think you are right in suspecting the same strategy is being applied here.

 

[mhammer]

I guess at some point a gut-shot will show up somewhere, and we'll have some confirmation one way or the other.

These days, the word "analog" has acquired about as much cachet as "computer-designed" had 25 years ago, and "German engineering" had for a number of years. As well, the whole Eurorack craze has made analog modular cool again. It is entirely possible that Duncan is applying the word "analog" with reference to the designated "modules" in the unit. But again, we await some sort of confirmation/disconfirmation, based on the actual guts of the thing.

I don't say any of this to thumb my nose at the FV-1 or anything else digital. There are some pretty snazzy pedals from Earthquaker, Catalinbread, Keeley, and others, that depend on the FV-1, and folks are still exploring the limits of what it can do (though Robert Keeley told me he's moving on from the FV-1 to another unspecified digital platform).

 

[vadsy]

They stole Chase Bliss's rear-skirt dipswitch bank.

dip switches have been used on pedals before Chase Bliss, location seems like an odd thing to copyright and be upset about

 

[mhammer]

No problem. No upset. Good ideas tend to spread.

 

[mister.zed]

Here's a demo I quite like that works it into songs. I especially like the envelope controlled tremolo rate at 0:30. I have the EHX Super Pulsar but the envelope doesn't have that kind of transfer function.

 

[mhammer]

My own experience in adding envelope control to modulation is that it is tricky. It has to feel like one's emotions, in that it comes on moderately and lingers for a bit. If the attack and decay of the envelope is too quick it just feels like an intrusion into one's playing.

 

[High/Deaf]

Re: digital

If your sampling rate is high enough and your quantization is deep enough, it is indistinguishable from analog. The record companies have limitations in that the products they sell have to be compatible with the players / formats in the real world. they just can't keep changing things. An internal A-D / D-A process doesn't have this limitation, and we should be reaching a point where you can't tell anymore, if we haven't reached it already.

Just like digital cameras. If 8 megapix don't do it, then surely 10 or 12 or 14 will. Do photographers worry about the technology inside or is it just us 'golden-eared' musos?

 

[mister.zed]

I got nothing against digital. I have plenty of digital pedals on my board. I record to digital. Just talking about what is what.