I’ll start out by saying this is not the greatest review, or even a review at all, but I didn’t really know where to post this.

Anyway, after saving some money, selling old crappy pedals and buying most of my dream rig, I finally got a Tube Zipper. (it was up between the tube zip and the stereo polychorus, but i already have a small clone, dmm, and small stone so i figured i’d be safe without the polychorus for now, unless someone here thinks i should still take the plunge immediately).

Like most people I saw the demo and was pretty much sold, but holding off cuz of price. I got it today, plugged it in and…well i had no clue what the hell i was doing with it.

Tried out some of the settings in the manual and really liked them, but can’t remember them off the top of my head since there are so many knobs and switches. This pedal was very overwhelming in the first 2 hours I dinked around with it.

I decided to toss the instructions aside and think of it in terms of two systems – the env. filter and the dist. – and play with each individually until i got a grasp of it. this helped a ton! as i got comfortable with the env. i started introducing the distortion and am loving the crazy quacking, zipping, funking sounds i’m getting.

what at first seemed unapproachable and sounded unplayable is now challenging me to play differently and think about the interactivity of controls. it’s opening my mind and making me think of all sorts of possibilities and foresee crazy, and applicable sounds. it’s really tripping me out.

one thing that i’m still not used to and may just come with time is being able to recall how i got certain sounds. i’m not someone who likes to paint positions on a pedal because i’ll want a number of different sounds, so i’d just get lost with lots of markers.

if anyone has other ideas on how they approached their zipper i’d love to hear them! any settings you’d suggest i’ll definitely try out.

I am also wondering this — when my tube zipper is plugged in there is a bright glow coming from inside the chassis where the tubes are. I have an english muff’n and it does not have any sort of light coming from inside, just the filaments in the top of the tubes. is this bright glow normal and just because there are three status lights? another thing is the drive knob is exceptionally tight — anyone else experience this too?

so in summary — it’s an insane pedal, makes very unique sounds and is fairly overwhelming at first. that’s just because it has WAY more depth than any other pedal i’ve used before — including the holiest grail and the microsynth.

Thanks for reading all that!