I’m following EHX closely lately, and that’s the reason behind me going nuts wanting to get almost their whole line-up. Can’t afford it, so I’m keeping it down to five for the time being.

I’ve read an extensive interview with EHX somewhere the other day (don’t remember where), an extensive interview that even went into the technicalities of sound engineering I don’t have much clue about, but it was very enlightening…

This issue with analog-digital was also addressed in this interview, extensively. I understood that EHX is as committed to analog pedals as it has ever been since its humble beginnings. But they made it clear that some of the components that used to be vital and widely used in vintage pedals are not easy to get anymore, in fact some of them have been completely replaced by newer and more efficient components – which were never designed exclusively for guitar pedals anyway. Some of these components became redundant as they were combined/integrated with others to do their job more efficiently (i.e. making slim flat screens possible). Unfortunately for us guitarists, the world has been spinning to fast and those invaluable pieces of electronics are gone forever.

So this is a sign that even though analog pedals will always exist, their circuitries are not going to be necessarily vintage or close to the ones our guitar heroes used to use.

I do feel a tendency towards digital pedals in the industry. After all, modernization takes over and that’s a good thing. It makes me think of photography. Every professional photographer knows that analog photography is still far superior to digital photography. But in digital photography convenience meets technology and more affordable prices in the long run, so every professional photographer has converted to digital. Limitations in pixel resolution are still there (which we could compare it to audio sample converters in the context of this thread), but the flexibility digital photography gives by not depending on films and easy data transfer is incomparable to that of the analog.

Not to mention that, in the case of a digital pedal, if you put a lot of effort to get one right, you’ll get 100.000 just as right (that was actually mentioned on the interview as well). That means you buy a Cathedral now and another in 20 years, they will both sound exactly the same (in the same rig) and I think that’s a very good thing.

My 2 cents.

…for instance…

We have been getting the same effects for decades, some of them being Phaser, Flanger, Chorus, Delay, Reverb, etc. Almost everything we get these days are derivatives or combinations of these effects, which were “created” (I’d rather say discovered) many, many years ago.

Why is it that no one come with a totally different effect? Something called “Tugger” for a change…

Both analogue and digital effects have their pros and cons. It’s up to the individual guitarist to choose what sounds and works best for them. I tend to use both. I like digital delays, but I prefer analogue modulation. Go figure.

I have a question that is a little on topic.
I went to gc to pick up a stereo mm with hazari and the mgr said gc has seem to stopped ordering them, but had one from another store like 300 miles away and thy could have it next day for me. thy had one locked in the demo area that looked perfect,I asked if i could buy that one, they said thy couldn’t because it technically didn’t own it. well next day came and thy didn’t get the ship and I needed one to use that day for studio work, well thy took the handcuffs off the floor model and sold it to me. thy said it had bee on for like two years and if I wanted to come back for the ordered on I can. I went home and opened it up and the made date was march 20th 2007.
So my question is…..
Do you think I should go back and get the new one or stick with this great sounding first gen?
And are the old ones made as well as the new ones? (ad/da ect)

the interesting thing about 1st gen digital delays, fm synthesis, all the flavors of stuff that’s widely dismissed as ‘crap’ from the 80’s is it’s a different flavor. The old DOD DFX line and the Digitech RDS/PDS units are building their own little cult followings not unlike analog delays. I’m gonna go out on a limb here but I think that bitcrushed delay is going to be a definite option on modeled pedals (L6/Boss type rot) in the near future. I mean, follow the prices on a PDS8000 on ebay, the only analog delay pedals going for as much as they do are the early Memory Men [Memory Mans? how do you pluralise that?], Ibanez AD9s and Boss DM-2s.

dremeyguy- you know there’s only so much you can do to an audio signal right? I mean you can add harmonics or clip peaks [distortions/fuzzes], repeat a signal [delays, ‘verbs, modulations], drive a filter or oscillator [synth effects] or emphasis EQ curves [eq’s, preamps, distortions, overdrives, etc]. You can combine these any number of ways, but I don’t think we’ll ever have a tugger.

:clap:

I’ve noticed a lot of people tend to run it that way: analogue->digital delay…
but I pretty much always go digital->analogue…

it’s just a personal preference issue really, but my reasoning is that running a short (analogue) delay into a long (digital) one sounds best to me as the repeats seem to gel together better that way; adding a softer ambience or slapback to the longer digital repeats.

it can also sound good the other way around for rhythmic echoes. but that’s not something I ever do, really.

another reason for going digital->analogue, is that digital effects can be easier to overload;
I’ve done this before while running an analogue delay (with lots of repeats) into a digital delay and it overloaded, distorted and basically sounded horrible. I’ve found analogue pedals much more forgiving in that regard.

There are always exceptions to the rule though; I would generally run a DMM first as the preamp can be quite sensitive… I even tend to run the DMM before my dirt pedals if I’m using it.