Home › Forums › Help/Technical Questions › HOG vs POG2: The Reckoning

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • December 31, 2011 at 5:18 pm #82086
    MattInVegas
    Member

    I’m closing in on buying a HOG, and actually just bought the foot pedal so I have it when I pick up the HOG in a few months (I know I won’t have time to get into it until then). I have a few days to cancel the order, so I took one more swing through HOG VS POG2 forum topics to make sure I don’t get buyers remorse.

    Most of them honestly aren’t all that helpful (Julian’s championing of the HOG and comparisons excepted). Best to watch videos. The main difference posted most often is the POG2 has a detune feature that helps with organ sound. I use my DMM to get a Hammond shimmer, so I think there are other ways to get that. Some of the replies said you can get the detune effect with the HOG.

    What I think most of the posts leave out are:

    • The HOG’s freeze/gliss and wah settings can replace a Nano Freeze and a wah pedal. I think wahs are much more personal selection, but you can subtract the price of a freeze pedal from the HOG’s MSRP. (Also comes with an expression pedal) Now your much closer to the POG2 cost. More likely if you perform, you’ll either bring the HOG or freeze/wah pedals. (I’m not getting rid of my Nano). I can see not wanting to bring the HOG everywhere because …

    • The HOG is something you’ll want to experiment with more for recording. I do a lot of ambient soundscape live recording, and I’ll def get more versatility out of the HOG than the POG2. But if you mainly want a pedal for certain voices, for limited use live, POG2 is the way to go. You can get a good organ sound or 12-string sound.

    • If you are very familiar with the Hammond B-3 (have played and know the drawbars), you want the HOG.

    The bottom line is, the HOG’s cost is daunting, but it packs a lot of features and is really several pedals in one, like the DMM. The only thing I’m disappointed with re: the POGs is I’d like a fuller bass sound for creating bass loops live with the Les Paul. It sounds better when I rely on the low E-string dry and use the guitars controls.

    Also, you don’t need the foot pedal while you’re on the learning curve. I got it to take advantage of a sale and gift card. Will be waiting for a good sale for the HOG.

    Hope this added something to the debate. I can’t speak for tracking, but both pedals were criticized.

    January 31, 2012 at 12:38 am #116883
    MattInVegas
    Member

    Got the Hog. Very happy. Making organ, cello, bass, synth, pedal steel and other cool strange sounds. Experimenting with direct out through a BMP and DMM, but so far its been better having them all in the same chain.

    February 2, 2012 at 1:58 am #116888
    julian
    Moderator

    I’ve had mine for a few years now & I still find new sounds with it. The price does seem steep, but for the amount it does & how much you can integrate it into your technique & style, it’s really a good value.

    February 2, 2012 at 2:35 am #116889
    MattInVegas
    Member

    I think the price of some EHX pedals intimidates, and perhaps keeps people from taking a good look at the value of the functionality. A lot of stores won’t keep it in their inventory, I imagine a lot of people have to make a decision based largely on video demos. It’s so worth it. Aside from creating voices, you really don’t have to get a Freeze, wah, filter, octave divider, etc. I just found that great gliss with the expression pedal depressed about 40 percent(?); used in combo with organ voicings is phenomenal.

    For playing solo with a loop station, its heaven. Love the cello and pedal steel, and using a slide with both of those voicings is just amazing. Plus, its one of the few pedals that really provide some possibilities when you use the regular and direct outputs.

    On the flip side, since few people own them you can stand out from your peers. I don’t really agree with most of the revisions people suggested on HOG posts here, and I’m happy with the foot pedal too. NO tracking complaints. I don’t know about owning the HOG and 2880 Super Looper though, with both foot pedals taking up space.

    Now a Stereo Polyphase, on the other hand … it just never ends.

    February 2, 2012 at 5:17 am #116890
    MattInVegas
    Member

    Wow. Just ran the cello voice through a Big Muff at full sustain with the tone bassy at 3 o’ clock and a DMM (vibrato, depth at 9 o clock and delay at 10:30-ish) and got a great brass/French horn sound.

    February 2, 2012 at 5:34 am #116891
    julian
    Moderator

    My thought on pedal size is that I can always make a bigger pedal board, or have two pedalboards.

    If I ever get a 2880, I think I’d have it up on top my amp & have a midi controller on the floor for it.

    on the HOG, half-cocked gliss gets some really great sounds, that’s definitely one of my favorite settings.

    As for HOG revisions:

    I would like more options for tonally sculpting the octaves, the filter’s nice but I wish there was a way to tweak the tonality of each octave. I find a lot of the upper octaves just a tad too shrill, but the low-pass sort of just blankets them all. Ideally I’d like a multi-mode filter for every voice with a pitch tracking option. Or maybe on future iterations they could just make it sound better. I accept that the tone of the HOG isn’t always 100% awesome & on some settings can be a bit obnoxious because it’s so awesome in so many other ways.

    Midi control would be awesome too, I could program some awesome effects into it if I had midi-control of all the effects at once.

    I miss my stereo polyphase. I loved the slow envelope & the expression modes. I thought the LFO modes were cool & I could get cool effects in conjunction with the expression pedal opening and closing the phase, but I thought it could have been a bit more pronounced, more like a small stone. Also I liked it for clean but not for dirty tones & it would have been ideal if I had a nice way to switch on my fuzz & switch off my phaser at the same time. I still have problems with tonal transitions, although generally now that I run parallel effects chains it’s not so messy.

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.