Did you do the mod? The Corset has a blend knob on it. I’m not following what you were trying to do.

I don’t know the age of his pedal, but the earliest bypass circuits used a single pole double throw switch. When the input was toggled directly to the output, it was still connected to the front of the effects circuit which would still load the pickups. Some people refer to this as “true” bypass because the effects circuit is being bypassed and there is a direct connection from input to output, but obviously the tone is still impacted by the load of the bypassed circuit.

Later, they used double pole double pole switches to completely disengage the effects circuitry which does remove the load of the circuit when it’s bypassed, but some of the early DPDT switches were designed for high amperage high voltage appliances, not for audio circuits. Some of those old DPDT switches have very high capacitance themselves so even with the circuit completely disengaged they could color the tone.

I totally agree with what you’re saying with respect to well designed true bypass using high quality audio components, but there are still a lot of early pedals out there that people are THINKING are true bypass and might even be true bypass, but using low quality components and those might still suck tone.

Also, not all buffered bypass circuits are equal. A well designed buffered bypass using quality components can be a thing of beauty. I think if you compare MODERN true bypass circuits to the latest buffered bypass circuits, you might find less of a difference in tone quality. With some modern pedals like the EHX Soul Food that have an internally switchable buffered/TBP output, I think the choice of buffer vs. no buffer comes down to where the pedal is in the signal chain, the presence of other buffered pedals, active vs. passive pickups, etc, rather than the tone of the bypassed effect. I haven’t seen this demo done, but I’ll bet that you’d be hard pressed to hear a difference between the buffered output of the Soul Food and the unbuffered output in a blind A/B test if that was the only effect on the line.

Yes. I thought I’d never replace my classic Crybaby, but I think this pedal got everything right. It’s definitely a winner.

No. The 44 Magnum, and the 22 Magnum, output is SPEAKER level not line level. It is intended to plug into a speaker. You would not put effects between the speaker output of your amp and the speaker.

Yes. That’s correct, because as you saw in the video, you can only have one effect going at a time in addition to the freeze “effect”.

I’m 57 years young. I graduated H.S. in 1977. I started working at a local music store. We carried everything that EHX was producing at the time. We also carried a lot of MXR, DOD, and Ibanez. Not everything because they were much more costly, but a lot. So, I had a chance to try out everything there at the store for the three or four years that I worked there from about 1978 to 1981. I also went to NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) twice.

I started as a music major and later changed to Computer Science, so it’s just been a hobby since then. I’ve sold all of my EHX, DOD, and Ibanez pedals. I didn’t have LOTS of them because I wasn’t wealthy, but I did get to play through MANY pedals, certainly everything EHX made at the time, and helped lots of people set up their pedalboards and amps.

Now, I’m starting to focus a bit more on my music, so I’ve gone through two digital all-in-one multi-effect systems ( Line 6 and Fender ) that included everything but the kitchen sink. They were fun and definitely had their advantages, many advantages, but they always sounded a bit “cold”, and “harsh”, and it was always a bit of a hassle to navigate the menus to dial in the parameters I wanted.

I’m a bit of a counter personality. I still like shooting film. Not because I don’t understand digital. I get it. I love the convenience, but EVERYONE is shooting digital…boooorrrrring. So, now I’m ( recently ) working on building up my ANALOGUE pedal board again. It’s still a hobby for me, so I can’t justify spending a lot of money. My wife and I have to clear large expenditures with each other. So, I’m back at the beginning comparing overdrives, distortions, phasers, flangers, delays, reverbs, wah wah pedals, from all the major manufacturers, but focusing on analogue whenever possible, and of course price. I keep coming back to Electro-Harmonix giving me the most bang for my buck, and the newest stuff that they’ve come out with is genuinely innovative. I don’t have many of their pedals yet. I have a Germanium 4 Overdrive, a Nano 360 Looper, a Small Stone ( Nano ) phase shifter, a Memory Toy, and a Canyon Delay (not analogue). I have other analogue pedals from other manufacturers like a Cry Baby Wah, a couple of other distortions, and some “utility” pedals – booster, buffer, filter, noise gate. But, I will slowly be replacing as many of those as makes sense with EHX solutions. I just like their stuff. I thought I would never replace my Cry Baby, but the new(ish) Cock Fight Plus is awesome. It does everything I want a Wah Wah to do and more, and it sounds great.

When I first started buying Electro-Harmonix pedals, it was because they were the cheapest and my employee discount let me get a good deal, but I was concerned that they wouldn’t retain their value. There was a while there when old EHX pedals could be had for pretty cheap, but now, some original circuit EHX stuff is getting crazy prices! Ya never know.

Sorry to possibly add to the confusion, but I forgot to mention the Superego, and as of today the Superego+. ( !! ) They are based on the Freeze, but include an effects loop just for the frozen sound so that you can keep the swirls going on the frozen sound and glissando. The Superego+ ( just announced today ) adds layering ( ! ), an effects section ( ! ), an expression pedal ( ! ), and the ability to morph between two presets with an expression pedal. ( ! ). Both of those are great machines, but they are significantly more expensive. The price of the Superego+ hasn’t even been announced yet. The plus is not really a multi-effects pedal even though it has multiple effects in it. You can only choose one effect at a time in addition to or separate from the Superego freeze section. But it is very powerful and gives you almost exactly what you want right out of the box. Given your setup, I think I’d stick with my recommendation, but you should at least have a look at the Superego and the Superego+ so that you can be aware of the almost all-in-one solutions that EHX offers for exactly what you’re trying to achieve.

Here’s the just-released official video for the Superego+.

I haven’t tried it with bass, but the Pitchfork is digital and polyphonic, so it shouldn’t have any problem tracking a bass.

I like it when bass plays chords under a lead guitar. I also like octave bass, up or down, but I don’t get straight parallel thirds or fourths. I think diatonic intervals are more useful, but you don’t get those with straight pitch mod machines. You need an effect that knows what key you’re in.

For a really good octave down ONLY sound, you can use the EHX Octave Multiplexer. It’s not listed as a bass effect, but I’m pretty sure it will work with bass, at least the original that I had many years ago did. The Octave Multiplexer is 100% Analogue and it is monophonic, so it will get confused if you throw intervals or chords at it.

The Bass Micro Synthesizer has the same circuit as the Octave Multiplexer for the Sub Octave channel. It also gives you an Octavix ( Octavia-like ) octave up, that means it’s distorted, and a square wave which is just a super clipped signal, basically a distortion. The filters on the Bass Micro Synth are tweaked for bass frequencies. This is also a 100% analogue effect which makes it essentially monophonic when you’re using the octave channels.

Again, if you only need an octave, the POG series is digital and polyphonic and it can give you a pure octave up and/or octave down. Even though it only does octaves, some people prefer the tone and ease of use of the POG to the Pitchfork in side-by-side comparisons. I’ve never seen a POG-Pitchfork shootout using a bass, so it might be that one tracks bass better than the other.

I don’t think there’s much advantage to the Bad Stone in your situation. The Bad Stone gives you more control over the “Color” or “Depth” or “Tone” of the phasing effect by giving you a dial for the feedback rather than just a switch like you get on the Small Stone (Nano Chassis). The Small Stone has a switch labeled “Color”. This essentially lets you select between two feedback levels. The Bad Stone gives you a knob labeled “Feedback” so that you can dial in other feedback levels. The two “Colors” you get on the Small Stone are essentially the two most popular settings for “Feedback” on the Bad Stone.

The other thing that the Bad Stone gives you is the ability to “freeze” the sweep and then control it manually. Freezing the sweep on a phase shifter gives you sounds from “throaty” to “nazaly”, kind of like a vocal synthesizer, but not as intense. Some modulation pedals (phase shifter, flanger, filter, tremolo, vibrato) that allow you to freeze the sweep and manually control it also have a pedal input so that you can control the sweep with an expression pedal. The Bad Stone does NOT have this feature.

Well, that is a very good question. This depends entirely on the design of the pedal. In a purely digital pedal, the answer should be, again according to the design of the internal circuitry, that there will be NO degradation of signal through multiple effects. All of the effects and interconnections are “virtual”. Adding another effect is just a tweak of the software algorithm generating the sounds.

With an all analogue multi-effects pedal, every internal effect has to be connected just as if they were on a board. The connections are shorter, and they are more shielded, but all of the wiring inside each effect and the connections between them still add up, so they are subject to the same issues as separate pedals. A lot of the degradation of signal from an effects chain comes from the wiring and connections INSIDE the pedals rather than between them. That’s why buffers can make a difference to the sound even if you only have a few pedals and very short cables.