The SEM is buffered, I believe. It has to do with having both LED status and true stereo output. However, EHX has fabulous buffered bypass – I ran a bypass test (put the disengaged pedal in a true bypass loop and bring the bypassed effect in and out of your signal chain) with a few of my pedals just to see if I noticed any tone loss and the only one which altered the tone at all was my big box Micro Synth. I didn’t test the SEM on account of I don’t own one, but I tested the Hazarai delay which is ALSO a true stereo XO-series pedal with buffered bypass and it didn’t hurt my tone at all. I can’t imagine the SEM being any different.

I wouldn’t have the Blues Driver and the OCD on the same board, nor would I have the LBM and the Metal Muff. With that collection, I would likely run: TU2-Qtron-SEM-OCD-MetalMuff or TU2-QTron-SEM-MetalMuff-OCD (depending on how the Metal muff and OCD interact).

I would run them ALL like this if you are going to use the SEM primarily as a chorus and/or if you’re running a stereo rig: TU2-QTron-BD2-LittleBigMuff-OCD-MetalMuff-SEM

and like this if you’re mostly looking for a flanger: TU2-QTron-BD2-LittleBigMuff-SEM-OCD-MetalMuff.

Yeah it can, but not super dirty.

I find the ‘suggested’ method (lower compression and raise input gain in NORM mode) to be a bit harsh, but if you kick input gain AND compression way up in SQSH mode the breakup gets considerably warmer.

Vox 847, it has the smoothest top end and clearest bottom end of any wah pedal I have ever heard. It’s a popular one so there’s actually a good chance you’ve tried it, but the problems you have described don’t sound like the wah I know and love. The Dunlop Dimebag wah has some excellent tones inside of it, and you can finetune it to your exact liking. Also, the new XO Worm has expression pedal control and a wah mode. I haven’t tried it, but I have heard great things and it comes with vibrato, phaser and tremolo as well. Your Metal Muff would love it.

Are you running the wah before or after the Muff? If you’re running the MM into the wah, try switching the order. It has the tendency to clear up the lows and mellow out the highs so you may find some of the pedals you hated all of a sudden sound great.

The newer Boss FV-500L works nicely, but mine has recently been sitting at about 10% engaged or so due to the weight at the front of the pedal. It doesn’t make a huge difference except in the pitch bend modes; whenever I take my foot off of it, the thing bends up about 3 semitones… It’s irritating. They included adjustable sweep tension, but it only affects the middle of the sweep for some asinine reason so the thing still rests partially engaged at full tension. Also, it’s stupid expensive. I need to find ways of gumming up the joint so that it sits properly again, I hate ‘regular wear ‘n tear.’

FWIW, I’m 6’1 and 145 lbs and I hate using the M-Audio for fear of breaking it. I’ve had great luck so far because I keep all my weight on my back leg and move the expression pedal very gingerly, but if you’re breaking it while sitting down then there’s not much I can suggest. However, I wouldn’t expect any higher quality of a unit to come free with a pedal. I’m just happy they decided to ship it with the HOG, it allows you to get full functionality out of the box while you search for a stronger expression pedal.

While I’m not a staff member or a spokesperson for the company, I can say without much doubt that EHX will forgive you… just this once.

In regards to earlier posts, I’ve never had any trouble running bass into a Holy Grail. Matter of fact, I think it sounds great! And isn’t the Knockout marketed half to bass players as well? I seem to recall Dan Miller saying something about how it’s great for bass in the demo… Maybe I’m thinking of the Steel Leather and just made up that part about the demo. Regardless, some other EHX pedals I really dig for bass:

Small Clone / Clone Theory / Polychorus
Double Muff / Big Muff
Hazarai
Soul Preacher
Q Tron / Tube Zipper
HOG (moreso than the POG because the HOG does 3rds and 5ths)

FWIW, McCartney’s sound in “Think for Yourself” is my favorite alltime fuzz-bass tone, and Claypool’s work on “Animals Should Not Try To Act Like People” is my holy grail of bass effects usage; low end is not traditionally my greatest concern (although none of those pedals cut much anyways).

No set pedalboard at home, just shelves.

I do, however, have a fairly firm setup for the drone band I play in. My drone board is as follows: EHX HOG->Boss TU-2->Boss ODB-3->Boss DF-2->EHX Holy Grail->EHX Hazarai.

Jazzmaster tuned to Drop B (via the HOG at practice although I tune it down properly for recording, and once we find a drummer I’ll tune it down properly for gigs as well) through those boxes into a 300w GK bass head into a 4×10 cab.

Analog or polyphonic? I think it would be neat to see an analog octave up, they have the Octave Multiplexer for analog sub octave but as far as I know the Micro Synths are the only current EHX product with analog octave up.