Basically, the difference is this: phasers are warm and squishy, flangers are metallic and sound a bit like you’re playing in a wind tunnel. I find the phaser has a more interesting sound at the top and bottom of the sweep, whereas normal flangers are more interesting in the middle of the sweep (unless it is Puretube’s Flanger Hoax, in which case it is interesting all the time no matter what).

The Worm should get you close to that “Breathe in the Air” tone, as well as offering you tons more awesome modulating stuff. I haven’t played the new XO version but I’ve heard rumors that it even solves the noise issue the big box was notorious for, so that’s something to be excited about.

I can’t think of a specific song from The Wall off the top of my head, but comparing the guitar tones on Dark Side of the Moon to The Wall is basically comparing phasers to flangers.

I think my favorite setting on the Micro POG is with the dry and sub about even, and upper octave set to about half of the dry and sub. Run this into a Big Muff and you have the most gnarly lead tone ever. The other thing I liked was how it sounded with a Flanger Hoax up front, it tracked the FH perfectly no matter what the settings on either pedal were. It also looks super cool (yeah it matters), and is obviously way way easier to incorporate into a pedalboard than it’s bigger brothers.

Cons (in order of how much they annoyed me): No low pass filter, no detune, only three voices. For these reasons, I traded it in for a used POG and then traded the used POG in towards a used HOG.

Now for a comparison of the three, to help anyone trying to make an informed decision: I find the HOG has similarly voiced octaves to the Micro Pog and the tracking is pretty well just as fast, so if you only use the dry, +1 and -1 sliders with the filter turned all the way up you basically have a Micro POG. The POG was different to my ears, the upper octaves had a slightly more ‘natural’ sound (despite noticeably slower tracking) and the detuned voices were a godsend for finding that perfect organ tone. I’ve had the best results replicating this organic thickness by running a subtly flanging Polychorus after the HOG, but it was nice having an entire organ in one medium-sized box. All three boxes are capable of producing a decent bass sound, the POG tracks a little slower but sounds a little fatter. The HOG’s resonance control offers the most control tonally, but the Micro POG requires no tweaking to find a great sound. Just turn up the knob and play.

Neither the POG or the HOG react as flawlessly to the pedals in front of them as the Micro POG does. Also, the Micro POG was way less noisy than the POG and slightly quieter than the HOG when you’re running it into a fuzzbox. I would call the POG noisy, even though I didn’t notice until I was running a Big Muff after it. If you use too many intervals on the HOG, it will come out of the fuzzbox sounding like a big huge mess so I usually stick to ‘Micro POG settings’ for fat solos. The resonance control on the HOG allows you to get that half-cocked wah sound right off the bat, a major plus, although the HOG takes up considerably more pedalboard space than a Micro POG and a wah pedal would so the value is questionable…

All three pedals are rock solid when tracking chords in the +1 and -1 octaves, even more complex chords sound great. Obviously the more voices you introduce, the messier the chord will get. This is most noticeable with the fifth and third sliders on the HOG; because you are getting fifths and thirds above fourths and thirds above thirds, you’re bound to encounter some dissonance. It’s not really an issue of tracking so much as harmonic mathematics, but 7th chords in particular are a horrendous mess when you have too many sliders turned up. However, it’s okay because if you’re using the harmonic settings on the HOG, you can play a single note and have a full chord come out the other side. For that reason, the HOG wins for creating organ tones with a bass. Also, rather than playing full chords you can just play a simple interval and the HOG will fill in the rest of the notes. For example, you can play the just the root and the 7th and get a much cleaner 7th chord. Or, you can just turn the harmonic sliders down and play whatever you want through the octave sliders. The +3 and +4 octaves seemed extremely goofy to me at the beginning, but they add richness in a way similar to the POG’s detune settings and for that they’re indispensable.

Now I obviously neglected to mention any of the expression modes on the HOG. Because the HOG has features that go well above and beyond what the other two are capable of, there’s not really much point mentioning them in a comparison. The pitch bends are fun even though I think Whammy effects are dangerously cheesy. The glissando modes are absolutely incredible, and the filter sweep is really really great for getting that ‘Bassically / Nativity in Black’ bass sound without ever plugging in a bass guitar. I don’t understand the logic behind putting in a wah AND a filter sweep, but I’m sure some people get use out of both modes. The preset footswitch is a great idea, but the HOG is really the only box of the three with enough sounds to justify presets. I would like to see a POG with a second footswitch for toggling between two settings so you can go from organ to guitar+bass with the click of a switch, but the benefits of this are pretty small – especially when you consider that the HOG already exists.

That’s really all that I can think of, sorry for the length of the post there’s alot to cover! I hope it helps.

That’s okay, nobody seems to be having particularly cool ideas this year. I mean, that Gibson is just hideous but at least the big three are all having kinda lame contests/limited editions… (I guess that Fender link is just a contest and not a new product so I will say this: Fender’s Road Worn guitars aren’t super terrible, but they’re certainly not cheap and for me there’s something just a little off about shelling out big bucks for a new guitar that has already been abused.)

Mind you, guitar companies have been doing stupid crap like this for years, as long as they continue to offer their ‘regular’ products there should be decent new axes around for decades.

I guess this is the year of ‘established guitarists to buy rad new pedals because there are tons coming out from EHX (Coming Soon), MXR (the new ones between the Wylde Overdrive and Variphase all seem pretty chief), Zvex (Distortron and Mastotron) and others.

“Hey, is this the new Green Day record?”

Hmmm, it would be nice to have the…

Polychorus, HOG and the Hazarai delay on my board all at the same time. They make a great team, but I hate using more than four or five pedals at a time so it’s pretty rare that they all see the floor together.

Man alive! That’s a tricky board, Fender&EHX;. I think you need to realize that dream, if only for a day. You can disassemble it after recording just one track if you need to…

Buddy here knows his Carbon Copy is going to crap out in a few weeks, he’s just preparing himself.

I think MXR is pretty alright, they’ve been turning things around after a few lackluster years. I’m especially pleased that JD gave Way Huge new life, hopefully Mr. Tripp’s product line will soon be expanding towards it’s former glory.

For some reason, I never even considered that Lux was a mortal… Don’t ask me why because I can’t tell you, but the most shocking part of this isn’t that he died – it’s my realization that he was able to.

I find it hard to mourn the death of musicians because they live eternally in their records and that’s all I ever knew them for anyways. This passing is not much different, although it cuts me a little deeper than usual – Bad Music for Bad People singlehandedly restored my interest in punk music, and it’s not even a ‘real’ record. If I had a nickle for every time I threw on Songs The Lord Taught Us or Fiends of Dope Island and immediately lamented my lack of LSD, I would have enough money to… buy some LSD, I guess.

RIP Lux.

Discontinued?!?!?