Guitar Effect Pedals

I’ve owned a ton of pedals over the last 30 years, but I seem to keep simplying my rig the older I get. After owning many of the “boutique” 808 clones out there, the one that I kept was the Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive - it’s just the best sounding overdrive I’ve heard and the price (around $120 new) is pretty unbeatable. Because I was so impressed with the Sparkle Drive, I started looking at some of the other pedals in the Voodoo Labs stable and the Micro Vibe caught my eye (and ear) immediately.

Growing up in the seventies, one of the classic guitar albums I loved was Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs” released in 1974. In the apartment complex I lived in growing up, I met a professional guitar player shortly after I started playing around 1975. He was a huge Trower fan and introduced me to this classic album cranked up on his little Sears 8-track player. The big, lush tones on that album were unlike anything I had heard before - I just couldn’ believe a guitar could sound like that. Marty was a complete gear head and he was happy to explain more about the “Leslie-speaker” effect than ever I wanted to know. To this day, everytime I hear a Hendrix, Trower or SRV tunes with a Uni-Vibe, I think about Marty with his white Fender Stratocaster weaving those swirly tones in his living room. I’m so glad I didn’t miss the 70s.

Since then, the Uni-Vibe sound has stuck in my head as one of my favorites. It’s a really unusual sound - not really a chorus, not really a phaser, not really a flanger, but something truly organic that defies a simple explanation. The original effect, derived from a purely mechanical process where a speaker simply rotates inside a cabinet, owes itself to the phenomom of the “Doppler Effect”. The best example of this phenomon is the sound of a car horn in a passing car - as the car moves further away, the pitch of the horn will drop accordingly. The best recorded example of this has to be the intro to Van Halen’s “Runnin’ With The Devil”.

The inventor of the swirly “Leslie effect” was Donald Leslie in the early 1960s. He came up with the idea as an effect for the Hammond organ and despite it’s wild popularity, it was never embraced by the Hammond Organ company themselves. The sound of the Leslie organ was popularized on numerous recording throughout the 1960s and it soon found it’s way into the guitarist’s arsenal. Fender licensed the technlogy from Donald Leslie in 1966 and released a similar mechanical device in 1967 called the Fender Vibratone. Soon after, the magical tone of Leslie was showing up on the records of Hendrix, Clapton, Pink Floyd, Beach Boys and The Beatles - there was no turning back now.

Even though the Fender Vibratone sounded incredibly cool, it had some major drawbacks. Since the sound was physically moving around in a circle, it was difficult to mic for the studio and live performances, and because it was mechanical, it was bulky and prone to breakdowns. This problem was solved in 1969 with introduction of a rotating speaker simulator known as the Uni-Vibe developed by Roger Mayer. After Hendrix used an early Uni-Vibe at Woodstock, this type of effect has been seared into the conscienousness of millions guitarists ever since.

So what makes the Voodoo Labs Micro Vibe a good choice? Of all the Uni-Vibe type pedals I’ve tried, the Micro Vibe has three big advantages: price, size and tone. If you’ve shopped Uni-Vibe units, you know no one’s giving these away for cheap. Roger Mayer’s latest pedal is almost $500 and Fulltone’s Mini-Deja Vibe can run you close to $300. At about $149 new, the Voodoo Labs Micro Vibe is an amazing deal in an otherwise pricey field of competitors. Even with at this lower price point, the Micro Vibe still incorporates the same basic technology in the more expensive units to emulate the Leslie faithfully - a real incandesanct lamp and genuine photocells - just like the big boys.

Speaking of the big boys, the small size of the Micro Vibe is also unique. Unlike many of it’s clunky competitors, the Micro Vibe is true to it’s name at only about 3″ X 4″ - just a standard stompbox. The case is built like a tank with a tough finish and requires only a single 9 volt battery for power. I don’t know how they pack all that tone into such a small case, but they absolutely pulled it off.

Tone. It’s all about tone in the end and the Micro Vibe delivers big time. Regardless of price, the Micro Vibe stands on par with any Uni-Vibe pedal out there for emulating all the classic tones you would expect. And there’s a reason is sounds like a Uni-Vibe; it uses the same sinewave oscillator, incandescant lamp and photocells that creates the Uni-Vibe’s unique sound and feel. For Hendrix, Trower or SRV tones, the Micro Vibe has got all the bases covered - and with true-bypass switching too!

You can check out some great sound clips of the Micro Vibe recorded by the legendary Blues Saraceno - click here and look for the tab labelled “Sound Samples”

The Z Vex Super Hard-On perfect preamp pedal. The “Crackle Okay” volume knob is a negative-feedback control styled after classic 60’s recording console inputs. (They crackled when adjusted too.) Most vintage guitars suffer from steadily deteriorating magnets in their pickups, since permanent magnets aren’t really forever. The Super Hard-On’s input impedance is so high (>5 Meg) that it refuses any current flow from your pickup… maintaining the most magnetic field around each string, so you can hear exactly what your pickup sounded like the day it came off the winder.
The ouput level can exceed 8 volts peak, and when it finally distorts, the wave is shaped like triode overload, not fuzz.

It’s so transparent no one will be able to tell you’re using a pedal. Perfect for making the most of a classic amp and guitar, because it simply makes your guitar bigger and pushes the amp harder, causing natural overload. This sound can be the solution to the ‘disappearing guitar’ effect you get sometimes on stage when you stomp on your distortion and sound weaker. When cranked, it sounds much louder than a fuzz or distortion under stage conditions.

Like all Z. Vex designs, current flow is low in this circuit (less than 2mA), enhancing battery life. The circuit board is hand-cut and soldered with the critical component, a BS-170 mosfet transistor, placed in a socket for easy user replacement should it be necessary. Your dealer can provide you with a free replacement transistor upon request.

The box is hand-drilled using no petro lubricants, and hand painted so that every box is unique. Knobs are Harry Davies, made with the same molds they’ve used since the fifties. Each effect is hand dated and signed by Zachary Vex.

WARNING: The very high input impedance of this pedal can cause strange reactions (sometimes mildly pleasant and/or arousing) when used with a vintage ‘junk’ (read ‘cool’) guitar. The solution is to simply lower the ‘crackle okay’ gain knob a little or leave the guitar volume wide open. Each Super Hard-On is unique in it’s reaction… you may have to try a few till you find one that perfectly matches a really strange guitar. They are optimised for the major brands. Any problems will only occur at the highest gain settings with an unusual guitar.

The Super Hard-On units made since June of 1999 have had spare transistors taped inside the unit in case the original fails due to high-voltage static electricity or other shock. Newer SHO units have a diode protection circuit to keep the transistor from blowing. To protect your SHO’s transistor on older units, please turn the unit off before unplugging the cords. On SHO units produced during 2000 and beyond, the battery switching jack has been moved to the output jack closest to the front of the unit (closest to the J. Myrold signature). Please unplug from this jack to preserve battery life.

The Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive delivers classic Ibanez TS-808 style distortion and features an independent Clean control that lets you blend in a boosted direct signal to enhance clarity and preserve note attack. The Sparkle Drive utilizes the same concept as layering two amps, one clean and the other saturated. With the Clean control turned down, you get a classic overdrive tone. Turn it all the way up and you get a super transparent, 100% clean boost.

Other Sparkle Drive features include gain, tone and volume controls, true-bypass switching, a status LED, sturdy metal enclosure, and a 9-volt DC input jack. It also comes with the amazing Voodoo Labs 5-year warranty even covers the switch if it should short out.

I’ve owned a load of overdrive pedals including some really nice Fulltone FullDrives, but the Sparkle Drive is the one I keep coming back to. I recently A/B’d it to a reissue Ibanez TS-808 and it was neck-in-neck in terms of tone and had just a touch more bottom end. My favorite feature is the Clean control - I’m have no idea why other manufactures haven’t jumped on this great idea.

My current rig is ultra simple. Just my Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster, a Fender Deluxe Reissue and the Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive - occasionally I bring out the Voodoo Labs Analog Chorus if I want a Fender Vibrophone effect. This is my simplest rig ever, but the tone is so sweet it’s hard not to think about…