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”