EHX Forums

Electro-Harmonix 12AX7 (also ECC83, 7025) Made In Russia

2012-01-30T08:17:04-05:00

Hi there,

I have just had my Peavey 5150 combo amp re biased with the Electro Harmonix 12AX7 (also ECC83, 7025) out put valves made in Russia. I first tried the amp out at yesterdays band practice and they sound great!!

They have really nice amounts of Hi Gain distortion and do not have the microphonic noise and feedback I had with my old out put valves!

I am well impressed and I would recommand this tubes to anyone who uses hi gain amps or wants a hi gain sounding amp.

Les from London

A song with my Freeze, LPB-1, Deluxe Electric Mistress + Double Muff on vocals…

2012-01-23T03:04:23-05:00

Danelectro Dano Pro + Vox Night Train 15W
LPB-1, cranked all the way from beginning to end.
FREZZE on the verses.
DOUBLE MUFF on vocals.
Deluxe ELECTRIC MISTRESS on solo and outro.
This is my way to review these pedals. They are all awesome. I ONLY use Electro Harmonix, which might sound stupid, but I will never buy anything else.
Two more songs to come with Micro Synth and a crazy cool sounding Memory Man with Hazarai.
Enjoy!

http://soundcloud.com/iamsuperape/king-against-the-wall-hit-the

Metal Muff, how you annoy your customers

2011-10-25T13:07:37-05:00

Hey there,
I and from Germany and always looking for better metal pedals. I have had cheap products and some more expensive like the Rat or Boss MT-2 but couldn’t resist to post my opinion here.

Pro:
Sound:
The EHX Metal Muffs sound was the best I have ever experienced. It gives you the ‘chunky’ sound with lots of distortion but still remains very clear (even through cheap amps), so you can hear every different note. You would expect this only from highly priced amps.

Style: Many nice slogans inside the packaging and even inside the pedal itself. I like these kinds of ‘easter eggs’.

Contra:
Durability.
It’s produced sloppy like it was made by children in China. Seriously, my Pedal was used as all my others were, no scratches, only a bit of dust AND IT BROKE IN MY LIVING ROOM IN 4 DAYS!! THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN WITH PEDALS BEYOND $20. Its now only making some fuzz mixed with the guitar singal, not even the bypass is working anymore. I have had BOSS pedals falling from heights above 3 foot without any damage.
I read that the Metal Muff’s 9V jack breaks really often, so I connected a battery but mine seems just ‘overall broken’. I’m studying some kind of engineering stuff, so I will probably try to repair it in a few years. Until then I can really say that this cheap production will not pay off, although I will have to buy another one, as soon as my hatred against EHX is gone and I have gathered another 80€. The next is gonna have a guarantee, for sure.

Its kinda my only guitar thing that ever broke, I would never take one of these on stage, as I’m the lucky owner of a good used metal amp made in Germany that will not break.

A song with my MICROSYNTH…

2012-01-03T16:33:36-05:00

I have purchased the MicroSynth to make some psichedelic noise.
One day I was bored and I tried to use it as distortion.
It blew me away.
Check the link below…
I use a Dano Pro Reissue through a Vox Night Train and a Vox v212bn.
MicroSynth all the way. No other effects.
In the second verse there are no guitars and the bass guitarist is using the same MicroSynth (for guitar).
It’s pure power. And ZERO feedback.
The Dano Pro is a funny/crappy guitar to play this kind of music, but the MicroSynth is magic.
I hope you like it.

http://www.iamsuperape.se

Please XO the Polychorus.

2011-06-10T03:55:13-05:00

I think the Polychorus should be converted to an XO box. I love the old chassis but with all the space it takes up along with the noise I got I had to sell it. If it was put in an XO box I would by it in a second! I wouldn’t mind it being mono like the original as well.

Stereo Electric Mistress XO

2009-01-12T19:57:38-05:00

Groovy little box for sure, you can get some really gnarly flanging sounds out of this thing (that’s good, I guess). The chorus didn’t impress me much. I already have a Small Clone so I just use that instead, but if you don’t already have a chorus, it will suffice. Maybe the chorus section could have been omitted completely, in leu of a color knob for the flange ( it is a mistress after all). Pretty sure this thing is digital, last I heard (correct me if I’m wrong) so it’s not quite as warm as I like my effects, that’s why I’m probably going to sell it and upgrade to the Deluxe Mistress. All in all, good pedal, good value. You’re getting two effects in one (something I’m not really crazy about, but that’s just me) for about 15 bucks less than a Deluxe EM (About $120, so if you can spare 15 more bones, you should spring for the DLX, I don’t know why I didn’t.)

magnum 44

2010-12-10T02:44:00-05:00

i find the magnum 44 to be simply amazing, running through one 12” sweet tone ! wow ! thanks for a great product

Q-Tron Plus - minor disappointments

2011-08-09T18:37:09-05:00

Hi everybody,

this is my first post in this forum and it is about my first Electro-Harmonix effect pedal. Just yesterday I received my brand new Q-Tron Plus in its violet box, and now I am just back home after the first test drive in my rehearsal room.

First impressions:
Overall the effect is great. The circuit has many settings which give you a very vast range of options to model your sound. I was inspired to buy it by Norm Stockton, after he answered me on fb that he used the old Mu-Tron for his recording “Pondering the Sushi”. I really dig the sounds he produces in this piece, so after some research I figured that the Mu-Tron is now reborn as the EHX Q-tron. I decided to go for the “Plus” version just to have the extra features at hand, should I ever need them (I play bass). I was able to dial in a pretty close resemblance to the bubbly sound I was after without too much trouble. After that it was 4 hours of pure fun My guitarist liked it too!

I was also very pleased with the included power supply. It has a reasonable length of cable and seems pretty heavy for it’s size, so I guess it is not a switching mode power supply, but a good old transformer and I like this. And the unit is really quiet when using power from the mains, which is great, especially since there is no option to run it on battery

Now the ranting part, I just can’t skip it:

1. Gain: My impression is that the overall gain of the unit when boost=off is not 1, not even close to 1. The processed signal has noticeably higher level than the signal in bypass mode. This annoyed me cause when I engaged the unit I was ridiculously louder compared to my previous levels and had to compensate with the volume on my bass. I have not performed measurements to back this up, but this is my “end-user” experience. I would really love an independent output level control and I will probably add one.

2. Footswitch: You guys have put in this effect the crappiest, lowest quality footswitch I have ever seen. Not only is it hard to press, but it also causes “gunshots” to be heard from my amp when I step on it. Moreover - at about the 10-th time I used it it refused to disengage, the button part just went up and down without actually operating the switch. It worked after some more attempts, but - is that the way a brand new, out of the box unit should perform? I expect the footswitch to fall apart by itself before long, it doesn’t feel sturdy at all. At first I was inclined to contact the support, but decided not to, cause I am already too tired of chasing another company’s support for the same problem in their product. So I will probably have to change that switch myself.

To continue on this topic - I don’t think there is much economic benefit in using crappy switches. Personally I would gladly pay $10 more and have a really good switch. And while I am at it I will share a thought with you. Since EHX is capable as a company to develop and produce so many different electronics products it shouldn’t be hard for you to develop your own relay based switching solution similar to this one: http://www.muzique.com/schem/bypass.htm The guy used to sell ready boards for around $5, and if he hadn’t discontinued his project I would probably have stockpiled on these. The parts are not expensive, so adding such circuit to a product wouldn’t make it much more expensive, but would increase the quality. I hope you get my point.

And finally - an idea: In my opinion there should actually be 2 footswitches on the unit - one on/bypass and one momentary, that would allow the performer to quickly step on it in order to use the filter only on a short phrase and then have the filter bypassed at the moment they lift their foot. I am surely going to do something in that direction too

So, these are my first impressions of the Q-Tron Plus. It is definitely going to stay on my pedalboard, but I will need to address some issues with it in order to make it perfect.

Cheers,
Marin Dimitrov

The Ravish Sitar

2011-10-05T19:13:15-05:00

Bonsoir!
I have had the pleasure of playing my new Ravish Sitar for four days now and wish to say that this is an extremely sophisticated piece of equipment! With some wonderful sounds already dialled in and more to come when programming starts. (RTM time?)
Here are a few initial thoughts about EHX’s wonderful gift to us aficionados and which I muttered to myself during my recent musical trip on the RS:
1) Get two amps - one for the Main Output (Lead Voice) and one for the Sympathetic Output
(Drone)…yes, there are two dedicated outputs on the RS.
2) Get three amps - two for a Stereo Memory Man (Main Output) and one for the Sympathetic Output.
3) Get four amps - two for one Stereo Memory Man (Main Output) and two for a second Stereo
Memory Man (Sympathetic Output. Now life is getting interesting.
4) Watch the mids on the amp(s)’ EQs since the Ravish can come up with sudden tonal surprises.
5) Learn to play the Ravish with your guitar since guitar dynamics, volume and tone settings can
change the sound scape of the Ravish dramatically without having to tweak a single nob on the
pedal itself. (This is true)
6) Use an expression pedal mainly for the beautifully consistent Drone Mode.
7) Use an expression pedal just every now and then on the Pitch Mode.
8) Buy two expression pedals.
9) Remember which key is selected in the Key Mode. Très sensible!
10) Read The Manual
11) The Holy Stain is a good companion to the Ravish Sitar.
12) The Stereo Memory Man is a good companion to the Holy Stain and to the Ravish Sitar. Be warned!
Sounds can reach cosmic proportions!

I played an SG with Seymour Duncan Classic Humbuckers and then a Fender Roadworn Telecaster with Texas Special PUs into a Vox. The SG had a set of 11s, the Telecaster a set of 10s. The Telecaster worked the best for me although the SG triggered some impressive tonal patterns (see 4). This is an exciting and highly inspirational piece of Electro-Harmonix magic! My Ravish Sitar has already featured in a couple of TDG’s numbers and worked like a dream when we did some live recording, crisp, clear sounds with no buzz or interference whatsoever, even when it was coupled with the Holy Stain in Dirt Mode. Straight chords are no issue, sound right on, strange chords produce a wide and varied musical universe, exotic chords produce microtonal response. And, last but not least, the memory storage works easily and smoothly with the option to return to the default factory presets when you get lost in waves of microtonal harmonics and have forgotten the way back to your original musical intention (see 1 to 12).

To sum this all up …. The Ravish Sitar is a classic.

Signal Pad, Anyone?

2009-02-21T16:48:12-05:00

Just wondering about them and nobody anywhere online has a review of them… yet. I’m mostly interested is how it “breathes life into your favorite pedals” like the description says. So, yeah, fire away, please.