mikeyx13 wrote:I made it to the top of the King of Tone wait list, but after getting The Elements I no long want it...I had a chance to compare them side by side and found I could get better tone, in my opinion, with my new favorite pedal. I am loving the sounds and textures I get with The Elements, even close to six months after getting it I am still finding great new settings. Guess that frees up just enough money for a Cosmicchorus :) It's almost my birthday!
Awesome you're still digging it, thanks Michael! You betcha we can do a birthday Cosmi too, let's party! *smile*
Tristan wrote:I don't know what you guys are talking about, I thought The Elements was the King of Tone, especially around these parts... :p
Haha! *boosh* (that's a Frisky Dingo boosh, not a mighty boosh)
You know, the thing about op amp based gain amplifying circuits is that they all can have a similar/general nature.. I don't mean to say they all sound the same, but they all have a big thing in common that flavours what they do. With enough control over the gain and eq and clipping nature you can kinda float around a bit between the well known op amp overdrive/distortion pedals.
The Elements isn't really a distortion pedal... it's a gain and eq pedal. It's got a ton of gain available and I personally use it mainly as a high gain distortion pedal, but it's a booster, it's an equalizer, it's overdrive, it's distortion, it's fuzz, it's whatever you choose to do with its gain and eq and clipping control.
It's much less good at sounding like different devices clipping.. like it doesn't really sound like a Fuzz Face at all, the iconic sound of transistor fuzz. It can do the IC Big Muff but not really the 4 transistor style. The Frazz uses a 1 watt audio amp for its grind, the Elements can't do that either.
But if you open up a pedal and see an op amp inside, the Elements can probably have a go at it. You know, within reason. I don't mean to say the Elements can just outright duplicate any op amp gain pedal! It's just that there's a lot of mystery and hype surrounding overdrive pedals and it's not necessarily always true.. it's really just about gain and eq and clipping nature and if you lined up 24 op amp based "overdrive" pedals you'd maybe think they all sound kinda similar, in some settings at least.
