IdiotBox TourBox reviews, progress & other misc. ramblinzs

[jrmy]

AWRIGHT! HERE... WE HAVE... TWO OF JRMY'S DEMOS! Or, uh, audio clips. Or something.

Both of these were recorded with the signal chain Fender Jazz Bass > pedal > M-audio FastTrack Pro > Garageband (with a neutral amp sim). Both of them go clean tone first, then the same riff over and over AND OVER, and then some other stuff that wasn't the same riff. No stacking, no other pedals, no ambience.

First up: The Death Ray! Sure enough, this one generates all sorts of laser-beam-y goodness. The trick is to really play with the first two frequency/filter knobs - there's gold up in them thar hills. I found that I got the best results in the higher, screechier end of the spectrum - with them lower, the pedal tended to glitch & fart out more. But from maybe 12:00 on up, all sorts of mayhem could be had. Also manually sweeping the knobs was AMAZING! If you have an expression pedal DEFINITELY DEFINITELY DEFINITELY use it here. I get to that at the very end of the demo, and then basically futz around with sweeping the frequency for like a minute and a half. It was so much fun, I coulda gone another hour, no prob.

EDIT: oh, another really cool thing - the pedal did a kind of modulated trem thing in the decay when I'd hold chords. That was really cool.

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/thewyrrejimes/death-ray-demo[/soundcloud]

Next: The Blasteroid. Man, this thing SLAYS on bass (and probably baritone & down-tuned guitar). You want yer sludgy Sabbath-in-a-can? Here you go! As I understand, It's a straight clone of the Earth Tone Graphic Fuzz, a mid-70's fuzz pedal with a nasty EQ/filter knob. You can get a lot of "cocked wah" (TWSS!) sounds out of it. Past 1:00, I could hear a distinct EQ "ring" that was probably just the tone knob affecting whatever hiss I was generating, and at 2:00 it got kind of piercing. That said, it would certainly cut through a mix! My personal favorite sound for this thing on bass was with the tone all the way down, or up to about 10:30, but if I were using it for solos, I could imagine it being really useful around noon. Also, at some point I'm going to mess around with it and modulation, because I'm guessing a phaser or flange would love to grab on to that EQ spike (TWSSx2!) wherever it was parked.

So yeah, here's the Blasteroid. Just to be a perverse bastid, I start the pedal part with the EQ cranked, and then dial it back to the bass-tastic range. Also, my apologies for using such a long riff (TWSSx3?) - I was just sorta inspired by the pedal to go with something like that.

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/thewyrrejimes/blasteroid-demo[/soundcloud]

I'll review my Orange Cycle recording at some point and see if it's worth posting.

Thanks again to everyone who's participating! Looking forward to what you guys think & record.

[Chankgeez]

... Changkeez ...

When did I start spelling my screen name this way, jymr?

(just kidding)

Thanks for all the words and the clips ...

[jrmy]

... Changkeez ...

When did I start spelling my screen name this way, yjmr?

(just kidding)

Thanks for all the words and the clips ...

Oh crap, that must have been the damned auto-correct! Sorry, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again Clangkseez!

[D.o.S.]

Box just showed up.

Beyond Stoked. I know people have said it before, but the packaging is far and away the nicest I've seen when it comes to boutique/small pedal builders. Shirt is rad. Going to read back through the thread and fire it up later today.

[Chankgeez]

Box just showed up.

Beyond Stoked. I know people have said it before, but the packaging is far and away the nicest I've seen when it comes to boutique/small pedal builders. Shirt is rad. Going to read back through the thread and fire it up later today.

Have fun.

[D.o.S.]

Boxing up the swag to send out to the next ILF'er in the next day or so. No clips, sorry bros!

Thoughts ahead.

Blasteroid Fuzz

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note 1: Holding with my tenure on a handful of properly equipped Sabbathian worship warships, imagine my surprise when, on a cosmic whim from beyond time and space, the Blasteroid and I set the controls for the heart of the sun and went right for NOT Lord of This World or N.I.B., but The Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive for a solid ten minutes.

Instant Vol. 4, says IdiotBox. Clone of the elusive Earth Sounds Research Graphic Fuzz, says Idiotbox. Loud as fuck, says me. Gobs and gobs of touch-sensitive sonic annihilation, says me. The graphic is spot on when it comes to the explosive joy that's inside.

Lurking within this righteously heavy box of burnt orange is a filter with suspicious resonant qualities. Especially noticeable on chords, the SMASH knob acts like a Blend knob on loan from the Blue Box, and from noon onward the filter begins to steal the show from the fuzz tone, which is vaguely muffish ala a fifteen day growth after a bikini wax. The Blasteroid likes to get hammered, and digging in with ze fingers and ze nails brought forth layers of sound and fury that had blunt smoking pipers kicking down the gates of dawn with big ass smiles plastered all over their paisley faces. Add fifths and octaves on the skinnier strings for extra helpings of gnar.

Recommended Riffs: The Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive, Fu Manchu's Guardrail, Kyuss's Gardenia

Laser Fuzz

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A confession—I hate gated fuzz. Hate it. Hate it hate it hate it hate it. The Lazer Fuzz is ridiculously gated. So there's that. Moving on.

The character of the LZ is pretty spectacular, and the pedal is aptly named. A square wave fuzz with one knob and a three way toggle that, per the literature, “controls the lo-fi tracking of the frequency divider.” Groove on. Southward seems to be the most normal, and the topmost peak turns your signal into a squelchy zappy conflux of bleep bloop and zronk. Doesn't rip in the way that many buzzy fuzz colors tend to, instead it manipulates the mix with creepy robot tentacles. Warm sounding, in spite of all the above. One could call it the Blooperbuzz ZapBloof, pronounced like the Mudhoney record. And when rocking the 'Honey, the LZ gets trashy and nasty in all the best ways possible.

Also, when run after a gain-y booster—for me, the trusty Dirge DOS250—the boost cancels out the awkwardly gross gating a bit, the tone become super velcro-y, and chaos reigns supreme, especially when bashing away at the strings with wreck-full abandon.

Recommended Riffs: Mudhoney's The Money Will Roll Right In, The Stooges I Wanna Be Your Dog. James Gang's Funk #49 (a must hear when LZ'd).

Mad Doctor Stutter

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Not a tremolo on paper. Better than a tremolo in practice. Can get that ultra-necessary One of These Days beepity boppity going, which is an absolute must 'round these ears. The total on/off bit dictates a whole lot more playing on top of yourself than is generally appropriate with company present/sounds a whole lot better than trying to go over the top on a more normal trem. The Ratio and toggle switch take a minute to get used to, as the interaction betwixt is counterintuitive if you're a nitwit like me. Also, as I'm 100% expressionless I didn't have a chance to play with that function. Sounds fucking awesome. I'll almost certainly buy one at some point.

Recommended Riffs: The Floyd's One of These Days. Frank Zappa's Peaches En Regalia (the intro)

Death Ray

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Yes, it is. This thing is a modulating signal rapist of indeterminate origin.

Note 1:Fair warning: I use a whole lot of not-high end in my basic tone. This pedal lives, breathes, and eviscerates in the higher end of the sonic register. You may have to adjust your amp to really get the most out of it.

Note 2: with a gain device in front of it (in this case, the Earthbound Supercollider) and the guitar volume down to zero, there's a nice throat-y vowel tone hiding beneath and before the chaos.

Note 3: the top knob controls the width of the “weirdness,” while the middle knob controls the height. With the middle knob at about 3 o' clock and the top knob at your fingertips you can get into Hawkwind's airspace. Would make an excellent addition to a noisy tabletop rig, or any situation where you could feed it a constant signal and have free digits to twiddle.

Recommended Riffs: Carl Sagan's Cosmos theme.

Orange Cycle

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SO. FUCKING. COOL.

Incredibly intuitive 8 step sequencer that features a master low-pass filter, a master tone that adjusts the pitch of all eight steps, a master speed, a hold function, and individual adjustments to each step. I wasn't sure how to play with it for the first five seconds, and after that it was all gravy, baby. It's got a tasty synthetic tone on its own, and when you combine it with other gain effects and modulators there's a whole host of joy in this box. Boy. Jox. Cyange Oracle. All shall dig.

Per it's online dating profile;
Likes: Descending bass lines, old school vidja games, using the hold button in conjunction with pitch sweeps.
Dislikes: Clean sounds. Milkshakes. The Best of Foghat.

Recommend Riffs: Don't be silly.

[jrmy]

Perhaps no clips, but some of the best print reviews in recent memory. Nicely done, sir!

[Chankgeez]

Yep, nice write ups, D.o.S.

Sounds like you had some fun.

[D.o.S.]

Tourbox is on it's way to the space(cow)6oy.

[space6oy]

Tourbox is on it's way to the space(cow)6oy.

[space6oy]

arrived safely today! box is getting to be a bit rough though, UPS store sticker warning about damaged deliveries made me hesitate. ok for me to give it less beat up packaging when i pass it on? if not no worries, just thought i'd offer.

[Chankgeez]

I don't mind (and I don't think Matt would either) if you give it a new shipping container, space6oy.

Do whatever you think is necessary to get this IdiotBox TourBox along to the next person. Thanks.

Have fun with those pedals!!!

[space6oy]

ok, will do. thanks dudes! so pumped to be part of this!

[space6oy]

does the blasteroid have to have an individual power supply? rigged 'em up last night using a standard boss 9v and a chain, all the others work fine w/ that, blasteroid first in line passes signal fine when bypassed, LED lights when engaged but doesn't pass signal then. works fine w/ the supply by itself, just thought i'd ask what's up w/ that since the others all work fine in the power chain...

[Chankgeez]

Yes. (From the original post in this thread:)

The Blasteroid needs an isolated power supply.

The Blasteroid also behaves differently with and without a buffer placed before it. I encourage you to try it both ways.