View other reviews for this product:
Fireguy8402 « Not bad... not great. »
Published on 12/23/11 at 08:09The Electro Harmonix Small Stone Nano is very small phaser from the Nano line. It is a very bare bones phaser with very few tweaks available. An input from your guitar, an output to your amplifier, a power jack , one rate knob, and a color switch that changes the frequency spectrum and hollows out the sound. It’s small in size (2” by 4.3” by 2.2”), so it takes up little of your pedal board . There is a red LED that lets you know when the pedal is engaged and the pedal can be powered by a 9 volt battery or by an additional power supply.
UTILIZATION
This pedal is built very strong and should handle plenty of road use. Metal enclosure and metal jacks, along with a sturdy stomp style switch all look very durable. There is one knob that allows you to change the rate, and I’m glad Electro Harmonix made this an oversized knob, because it allows you to make adjustments to the rate of the waveform on the fly with your foot. The color adjustment is available via a small flip switch and does change the overall sound of the pedal.
SOUND QUALITY
This pedal does suck a little high end off my tone and there is a slight drop in volume when used with my Marshall. The Small Stone has a sound of it’s own, so it sounds like a Small Stone should. A lot of people either prefer the Small Stone or the Phase 90 because they have different sounds, I suggest you try both out and see which fits your style best. Overall I feel the Phase 90 is a little brighter and cleaner with a more defined swoosh, and the Small Stone is a little darker pedal with a more low end swoosh. Adding the color switch does make this slightly more versatile, but I prefer the Phase 90. This pedal does have an issue with the bypass that I’ve noticed on a couple of my amps, it allows the modulation to seep through the pedal even when the pedal is bypassed. So even when the pedal is off, there is an underlying modulation sound going on, which makes the pedal useless for me.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall this isn’t a bad modulation pedal. It does do the dark swooshing sounds nicely, but it lacks in tweakability. If the added a knob to adjust the depth of the waveform I would find this pedal a lot more useful, but the rate knob alone doesn’t allow me to dial in what I need even if the overall tone from the pedal is nice. The bypass on this thing kills it for me, so I would point buyers in another direction. If the Phase 90 doesn’t do what you’re looking for I would still look for a pedal that has a few more features and a better bypass.
UTILIZATION
This pedal is built very strong and should handle plenty of road use. Metal enclosure and metal jacks, along with a sturdy stomp style switch all look very durable. There is one knob that allows you to change the rate, and I’m glad Electro Harmonix made this an oversized knob, because it allows you to make adjustments to the rate of the waveform on the fly with your foot. The color adjustment is available via a small flip switch and does change the overall sound of the pedal.
SOUND QUALITY
This pedal does suck a little high end off my tone and there is a slight drop in volume when used with my Marshall. The Small Stone has a sound of it’s own, so it sounds like a Small Stone should. A lot of people either prefer the Small Stone or the Phase 90 because they have different sounds, I suggest you try both out and see which fits your style best. Overall I feel the Phase 90 is a little brighter and cleaner with a more defined swoosh, and the Small Stone is a little darker pedal with a more low end swoosh. Adding the color switch does make this slightly more versatile, but I prefer the Phase 90. This pedal does have an issue with the bypass that I’ve noticed on a couple of my amps, it allows the modulation to seep through the pedal even when the pedal is bypassed. So even when the pedal is off, there is an underlying modulation sound going on, which makes the pedal useless for me.
OVERALL OPINION
Overall this isn’t a bad modulation pedal. It does do the dark swooshing sounds nicely, but it lacks in tweakability. If the added a knob to adjust the depth of the waveform I would find this pedal a lot more useful, but the rate knob alone doesn’t allow me to dial in what I need even if the overall tone from the pedal is nice. The bypass on this thing kills it for me, so I would point buyers in another direction. If the Phase 90 doesn’t do what you’re looking for I would still look for a pedal that has a few more features and a better bypass.