View other reviews for this product:
tjon901 « Psychedelic sounds from the 60s »
Published on 05/26/11 at 12:41Electro-Harmonix has been making crazy guitars pedals since the 70s with a lot of their designs emulating iconic sounds from the 60s. Located in New York Electro-Harmonix has made some of the most iconic and unusual guitar accessories of the last 50 years. They are most famous for their American version of the Big Muff pedal. The Micro Synth is one of their most unusual pedals. It is able to emulate all sorts of strange sounds from the 60s. It can make your guitar sound like a Fender Rhodes or a Moog Synth. You can sound like you have an octavia on or sound like you are playing backwards. You will think you are at a Pink Floyd recording session when you switch it on. New progressive bands like Smashing Pumpkins have used these kinds of pedals to great results.
UTILIZATION
The face of the box has ten slider controls featuring four independent voices, one input and one output jack, effect on/off footswitch and power on/off switch. Not going crazy with the sliders is the key to getting a good usable tone. The trigger slider controls how hard you have to hit the signal for the effect to kick in. The sub-octave slider isolates and controls the bass harmonic of the guitar sound. The guitar slider controls just that. It controls how much of the guitars original sound make it through the sound of the effects. The octave slider is another octave parallel to the bass octave. Square wave controls the saturation of the actual synth sound effect. Anyone who has played a keyboard synth will recognize the square wave tone. Attack delay does what it says, it delays the attack. With a delayed attack you can get the weird backwards guitar sound. The resonance control should just be re-labeled presence. The start and stop frequency knobs control when and synth tone comes in and when it stops respectively. If you want the synth sound to last longer with every note you would turn down the stop slider. These two sliders also control the pitch of the synth sound. With a high start frequency and low stop frequency the synth sound will start with a high pitch then go to a low one as the note sustains. The last slider just controls the rate of the effect.
SOUND QUALITY
You can get all the classic synth tones with this pedal. It feels like you are not playing guitar anymore. It does not do modern key synth tones it only does the classic ones. You can get all the weird sounds used by Pink Floyd and Hawkwind. You will find yourself playing with the settings on the pedal more than playing the guitar. This is not a set it and forget it pedal. It has too many sounds on tap to just use one.
OVERALL OPINION
This is one of Electro-Harmonix's coolest devices. There is not anything else like this on the market. With the solid construction and being built in America it is well worth its price. I would not want to rely on something this complex built in a factory who knows where. Electro-Harmonix knows what they are doing when they make a pedal like this and this is the best of the best.
UTILIZATION
The face of the box has ten slider controls featuring four independent voices, one input and one output jack, effect on/off footswitch and power on/off switch. Not going crazy with the sliders is the key to getting a good usable tone. The trigger slider controls how hard you have to hit the signal for the effect to kick in. The sub-octave slider isolates and controls the bass harmonic of the guitar sound. The guitar slider controls just that. It controls how much of the guitars original sound make it through the sound of the effects. The octave slider is another octave parallel to the bass octave. Square wave controls the saturation of the actual synth sound effect. Anyone who has played a keyboard synth will recognize the square wave tone. Attack delay does what it says, it delays the attack. With a delayed attack you can get the weird backwards guitar sound. The resonance control should just be re-labeled presence. The start and stop frequency knobs control when and synth tone comes in and when it stops respectively. If you want the synth sound to last longer with every note you would turn down the stop slider. These two sliders also control the pitch of the synth sound. With a high start frequency and low stop frequency the synth sound will start with a high pitch then go to a low one as the note sustains. The last slider just controls the rate of the effect.
SOUND QUALITY
You can get all the classic synth tones with this pedal. It feels like you are not playing guitar anymore. It does not do modern key synth tones it only does the classic ones. You can get all the weird sounds used by Pink Floyd and Hawkwind. You will find yourself playing with the settings on the pedal more than playing the guitar. This is not a set it and forget it pedal. It has too many sounds on tap to just use one.
OVERALL OPINION
This is one of Electro-Harmonix's coolest devices. There is not anything else like this on the market. With the solid construction and being built in America it is well worth its price. I would not want to rely on something this complex built in a factory who knows where. Electro-Harmonix knows what they are doing when they make a pedal like this and this is the best of the best.