I’m an electric guitarist looking for “his” sound.
I’m not that much into electronic music, but I think an analog synth/oscillator/waveshaper is what I need to get that square-wave, Moog-like sound I’m looking for.
Plus, I’d need also an octave generator. (sub-octave and an upper-octave)
I don’t know if the MF107 and its VCO (with the sync ON, only!) - and maybe another moogerfooger, such as the analog delay, (I’m interested in its LFO with waveforms) are what I’m looking for…
I know that there are more “guitar-meant” effects (pedals) that feature a VCO and/or octave generation, but they seem of lower quality and can be hooked up to a guitar only, which would be a con.
I’ve also noticed most of this guitar-only effects (pedals) - and the Little Phatty - feature a “glide” control… What is it for, exactly?
Could you help me?
Is there anything that the MF107 or the MF107+MF104 can’t do that a single guitar pedal can?
May also the Little Phatty do the job? A couple of Moogerfooger have not a much different price!
If you have a specific sound in mind, I wouldn’t point you towards a MoogerFooger pedal. If you’ve tried a MoogerFooger and like what they do, then there’s the match. Check out all the videos that people put up. If you like what you hear, then go for it. If instead you want a certain sound, listen to more videos and try a bunch of stuff before settling on what turns you on. Otherwise you may just be setting yourself up for disappointment.
Welcome to the world of tone. Like mentioned above - watch lots of vids, try pedals at stores etc. that’s how we’ve all done it. Oh yeah, expect that in a year or three you will go through it again
Some directions to begin your search:
Moogerfooger 107 - not very friendly to guitar on its own, needs at minimum a compressor in front of it to create a more flat linear attack and sustain curve. It does its own sound really well once dialed in.
Have a serious look at the EHX MicroSynth. I would recommend the Bass version. You can ignore the marketing hype with “guitar” pedals, consider them effect pedals that work on all sources. Some are “tuned” to respond better to certain frequencies, but this is not something to hold yourself back with. The EHX will give you everything you mentioned to be seeking, and with an added EQ pedal covers A LOT of ground - everything from raw square wave tone to volume fades, filter sweeps and octave up / down sounds. Remember BASS version.
The Pigtronix Mothership and another one of their pedals might be of interest.
Dr scientist & SubDecay also make pedals that may work for what you need.
Further, there are digital products from Line 6, Digitech etc that can do what you want.
My recommendation: buy the EHX, use it, learn it well, and see if it makes you want something different, like a sputtery fuzz, or more pronounced octave up etc. This is a good starting point pedal (and a secret weapon of many artists).
Edoardo, if you are considering buying a Phatty just for getting a synth tone out of your guitar, I’d advise to try something cheaper and handier first.
The 107 will give you something with more grit, less “squary” I’d say. The 104, although having LFO with cool waveforms, won’t synthesize anything. The LFO is only connected to the delay time. No LFO out.
The EHX BassMicroSynth is certainly something you may like. The other references above as well. Check the EHX website, in the “pitch/octave/synth” page: they are creative guys…
Oh, a website I tend to get back to often is crushthebutton.be (here are their product in the style you may be interested in). It’s a Belgian online shop. I’m not saying buy there, but they have a good choice as well.
Maybe some US have too, though. That being, I don’t even know where you are located.
Edoardo, I started out with the EHX POG2 and the MF 105M midimurf pedal. I’m a guitarist as well, and I was just looking for somethings to really expand the sound of my electric guitar. The murf is probably not what you are looking for, but the POG2 is another good alternative for a pitch shifter. When I was first looking into this stuff, I was watching lots of youtube demos of the various pedals, so I’d recommend doing that. “death by audio” may be another place to look. Haven’t tried their stuff personally, but you might find something there! Also, check out Koma Electronic.
Actually, I’ve been watching some demos before asking for your help.
Both the EHX MicroSynth and the Pigtronix Mothership get very close to what I am looking for but my doubts are:
EHX Micro-Synth: it’s not a synth, as it does not feature a VCO, it is a filter, and I’ve read around about some quality issues.
Mothership: square wave either “on” or “off” only. lower octave only.
Whammy and ring mod: I couldn’t care less. It seems much more popular and acclaimed though.
So I’ve come into the MF107; I’d already have the stuff to compress and/or pre-amp the signal. It has less feature than the others but I thought that if I added some other effect (such as a pitch shifter), its versatility would have turned out more helpful in a chain with other effects.
I thought about a whole slim phatty indeed as buying two good effects is not so cheaper than getting a slim phatty, with all its modulation options and envelope generators indeed. But can I synch the SP oscillators with the guitar?
@Stiiiiiiive: thanks again.
Any European online shop is a big help.
@tommyecho:
I didn’t know “Death By Audio”, nor Koma elektronik. The first one seem to have a couple of products that may suit me while the second offers too
“difficult” stuff at the moment
BTW: this effect I’m looking for does not have to be a pedal. I’d use it at home. On the other hand, It must be analog.
Normally, only with a 13-pin Pickup of some kind installed on your guitar, such as the Roland GK-3 running into a MIDI decoder such as the Roland GI-20 (possibly discontinued) or the Roland GR-55, using the MIDI output.
Another option (which doesn’t require a MIDI pickup installation) is the Sonuus G2M, but I’ve heard people have had mixed results in terms of reliable tracking etc.
Although a different result, you can run the guitar signal into the SP’s “Audio Input”, which will put your signal through the SP’s (low-pass) filter section only (not syncing the oscillators) - which would be a pretty expensive option for a low-pass-wah-like effect, especially when the MF-101 is available.
MIDI controlling software/hardware synthesizer modules via guitar is definitely a harder thing to get right than simply running through effects pedals..
I just heard about this the other day. It’s a new program that is supposed to allow you to use a normal guitar as a midi guitar. I’m about to test it out, and I’ll let you know how it goes. I completely agree with everything David Smyth said in the above post, but if this thing works better than previous options, it could open things up
Update: I just tested it out, and it works pretty great. Of course, this sort of thing always introduces a bit of latency, but the tracking is pretty amazing! I prefer to just play the keyboard, myself, but it’s fun to know that this is out there
With the Ladder Filter and CV input you can have unlimited tonal shaping at your fingertips.
Then get a CP-251 or a another control processor like the Broadcaster by Co-Pilot FX and plug it into the CV input.
Alternatively, I must disagree with tommy and tell you that the MURF has been my first and most committed love among tha foogas. It can do a ton of interesting things resembling flangers, panners, sequencers, wahs, etc. Plus it has a LFO input to control and shape the sweep of the various patterns.
The 107 has been the only fooger I’ve bought and sold twice. Cool sound initially, but seems quite limited with guitar. The envelope follower can be very very glitchy w/ guitar. It seems to be general consensus that it’s not the best MF pedal for the guitarist.
Another great option is the MF-103 . . . with super slow speeds you can acheive with the Triangle wave LFO allow it to be used as a comb filter. Also you can plug in a second sweep LFO to make it outpace the MU-Tron Bi-phase.
I’m also quite intrigued by the Subdecay Starlight DLX Flanger, among the other DLX pedals. I’ve never owned one, but how do I GAS for them!
One last rec . . . the SoundSubstance Fuzzmulator. I know Dale, the designer, and he created a pedal with 4 separate consistent waveshapes (non-oscillating) to mix with and hone your guitar’s signal. It’s been on just about everything I’ve recorded because I can dial in a good wet-dry ratio that really fattens up my tone. Sounds similar to the EHX MicroSynth, but it does not make your sound as sterile. (according to my old Bass player who bought and sold the EHX MS in one week)
What ever you get make sure it has a broad tonal range for the LFO or waveshape mix amount, you don’t necessarily want to eat your guitar signal.
Edoardo, what follows might be obvious, but I’ve read some of your posts letting me think that it is not.
You seem to believe that some boxes that features some of the usual components of a synth will provide you with the sound of a sunth. If you think so, you might be disapointed. In others terms, it’s not because the 104M or 103 have an LFO or the 107 has a VCO that they will make your guitar have the sound these particular components achieve in a synth.
Substractive synthesis in a nutshell…
Here is a quite simplified description of the audio signal flow:
First component: the oscillators, incarned by VCOs in Moog synths. They are the initial source and produce a signal usually rich in harmonics.
Second component: the filter, incarned in a Low Pass in the Moog instruments. It allows to remove some harmonics from the initially rich signal, the one produced by the oscilator(s).
Third component: the amp, incarned by a VCA in Moog synths. It is usually associated with an envelope so that the volume can evolve in time.
Besides the audio signal, you can have other signals that control the different component described above. These signals are generated by different controllers (amongst which lie the LFOs). It’s said that a controller (source) modulates a parameter (destination), that is it replaces your hand tweaking the knob for this parameter.
An LFO allows to replaces your hand turning the knob periodically.
An envelope is another way of having a parameter evolving in time, not periodically this time.
The note you play on a keyboard will also modulate the pitch of some oscillator.
…
Now you have the basic concept. BTW, flangers, phasers or even chorus embed LFOs. They modulates delay times, just as in the 104M.
NOW!.. what you seem to want is obtaining a synth-like sound with your guitar, your guitar being the source of the audio.
If you plug it into a Phatty, it will take the place of the oscillators, BUT NOT CONTROL THEM. That is, it will go through the filter and the amp without interacting with the component that produces that “square wave” you’re after.
With the 107, you’re closer to the solution: although the pitch of the VCO is still not controlled by the note you pluck, a feature called “sync” tend to simulate this. Still not what you are after though.
Here is what I think you need:
Either an intrument/FX that allows you to control an oscillator with th pitch your guitar produces and the volume of it with the volume of the sound out of your guitar (BTW this is a MONOPHONIC process, most of the time: you won’t be able to play more that one note). This is not very common. The Korg MS20 does it, then you can try software but it’s not analogue.
Or an FX that is able to process your guitar sound in order to transform it into a square wave. The usual method here, used in fuzz, is to over amplify the guitar signal until it is totally distorted: the chopped off waveform is very squary then. Ithink the MicroSynth is kind of working like that, with a bit more process to get a cleaner sound.
Voilà. I hope it helps. I hope it does not make things too complicated nor breaks your dream
You may be interested in reading some deeper substractive synthesis documentation, like online tutorials.
Stiiiive has nailed it on the head. So many times, I read a young player is looking to reproduce the “sounds” of a synthesizer, using a bass or guitar as the primary instrument. It just doesn’t work out that way, unless you can be satisfied with a synth “effects” pedal, or combinations of fx, like fuzz, octave down, and envelope filter. But, to truly get to making all the many various synthy sounds, there is simply no substitute for a keyboard synthesizer. Plugging a guitar into a Little Phatty will only get you a filter effect, which can be achieved with a filter pedal just as easily, and alot cheaper. I would suggest that you stick with guitar, and use whatever fx you like to use, but consider buying a synthesizer to play what you seem to be looking for. Best of luck.
@Stiiiiiive Thanks so much for the great explanation!!!
Guys, thank you all very much but I think I shall apologize, I haven’t been clear in the first time
I do not want to play a synth, am looking for a sound, very much like a moog sound … Of course there is no “THE” Moog sound but I mean…
Without having to turn knobs while playing, in order of importance:
Yes, fuzzy of course, but I find most standalone fuzz boxes too noisy.
the attack must be late/slow or there should be no guitar-like “attack” at all
Sub octave. And Higher octave (yes that may be poliphonic though)
A little “phaser-like” maybe, but no jet-like flanging sound
So I thought that having a VCO in the chain would have got me there.
Again, I’m not very much into electronic music, I still have doubts on the meanings of “modular”, “envelope”, “CV”…
Now I have a question/doubt: what does the VCO in the Pigtronix Mothership pedal do, exactly? Is it to make that pedal so popular?
(Thanks also for all the other producers you guys mentioned, I had not heard of most of them…)
Edoardo, a VCO is a sound source just as your guitar. It’s usually pitch controlled via a keyboard. However, you can control it in other ways, one of which is through a system that detect the pitch of an incoming signal and set the VCO pitch on the same value in real time. The Mothership does exaclty this (this is what I mentionned earlier giving the MS20 example…)
So I think the Mothership is one of the component of what you are trying to set up: it’s the one that will make your guitar produce a synth tone. Monophonic!
Then you’ll need a filter: here you can use a MoogerFooger 101, obviously the right candidate.
The 101 will take the amp duties in charge too.
That being said, I don’t have the EHX MicroSynth features in mind but it may do the whole job as a unique box.
Yes and no. The MF-101 will filter, and will respond to DYNAMICs directly - like an auto wah / qtron - the filter follows your volume envelope (how hard you pick for example). You do have much more control of the filter via CV, but you would need to add a CP-251 . MP-201 to achieve something similar to the EHX.
The difference is that the EHX MicroSynth is a TRIGGERED filter sweep with fixed start and stop frequencies, and a duration for the sweep to take place. You can set it to filter upwards or downwards, or remain fixed. Your volume level simply triggers the sweep to start, and it will not follow your volume level, but it will be re-triggered based on your volume peak.
The EHX can remove the attack of the guitar with a volume envelope slider, producing a fade in effect. Along with a compressor you can really make it sound synth like.
As far as others have stated about it’s sterile sound - I can appreciate that statement, it can be sterile at times. However, once you really spend time with it and really work with it’s very subtle adjustments you can get really good at dialing in unique sounds that are anything but sterile. When I think of a sterile pedals, companies like BOSS and DOD come to mind, but that’s a preference / opinion thing. The EHX interacts very will with other pedals, and doesn’t care about buffers / true bypass etc. My Guitar player and me on bass together using the same pedal sound completely different, and both sit in a mix really well.
As with the mothership, adding a filter or EQ pedal (strongly recommend a parametric) after the MicroSynth, you take the pedal so much further.
Again… I use the MicroSynth, and my own other methods to reproduce very synthetic aggressive / hard sounding bass lines. You can achieve similar sounds to synths, but only to a point of course. Dead Weather, for example, sounds… Controllable Fuzz, Filter sweeps, and EQ / Compression / level control are the keys to make it happen. That’s all I’m saying.
I’m a guitarist with a Pigtronix Mothership. I like it a lot, but I would recommend trying it yourself before buying. It doesn’t really handle dynamic playing well. When you play a note that is loud enough to trigger an output, the Mothership generates a note at the level set by a front panel control. Playing harder won’t make the output note louder.
I think you mentioned that you weren’t interested in the Mothership’s ring mod. I’m not either, but it’s not a normal ring mod and I use it to generate an octave up, which I think was something else you wanted.
I don’t use the whammy but I do sometimes use the glide feature. It slides the generated note up to the target by an adjustable amount.
Greetings! first post
I’ve been following this thread with interest as I bought my FreqBox for guitar and found it to be not what I expected and quite challenging to use. It still is… which is a good thing imo.
One trick I’ve discovered is that patching the ENV OUT to MIX IN makes it more “usable” for guitar.
Sample setting to get started
Freq: noon
Sync: On
Wave: noon
Drive: 3 o’clock
Output: 9 o’clock
Env. Amount: noon
FM Amount: 3 o’clock
Mix: 10 o’clock
When you pick lightly or roll off your guitar volume you get more of your clean guitar signal and when you play hard and dig into the strings you get more of that bite from the VCO signal. I like having that increased dynamic response, chords sound a little clearer, and the decay is less harsh. This works well for me for band/live situations. It’s a relatively tame setting for this unit but sometimes less is more. That being said, you’re missing out if you buy one of these and don’t at least explore the more extreme sounds.
I don’t have experience with the EHX MicroSynth or Mothership but I would love to own those too based the demos I’ve heard.
If you’re wanting a full-blown Moog analog synthesizer sound for your guitar, there’s nothing better than the Electro Harmonix Micro Synth imo. That’s pretty much going to have everything you want. Throw a Moog MF-101 Lowpass Filter after it (I do this) and there’s truely nothing closer to getting that Moog sound with a straight up guitar/guitar signal. That being said, I personally would HIGHLY, HIGHLY suggest you seek out the older style trapezoidal-chassis 24-volt model, NOT the current purple smaller-chassis 9-volt model. I’ve owned both and can tell you that there is a huge difference in “mojo” between the newer and older/reissue models, due to voltage and components I suspect…they can be found on ebay quite often. The original models from the '70s go for quite a bit more money, obviously. Mine is a '90s “reissue” model, which were built to the exact same specs as the '70s models (per Mike Matthews in a published interview.) Point is, the '90s reissue models go for quite a bit less than the '70s models, yet they’re both equally as good, so keep that in mind when searching and spending money. They can easily be modded for an expression pedal input to it’s filter sweep as well.
The original/reissue EHX Microsynth was designed by David Cockerell, the designer of the EMS Synthi. It’s a wonderful box that responds extremely well, once you learn how to use it. It’s not hard to use at all, but you kind of have to change your playing style because it’s more of a tigger style instument. It’s not an effect, it’s a monophonic analog synthesizer so you’ll be getting the real deal. It’s basically a great moog-sounding guitar synthesizer, and has always been marketed that way as well. Adding the MF-101 after it puts the icing on the cake.
Here’s a couple quotes from Bill Ruppert (the guy that does Electro Harmonix’s Effectology series videos:)
“The Microsynth is a pure analog effect. Its funky and contains David Cockerell analog filters you can not duplicate in the VG-99. The distortion and flip-flop octave circuits are monophonic but VERY unique.”
“The MicroSynth has an amazing amount of bottom end in the sound if you crank it up. It is SO PHAT! Who needs Moog Taurus bass pedals when you have a guitar and a MicroSynth?”
“Bill Ruppert”
He also says it’s one of his favorite effects/boxes ever. It’s one of mine as well. Like I said, if you want the Moog sound, look no further than the Microsynth. All you need is a guitar, amp, and the Microsynth.
while the second offers too
