Recommend pedals for 80's sounds (keyboard synth, 8-bit video games, echo ambiance, glitch/stutter)

[JediMasterThrash]

I've been searching for some interesting pedals. Sounds that you can't get with an regular amp or even a pretty full function multi-effects guitar pedal.

I've been honing in on the 80's sound, specifically,

keyboard synth
- So far the EHX Synth9 seems to be my fav

video game
- the parasit arcadiator seems to do atari/arcade pretty well, but for nes/super mario sounds, I've heard somet good sounds on bit crushers, but I think it really needs a more synth/pad + fuzz sound than a bitcrusher sound. The pigtronix mothership 2 seems to be pretty good at that.
What I'm really looking for is something maybe flexible enough to get from atari to nes to sega genesis type sounds.
The death by audio robot also has some really interesting sounds that kind of fit into this theme.

echo ambiance
- something a regular delay effects can't do. I've been liking modulating echos, like death by audio echo dream 2 can do. The earthquaker rainbow machine also sounds good.

glitch/stutter
- I think these mean different things to different people. I'm kind of looking for something that can kind of create that new retro wave sound. Sort of random pitch and modulation and stuttering sounds, kind of like a bad VHS tape or CD skipping. Something that really creates an ambiance more than a stark effect. A few I've seen in this vein are the Catalinbread Csidman, red panda particle, montreal assembly count to five.

Any recommendations?

 

[TedEH]

Maybe something worth experimenting with is a solution to convert notes into MIDI and use whatever VSTi you want with them. I know you can do this with the Reaper tuner plugin, but I'm sure there's better ways.

 

[bnzboy]

I got a similar tone you are looking for by combining an octave pedal (MXR Octave Deluxe) and an octave fuzz (EQD Fuzz Master General)

 

[PF Chang]

A laptop and some speakers.

 

[TedEH]

I was able to get some almost video-game-y sounds using a neck pickup and a Hotone CRUSH pedal though. It's a very ugly sound, if that's what you're going for.

 

[rexbinary]

Maybe this?

http://www.bestguitareffects.com/alexander-pedals-syntax-error-review/

 

[budda]

Look into the dr scientist bitquest. That pedal is magic.

 

[TedEH]

The Dr Scientist website is amazing. And being Canadian makes me that much more interested.

 

[B.M.F.]

Meris Ottobit Jr.

 

[Cheap]

chase bliss warped vinyl and ehx hog seem like they might be able to cover a fair amount of ground for what you're after. definitely at a cost tho..

 

[Veldar]

Boss - DD 6 for glitch

 

[JediMasterThrash]

Thanks for suggestions. Looking at the DD6, and also noticed the Digitech Obscura, anyone try that? It seems to have some nice modulated and reverse delays. Now that I've discovered reverse delays I think I'd want a pedal that supports that too.
[edit, realized my g-system already has reverse delay. What i'm really looking for that the g-system doesn't have is that kind of disappearing into the clouds delay, like it modulates and fades into the sky creating ambiance]

The warped vinyl is grown on me, that might rise to the top of my list

The ottobit jr is nice too, I think I definitely want something with both bit depth and sampling rate controls. Kind of between that and the WMD pro now. I think the 512 waveforms on the WMD is something nobody else does, and the Pro version lets you save presets, which is nice for any pedal that has more than 3 knobs.

An interesting conundrum for a lot of these pedals. They support such a variety of potential sounds, but then no way to enable/disable more than one of them easily at a time. That's primarily why I've always used multi-fx units, even though efx in them typically aren't as good as the equivalent stand-alone analog pedals. But I like for each preset selection to have a different delay and a different pitch and a different harmony and a different EQ, etc.

Some pedals support midi to control the presets beyond the dials, though I have no experience with that.

 

[JediMasterThrash]

For anyone interested, I ended up going with the Ottobit Jr in the end. The key reasons were two fold.

One, I decided in order to have the most realistic affect, the bit depth/sample rate reduction needs to happen at the end. And since all my pitch/mod/delay/reverb is in stereo, I need something in stereo. An alternative was to get two Mooer Lofi since those are only about 50$ each so it didn't break the bank to get two for stereo.

Two, with a lot of the other bit crushers, they basically were designed to make aliased noise from the sample rate reduction. Which is a cool affect. But to recreate more realistic lo-fi 80's/game sounds, I felt what all those pedals really needed was a low pass filter to combine with the sample rate reduction. And the Ottobit was the only one with a real lo pass filter.

Additonally, the sequencer which can do pitch and sample rate, seems to be able to recreate the sample rate arppegio sounds of the death by audio robot and the red panda bitmap and alternativing octaves of the arcadiator.

I ended up getting a DMC.micro midi box and an expression pedal for it, so we'll see if I can unlock the full potential or not.



i never found anything that appeared to cover 80's synth music better than the EHX Synth9 so I got that. Though I still really like the digitech dirty robot. But I think that once I have a square wave synth up front (like the synth9), i'll be able to recreate everything with my G-system, since it has an auto-wah and auto-formant and tremolo, and I think the dirty robot sound is just a combination of square synth + auto-way + tremolo. Possibly an octaver too. But the dirty robot does it so well it might still be worth using the pedal version. It just seems to nail those like sci fi Terminator movie sounds perfectly.



For the Glitch/Stutter, I haven't gotten anything yet. The red panda particle has a lot you can do with it but in the end i'm not convinced of it's practicality. The Ottobit does have a stutter mode i'll try out, but I don't think it's what I'm gonig after. The caitlinbread csidman really seems to be the only one so far that really can just randomly stutter a zero-delay signal, which is what I'm after. A lot of the pedals, like the count-to-five, a more sample and hold based. I just want something where it's just always on and doing it's thing, and is also random. The Dwarfcraft Grazer I just found the other day, and that I think seems more practical than the particle anyway, but still a bit too in your face. I want something that's more subtle, more like a random occasionally glitchy playback and a full on glitch/stutter affect. If I can find a csidman cheap I'll probably check it out, or see if anything new comes out. Th alexander syntax error also seems really good at what it's doing. Again it might be a bit too over the top for what I'm looking for. But it's something i'd like to try out in person sometime.



For echo ambiance, I've found that a lot of what some of the pedals, like the earthquaker rainbow machine, are doing, I can actually already do with the G-System. A lot of these echo/reverb ambiance pedals just add a feedback loop to a pitch shifter to achieve their affects, and it turns out the pitch shifter in the G-System already has this feedback loop and a delay setting. I was able to re-create most of the rainbow machine affects with it. I think there's still some ambient reverb affects I still can't achieve yet, but i'll make another thread to focus on those.


There's so many pedals and pedal manufacturers out there, it's impossible to keep them all straight.

 

[budda]

With your explanations, im wondering what my fx8 can do. Someone asked for a glitch block but it didnt really gain traction .

 

[TheArsonistsDaughter]

Rainger FX has some cool weirdo stuff...

With your explanations, im wondering what my fx8 can do. Someone asked for a glitch block but it didnt really gain traction .

I know my Axe Fx 2 has some bit-crusher-y options with the drive/fuzz pedals, I haven't messed with them too much, but along with the ring-mod and all the control options there's got to be some glitch-y gold in there somewhere!

 

[NateFalcon]

WMD Geiger counter...Endless fun with these...every square-wave, bit crush, and cool fuzz/distortion imaginable

 

[budda]

I know my Axe Fx 2 has some bit-crusher-y options with the drive/fuzz pedals, I haven't messed with them too much, but along with the ring-mod and all the control options there's got to be some glitch-y gold in there somewhere!

The task is to find good glitchy and kill-me-now glitchy.

Lfo rate modifier on the speed of a tremolo feeding a or synth is an experiment I plan to try.

 

[TheArsonistsDaughter]

The task is to find good glitchy and kill-me-now glitchy.

I'd say the task is to find when to use good glitchy vs when to use kill-me-now glitchy...

 

[budda]

I'd say the task is to find when to use good glitchy vs when to use kill-me-now glitchy...

My bandmate has the high pitch kmn sounds down pat, im looking for lower pitch wackiness

The eq page on most effects in the fx8 lets you set the hz for low and high, which is handy.

 

[cGoEcYk]

I'd just switch instruments and use something like this: