Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:39 am Posts: 1339 Location: Northern Lower Peninsula, Michigan
Re: EHX "9" Pedals
As I mentioned on FB, at Oz's we tried out most of the EHX pedals he had in stock last week when no one else showed up for our weekly guitar/songwriting class. The three knob POG was really impressive. Probably the best Octave effect I've tried. For me, the deal breaker with the Mel 9 was the fixed modulation. If there's some way to control that, someone let me know. That one I only like the first two patches that remind me of the Moody Blues & KC. Did a real Mellotron have fixed modulation ? The flute was not as good as the flute in my C9 because of that. I've never played a Mellotron, perhaps that's how they work and they duplicated it.
At 2015 NAMM, one of the reps demonstrated the C9 to me, which was part of a huge pedal board of their effects. Typically it's best to run the C series as the first pedal in the chain. I've tried using a compressors in front but it does little to nothing. Different instrument produce different results. My Martin acoustic works really well with the C9. The rep seemed to prefer using the C and B9 with the Super Pulsar tremolo pedal, which really brings out the sound of these. I had to ask him to shut it off so I could hear just the C9.
Often I tend to find using a pick works best in many cases. With my Grand Stick I tend to hear some tracking issues with the C9. That Synth 9 works far better than the synth effect in my L6 Helix. I find a lot of synth pedals outside of EHX are difficult to control, but this one no issues at all. Although these C pedals have little tolerance for bad technique. Keep notes properly fretted, if you do not hold a note properly, the effect with either die out or make some odd noise. Can actually help you be a better player.
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 7:40 am Posts: 2884 Location: Detroit, MI
Re: EHX "9" Pedals
MichNS wrote:
As I mentioned on FB, at Oz's we tried out most of the EHX pedals he had in stock last week when no one else showed up for our weekly guitar/songwriting class.
Steve! (#3? You're always #1 in my book! The Book of Steves.) I am very much interested in joining the guitar/songwriting class at Oz's. That it will have three Steves is just a bonus. This would be awesome on so many levels for me as a learner and to get out of the house and get with other people. What do you think about that? It sounds like the group could use some more people, and it'll make me step my game up a few or twelve notches. Unless anyone minds, I'm going to send Steve Oz (#2) a note asking him about it.
MichNS wrote:
The three knob POG was really impressive. Probably the best Octave effect I've tried. For me, the deal breaker with the Mel 9 was the fixed modulation. If there's some way to control that, someone let me know. That one I only like the first two patches that remind me of the Moody Blues & KC. Did a real Mellotron have fixed modulation ? The flute was not as good as the flute in my C9 because of that. I've never played a Mellotron, perhaps that's how they work and they duplicated it.
I know the Mellotron in the real world is a bunch of tapes that play when triggered by a keyboard. It's literally tapes playing back samples. So I suspect (from that perspective) that modulation is baked in. But someone who has one please chime in!
MichNS wrote:
Often I tend to find using a pick works best in many cases. With my Grand Stick I tend to hear some tracking issues with the C9. That Synth 9 works far better than the synth effect in my L6 Helix. I find a lot of synth pedals outside of EHX are difficult to control, but this one no issues at all. Although these C pedals have little tolerance for bad technique. Keep notes properly fretted, if you do not hold a note properly, the effect with either die out or make some odd noise. Can actually help you be a better player.
Bold added. OH. My. god, Steve! Just playing with the SYNTH9 for a couple of hours yesterday, I noticed that I had to really, really clean up my playing. And that I could! It took some work, and slowing it down, and thinking carefully, and finger placement made a HUGE difference.
Also, changing my pickups to stereo and only using the one side made a HUGE difference than in summing the two sides together into one channel. It sounded like hitting the POLYPHONIC key on an old analog synth, instead of MONOPHONIC, where all the oscillators are piled onto only one note at a time. I'm not sure what's going on there with the stereo versus mono other than a hotter signal.
But the SYNTH9 tracks extremely well--at least on the NS, I haven't tried any other Stick yet--if you don't play like a sloppy mess (my usual style, apparently). It's really made me tighten my stuff up, and that can only be a good thing (unless I start playing weird without it).
It is rather unforgiving of not taking your fingers off the strings quietly and noise will mess up a good strong, PHAT analog keyboard sound. But when it works (and it seems to work if I clean my mess up), it's pretty fricking cool! It also outputs the dry signal, so if I record with two channels, I still have the unaltered output of the Stick and then the SYNTH9 line to blend in.
SO, recap: SYNTH9 makes you play cleaner if you want it to track, but that seems like a good thing. Also, I want to join your guitar/songwriting sessions. Thanks so much for the info! (Stickist Steves, Thick as Thieves™).
I'd love to see some video of some Sticks and some of these 9 pedals, if anyone would share with us!
For me, the deal breaker with the Mel 9 was the fixed modulation. If there's some way to control that, someone let me know. That one I only like the first two patches that remind me of the Moody Blues & KC. Did a real Mellotron have fixed modulation ?
This was the deal breaker for me as well when I briefly owned a Mel9. There's a heavy, artificial modulation on top of the basic sound which I assume was meant to simulate the vibrato on the tape recordings, but I found it too distracting and not like authentic Mellotron sounds. An admirable attempt (I'm very excited about the potential of polyphonic effects/synth processing without a hex pickup), but the pedal didn't work for me in the end. Also experienced glitches and artifacts on he first setting (Orchestra I think).
_________________ Rob Martino YouTube - Facebook - Bandcamp - Instagram Rosewood Grand Stick #7025 - Mirrored 4ths 5+7 Paduak Grand Stick #5197 - Mirrored 4ths 6+6
Sun May 14, 2017 6:35 am
rwkeating
Artisan Contributor
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:27 pm Posts: 553
Re: EHX "9" Pedals
How do those EHX "9" pedals compare to the Roland SY-300 in terms of tracking?
My SY300 is instantaneous and glitch free, evocative of the early switchboard synths of the '70s but perfectly polyphonic for the chords I play. Nima says it won't sort out 5-note chords or larger and I've never tested that. I use it sometimes on the melody side, sometimes with 4-note chords and arpeggios (3 notes in the RH plus a highest note in the LH pinky).
Sun May 14, 2017 3:24 pm
MichNS
Multiple Donor
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:39 am Posts: 1339 Location: Northern Lower Peninsula, Michigan
Re: EHX "9" Pedals
After the NAMM 2015 show, I ordered a C9. Later that summer Bob Culbertson was at Oz's and I brought my C9 to see what he could do with it. While he was playing "Hocus Pocus" and one other song, I was adjusting the dry tone in. The pedal could not keep up with Bob with only the wet organ signal. We got something that did sound good, but not a full wet signal. Seems the tracking works well until you reach a certain speed. For fast notes, the dry signal needs to be turned up to compensate for the wet signal's delay.
What puzzles me is how the EHX guys get such great tracking. I'm thinking it has to do with the pickups. If you'd like Steve, this Thursday I could bring my Martin guitar into Oz's. That instrument beats anything else I own that makes the C9 work well. The flute sound is incredible through that guitar. Also try using a pick on your NS.
Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2015 7:40 am Posts: 2884 Location: Detroit, MI
Re: EHX
robmartino wrote:
This was the deal breaker for me as well when I briefly owned a Mel9. There's a heavy, artificial modulation on top of the basic sound which I assume was meant to simulate the vibrato on the tape recordings, but I found it too distracting and not like authentic Mellotron sounds. An admirable attempt (I'm very excited about the potential of polyphonic effects/synth processing without a hex pickup), but the pedal didn't work for me in the end. Also experienced glitches and artifacts on he first setting (Orchestra I think).
Thanks, Rob! That's the 2nd person to say that the Mellotron pedals have a modulation on top that doesn't work well on some patches. That seems to be a feature of the Mellotron emulation. But some of the patches do seem to be good and work well, and some do not. That's been my own experience on the SYNTH9 so far as well: some patches work better than others (with my NS/Stick at least so far.)
rwkeating wrote:
How do those EHX "9" pedals compare to the Roland SY-300 in terms of tracking?
BSharp wrote:
My SY300 is instantaneous and glitch free, evocative of the early switchboard synths of the '70s but perfectly polyphonic for the chords I play. Nima says it won't sort out 5-note chords or larger and I've never tested that. I use it sometimes on the melody side, sometimes with 4-note chords and arpeggios (3 notes in the RH plus a highest note in the LH pinky).
Good question and good answers! I've been interested in the SY300 for a while, and I was at first disappointed that it doesn't export a MIDI signal. Now I get that these are designed to input a guitar signal and then "color" it or replace it or blend together with the output of some tone generators. Earlier I was using "oscillators" when I meant "tone generators," or as we say for keyboards, "voices." As in, "this keyboard has 16 voices" or that's how many keys you can press down and get a note, before another note has to replace one of the 16 voices already generating a tone. Then multiple oscillators can alter the timbre or attack, or decay, or filter sweep or whatever. You can have multiple different oscillators (high and low frequency) all modulating one or more tone generators or voices.
Like Emmett said with the SY300, it can only do 4 notes at the same time. I think the SYNTH9 pedals (and perhaps the entire "9" line) have a similar limitation. Although I haven't done more than 4-note chords with it yet on my NS. Someone with a 6-string guitar could probably chime in to say that it does track all six notes of the chord, but I suspect 4 voices is the limit.
But now that I see what these pedals are doing, I want to go back and take a closer look at the SY300. Or whatever the next generation of that hardware will become.
MichNS wrote:
After the NAMM 2015 show, I ordered a C9. Later that summer Bob Culbertson was at Oz's and I brought my C9 to see what he could do with it. While he was playing "Hocus Pocus" and one other song, I was adjusting the dry tone in. The pedal could not keep up with Bob with only the wet organ signal. We got something that did sound good, but not a full wet signal. Seems the tracking works well until you reach a certain speed. For fast notes, the dry signal needs to be turned up to compensate for the wet signal's delay.
What puzzles me is how the EHX guys get such great tracking. I'm thinking it has to do with the pickups. If you'd like Steve, this Thursday I could bring my Martin guitar into Oz's. That instrument beats anything else I own that makes the C9 work well. The flute sound is incredible through that guitar. Also try using a pick on your NS.
Steve, I've noticed that I get better tracking when I use all my pickups, and then use just one side of the stereo signal, instead of summing both sides together. I suspect that pickups are indeed the key in getting the best results. Please bring your Martin guitar and I can check it out (I haven't seen it yet!), and also we can play with pedals. I'm going to send Oz an email and probably a text as well today asking him if I can join up with the guitar/songwriting class.
And several of the patches work really well with the NS so far, especially if I play cleanly and deliberately. But if it won't track all the time with Bob Culbertson, I have little hope of playing with better technique than him. Although to be fair, if you do have to adjust your style or playing slightly to get better results, Bob was just plugging in and playing like he normally would. Perhaps he would have gotten better results if he had played with it for a day or two.
Or perhaps there are things we could do to make the tracking work as well as it seems to do for the EHX demonstrators. You mentioned that you already tried some compression between the Stick and the "9" pedal and that that didn't work? What were the tremolo pedals that the EHX guys were using?
I also haven't tried my Rosewood with its active pickups or my Railboard with its passive pickups yet. I suspect that I might have different results with those different instruments. I'll have to check and get back with you all soon.
Yesterday, I got in a good two hours noodling with the SYNTH9 and the NS/Stick. There were a couple of patches that worked really well with the NS on the bass side. I played with some Van Halen-meets-Rush-meets-Awesome filter sweep Oberheim and Moog sounds at top volume that made the whole studio shake with their PHAT fatness. I think Ozzy somewhere perked up his ears and said "Oh, that's some evil shit there!" as I laid into some tritone riffing. I will have to get this pedal onto some tracks Pretty Damn Quick.
I'd love to hear more of your experiences with these "9" pedals, and with the SY300 and others in this line of "input Stick audio; output tone generators mixed with input" line of effects. As Rob said, I am also "very excited about the potential of polyphonic effects/synth processing without a hex pickup." And there might be some tips and tricks to figuring out how to get the best performance and results from these. Let's all please share what we find! Thanks!
Joined: Sun Apr 26, 2015 10:08 pm Posts: 1571 Location: Tel-Aviv, Israel
Re: EHX "9" Pedals
BTW the C9 has melotrone preset.
also i would like to mention that recently i connected the new tc electronic Mimiq to the SY300 sub outs (sy300 has 4 outputs)-and it copletely blown me-everything sound now like big orchestra-highly recommended.
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#7159, Grand Railboard,Plum, RMR tuning, MIDI melody. Manufactured Dec. 2018
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