November 17, 2022
No More Reviews
November 17, 2022
Alas, it seems my supply of cheap Chinese stuff to review has dried-up completely. If fact, all the cheap Chinese stuff has dried-up - just look at eBay. Oh well, I don't need another "Phas" pedal anyway. A number of the products have disappeared from Amazon as well, but the pedals are still in stock, and they're even cheaper now.
The sad thing is, these are actually not bad!
Today I got my set of Alice bass strings, 105-85-65-45. They were packed in individual sealed plastic sleeves, similar to every other kind of string. The diameters are all within 0.001" of spec. The lengths are as follows:
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My grandmother told me: "If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all."
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All the little bits and bobs that I used to order cheap from China have become much harder to get. eBay is a shadow of what it was just a year ago, there is not nearly as much cheap loothery supplies. But even if you find something, half the time it just disappears in shipping. Or at least it seems to disappear in shipping - a lot of tracking numbers from China are completely imaginary. As soon as you order something, they issue a tracking number to lock it in. That doesn't mean it shipped, or that it ever will! Fortunately, eBay makes it pretty easy to get your money back from such scammers.
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First, I am bound to state that I received this pedal at no cost for review. Having gotten that out of the way …
This is pedal #4 since I started reviewing these for KMise, and I must say, I am very pleased with all of them. I started with the tremolo, then the phase and the "US Dream" overdrive, and now this "Crunch" distortion. All these pedals are well built, great-sounding, attractive, quiet, compact, and true bypass.
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My verdict on active tone controls for a guitar is that they are not worth it. There is already plenty of treble, and not enough bass that boosting it will make much difference. If you want to try an active control on a guitar, try an onboard distortion instead.
But the Artec EXP tone control is a funny thing. In the middle, it gives a flat clean boost. Turn it forward, and you get a high/low boost, or what amounts to a mid-scoop. Turn it back, and it gives a mid-boost. Sounds interesting, so I decided to try one.
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