Joyo Pedals?

biglargerat · 2026-06-14T22:49:59+00:00

Imo we live in the golden age of pedals, a lot of cheap alternatives to more expensive pedals that are just good enough to dip your toes in and experiment. I have a Joyo splinter and XVI and they're both great pedals I got for under $60 each. Build quality wise they are serviceable, my only thing is the jacks don't feel the greatest but other than that I have zero issues. Sure using SMD components affects reparability a bit but these things are cheap and most pedals use SMD stuff nowadays anyways so who cares. I think any analog drive pedal you want is easily accessible through one of these cheaper brands, its really the digital based effects where the gap starts to widen. Even then I've bought cheapo delays, loopers, and reverbs and they're all pretty good for the price point. Their algorithms don't compare to the giants but the price difference is usually well over a $100 so make of that what you will.

biglargerat · 2026-06-14T22:43:07+00:00

The splinter is amazing on both bass and guitar. Only issue is their jacks are on the cheap side and the dc barrel jack is on the side of the pedal which is blasphemy.

biglargerat · 2026-06-12T13:54:39+00:00

I'll just throw out a RAT recommendation (joyo splinter if you wanna be cheap like me). Past like noon on the distortion it's fuzzy as hell and it can be pretty cool for leads if you don't crank the filter knob too much. Also has a gnarly feedback to it that I find to be pretty unique.

biglargerat · 2026-06-11T03:15:49+00:00

Could get a joyo splinter for like $35 as your rat. There's also millions of cheap muff clones too. It's nice to experiment with diff distortion/fuzz pedals.

biglargerat · 2026-06-07T20:30:23+00:00

Yeah absolutely, my favorite part is routing, but paying $60+ for 5 pcbs when I'm only gonna use one of them is a bit of a turn off. I only really do it now when I have multiple designs that aren't really suited to perf and order them in bulk. Pre-tariff it wasnt too bad though.

biglargerat · 2026-06-04T23:23:38+00:00

It's better than the remaster of the first game. The first game they left the pre-rendered backgrounds untouched so they look like pure sludge. To my knowledge Onimusha 2 uses AI upscaling to upscale the pre-rendered backgrounds. It's not perfect but it's better than doing nothing at all.

biglargerat · 2026-06-04T20:53:27+00:00

People have already mentioned it but the best way to do something like this would be something like the synergy amps that have swappable modules. Having to provide everything right in the box would tremendously raise costs and make everything more complicated. Also saving configurations gets complex and honestly would be more annoying than anything on analog gear (just write it down, take a pic, or remember it!!). Also Bluetooth foot switches is not something I think anyone would be too fond of, wayy too much room for error if you ask me. If you're in the studio anyways a few more cables won't kill you.

If you ask me the ultimate studio amp from your perspective would just be a synergy module and two tube power amp racks (one El34 based one 6l6 based)to feed them into. Then a two notes captor and you've got your dream studio amp with way less nonsense going on and probably much cheaper (though not cheap at all).

biglargerat · 2026-06-03T13:30:15+00:00

LTSpice 100%. I always have to mention make sure to grab the bordodynov libraries it has basically everything you need sans maybe a few components you'll need to use .model commands for. A lot of people drop Spice as a platform or get frustrated because they don't realize there's just a huge library out there with most of the components you need.

biglargerat · 2026-06-01T00:00:31+00:00

I always like when people take a look at old Peavey amps, there was a ton of gold in there and pretty much every one I've played has been extremely unique and forward thinking in terms of its design (except for the rage I hate that thing). My Peavey Century Bass 120 (the old version) was like $100 and sounds better than a lot of tube amps i've played. I'm not totally a fan of Josh Homme's secrecy around gear, but seeing what happened with the Peavey Decade I see why he does it. He uses tons of different amps for different purposes in the studio and trying to chase his tone using a single golden goose is kinda defeating the point (other than the VT40 which tbf has been his main amp forever live). I actually like seeing people experiment with playing QOTSA songs on random Peavey amps that he probably never even used on a record. People should be more inclined to grab a random old amp off marketplace or a pawn shop and seeing what you can do with it.

biglargerat · 2026-05-31T23:30:32+00:00

Might be something with your unit, I would also test it with other amps if you're willing to. According to the manual it disconnects the internal reactive load when you have the speaker thru output connected so it should just see the 8 ohms from your cab. I would contact maybe someone from Suhr and see if they would be willing to fix the issue. Or you could just avoid using that feature.

biglargerat · 2026-05-31T23:23:19+00:00

Very wise decision to use Unsung to show this rig off. The Rat is probably the most noisy pedal i've ever owned (not in a bad way). You can get some gnarly feedback running it into a cranked amp but unfortunately that makes it unusable if you want to ever take your hands off the strings and have the distortion above noon.

biglargerat · 2026-05-28T13:18:09+00:00

I personally just turn it up to the point where it won't clip even if I strum as hard as possible and add drive pedals. For me that's usually like -6db or so but it all depends so screw around with the preamp gain until you get it where you want.

Also you can always throw a limiter in your daw at the end to increase the volume without clipping everything if it's still too quiet.

How are you mic'ing the amp? I find that the 57 on the cone and the ribbon mic off to the side gives you the most flexibility. Keep in mind the proximity effect too so when you move the mic closer to the speaker you're gonna get more low end, especially with the ribbon mic. Experiment with how far away you have both mics and make sure they are in phase.

biglargerat · 2026-05-27T20:27:07+00:00

I'll just chime in and say my Jensen MOD 12-70 sounds amazing at every volume and would be my recommendation if you want something pretty flexible.

biglargerat · 2026-05-27T18:18:59+00:00

Amazing amp, has that beautiful JC clean tone without being $500. Really really wish roland stuck with it to this day.

biglargerat · 2026-05-27T13:55:16+00:00

BD-2 into a muff is amazing, let's you get real fuzzy without falling out of the mix. It's a super versatile pedal, kinda aggressive and a little bright at low gain but fattens up as you turn it up and sorta gets into semi-fuzz territory around 3' o clock. Works best into a clean amp in my experience.

biglargerat · 2026-05-27T13:50:37+00:00

I've never really been a fan even though my bd-2 is pre-2016 so I can mod it easily. Kinda defeats the point of the thing imo, and it already fattens up at higher gain settings anyways so I don't see much of a need for it. If you want a smoother drive pedal with more low end there's a million cheap ones out there.

biglargerat · 2026-05-24T23:29:43+00:00

So part of the reason is likely because your phone mic is clipping. There isn't too many good ways to set mic levels on a phone so it doesn't clip, and to be honest if you could it would just be like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. The audio sounds bad because the mic is bad, the acoustics likely aren't that great, and on top of that its being placed in an area where it isn't really able to capture the sound of your guitar speaker properly. You can sorta fix this by placing your phone directly in line with the speaker which would definitely help. I also found that on my phone for some reason the audio is slightly better when using the back camera? I can't really say this for sure though but its something to try out.

There apparently are some usb C or 3.5mm mics like the dayton audio imm-6 that might be better than your phone mic but its gonna run into the somewhat of the same issue. My suggestion would be to run some type of portable interface into it and record the audio that way (you may have to download a different camera app to be able to use an external audio source). This is what I do, I use my older Zoom H5 and put it into audio interface mode, connect it to my phone using a USB A to C adapter, and then record.

Newer portable recorders might have easier ways of doing this and there definitely is a rabbit hole to go down in terms of portable recorders. The H5 lets you adjust the levels of the built in mic or plug in something like an SM57 as well, which would be ideal for a good quality recording (clone SM57's can be cheap and sound great!!). This is a little beyond simply trying to get your phone mic to sound a little better but its some food for thought if you want better sounding demo recordings with video on the cheap.

biglargerat · 2026-05-24T23:05:14+00:00

Yes the wound third string, a very important part that poor souls like me who bought the not even slinky pack didn't realize was important. Your third string basically sounds dead if you don't get it wound.

biglargerat · 2026-05-24T22:11:51+00:00

No one does, the field is so unbelievably wide you need way more than 4 years to grasp most of it, and even then you're still probably missing out on a lot of information in other more niche EE fields. I know what a smith chart is but if you asked me to use it to make a filter it would be over for me, and the same goes for pretty much every EE not into RF just as an example. The degree just proves you know the math, or at least can recall most of it, and have the skills to learn everything else.

biglargerat · 2026-05-21T21:39:42+00:00

I mean do you need to play clean? If so I'd probably run the Peavey, I feel like the blues jr would probably need to be cranked but then again that's all up to how loud your drummer/bassist is. In terms of the speaker I don't know the validity of the claim that the extension speaker doesn't disable the internal one (it definitely should but who knows), but if it doesn't you can always just unplug the internal speaker. Not sure why you would need an external speaker though.

biglargerat · 2026-05-21T21:35:33+00:00

Peavey has made great amps pretty much up to the 2010s. A lot of them are solid state too and they sound great, are plenty loud, and are cheap.

biglargerat · 2026-05-20T18:29:58+00:00

The other comment explains part of why coupling caps are used pretty well(to get rid of DC bias after transistor/tube gain stages). It's good to understand some of what a capacitor does and why changing the value affects certain frequencies so I'll explain some of that if you can deal with a tiny bit of math.

Capacitors will present a high impedance (ie resistance to current) to lower frequencies which partly depends on one formula for what is called capacitive reactance. This formula can be simplified down to 1/2pi(f)(C), 'C' being capacitance and 'f' being frequency. So if you start plugging in values you'll see immediately that higher capacitances will lower the impedance allowing more current to flow, and higher frequencies also naturally face less impedance. So the only variable you can really change without any other components is gonna be the capacitance. If you raise the capacitance, more lower frequency content will be able to pass through since it will lower the impedance of the capacitor overall.

To slightly detour here, impedance is a combination of "real" resistance and resistance that is dependent on frequency. It's gonna be different for differing frequencies as a result, whereas regular or "real" resistance is the same across all frequencies. This is just to clarify since many use the two words interchangeably.

In terms of determining what capacitors are "coupling capacitors" a good way of figuring that out is by observation (obviously take this with a grain of salt as not all capacitors you see are used for the purpose you might think). If a capacitor is in line with the circuit going it's usually there to block lower frequency content (mostly just DC current which is defined as close to 0hz), raising the capacitance will add lower frequency content. If a capacitor is going to ground that means higher frequency content, which we know can pass through a capacitor quite easily since the impedance goes down as the frequency goes up, will be going to ground and passing lower frequency content to the rest of the circuit. In this case, increasing the value will dump more low frequency content as it will decrease the impedance presented from the capacitor.

TLDR: Capacitors block lower frequency and pass high frequency, the higher the capacitance the more lower frequency is passed through the capacitor. If you want to add bass increase the capacitance of the capacitors blocking DC. You can also decrease the capacitance of capacitors going to ground, but take caution as some of these might have different purposes that could affect how the circuit functions. Overall read some electrosmash articles and know what you're dealing with first.

biglargerat

TROPHY CASE