The good, the bad and the self-delusion

After my previous blog about guitar effects pedals, I decided to look for the chorus and phaser pedals; as I suspected, they were under the bed. I first looked at the phaser pedal: initially I saw no way of opening the sturdy metal box, but eventually I saw that in each corner of the box was a screw so I unscrewed them and opened the box. The electronics had been wrapped in a foam-like materal that had seriously deteriorated in the forty years of the pedal’s existence. Not only the foam: the pedal had been stored with a 9v battery still attached; although I was able to partially detach the battery, one pole of the pedal’s plug seemed fused to the battery, and in trying to free it, I merely tore the battery pole. Into the bin the pedal goes without further thought.

Then I had a look at the DOD FX65B chorus pedal: this is sturdily built and fortunately there was no need to open it up as there is a battery compartment at the top of the pedal. I connected a new battery to the pedal but there was no sign of life. Then I read the manual that was stored in the pedal’s cardboard box: a line that caught my attention said “if you’re not going to use the pedal, unplug the input jack so as not to waste the battery”. Could it be, I asked myself, that I’ve always been checking the pedal with no cable attached? I found a guitar cable, plugged it in – and the little red light on the pedal came on when I depressed the pedal. In other words, this pedal works fine! 

I saw a mention of the possibility of using an external power source instead of a battery so I thought that this would be a good opportunity to try out the pedal power box that I bought from Temu. At first I plugged the USB cable that comes with the box into the USB power out then wondered what I could do with the C connector end; then the penny dropped and I plugged the C connector into the unit and the big USB socket into a telephone charger. Blue lights came on. At this stage I realised that I had been deluding myself: I thought that this unit would store electricity that could then be sent to any connected pedals, but it appears that this distribution unit itself has to be plugged into the electricity when being used. At least it saves on a multitude of external adaptors, aka wall warts. 

I then discovered that the chorus pedal can use an AC adapter that of course I don’t have – well, this pedal is from the 1990s. At least I can use the chorus pedal with a battery. The multi-effects unit (which has been released from Israeli customs but has yet to arrive here) is promised to contain its own USB charged battery. I think I confused this with the power distributor. 

I took the pedal with me to band rehearsal last night. It drew a few comments, so I explained the history of the pedal (my brother in law reckons that he gave it to me in 1988, but that's wrong as he would have been too young then). I used it sparingly in the songs, primarily in the new one that was introduced a month ago. As I had the chorus effect on the pedal, I set my amp to use a small amount of phaser. We recorded that new song, so it will be interesting to hear what my guitar sounds like.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
24	11/02/2006	One small step	Programming, Psychology, Kaizen, The brain
451	11/02/2012	A change is gonna come	Films
1580	11/02/2023	This week's rant	Israel
1581	11/02/2023	Hot filling soup	Cooking, Weather