Barefaced Machinist

[fretmeister]

Just now, Rich said:

From little acorns, and all that. If they're going to dip a toe into the waters of stuff-other-than-cabs, better to start small. Jumping in feet first with an expensive tube amp, with all the R&D and prototyping costs involved, could have been financial suicide. I think it's a smart first move.

Quite.

It's been quite clear how difficult NeuralDSP / Darkglass have found it to get their new Quad Cortex to market this year. Should have been out already. I hate to think how long and how expensive the R&D is for a next gen modelling unit without the pandemic getting in the way. Could easily sink a company.

 

I don't use fuzz really so I'm not in the market for the pedal but I do hope it's a success.

[Rich]

And FWIW, I think it looks fackin brilliant. It appeals to my inner engineering nerd. Once you've worked out what the symbols actually mean -- and let's face it, we're all intelligent, even the guitarists**  so that won't take long -- it'll be easy enough. I mean, it's not the first pedal to have shall we say 'enigmatic' control labelling... 'Pinch' and 'Wool' on the Woolly Mammoth, anyone?

** obvious joke, but I apologise to any sensitive petals who are offended by it.

[Cuzzie]

1 minute ago, Rich said:

And FWIW, I think it looks fackin brilliant. It appeals to my inner engineering nerd. Once you've worked out what the symbols actually mean -- and let's face it, we're all intelligent, even the guitarists**  so that won't take long -- it'll be easy enough. I mean, it's not the first pedal to have shall we say 'enigmatic' control labelling... 'Pinch' and 'Wool' on the Woolly Mammoth, anyone?

** obvious joke, but I apologise to any sensitive petals who are offended by it.

Exactly - Punch, Buzz, Crunch  on the PSA

Creation Audio Labs Grizzly Bass - this has been given a thumbs up on here numerous times,  pretty sure the lack of words on this pedal didn’t come up as a problem

Just 2 examples.......

Yep - it looks good and COG are also a very solid company

[EBS_freak]

10 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

I appreciate that the Orange Butler decided to "abuse" these - but it's definitely confusing! 

Ive just looked at the bass butler logos as I have never seen that pedal.

I wouldn't associate the sine graphic with clean. My thoughts go straight to synths, modulation, tremolo...

Again, the square wave puts me into thinking synths. Or clipping... certainly not just drive.

The mid, I didn't actually get that at all. Does that make me dumb? I saw it more as a pan or something? But that wouldn't make a great deal of sense on a mono pedal.

Obviously I got treble and bass... but not sure what the arrows were meant to be adding? Not overly happy with the variable resistor being gain either. Im not sure the vast majority of people would get that as gain.

You'd probably be happier if you were a user of an Orange amp as it's all mirrored on their amps. So given the above, I'd also apply those thoughts to Orange as a whole. Im guessing their familiarity is down to learning through having an Orange or having read the manual - but I certainly don't think they are great choices. Similar confusions are had with the Machinist pedal. But maybe that's just me.

 

For interest -

https://orangeamps.com/articles/the-orange-graphics-explained/

[alexclaber]

34 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Just some further feedback - again, just my opinion.

Im intrigued by the inclusion of knob choices. Standardise them.

If people want to customise them, let them do it at their cost. Build a brand on uniformity - not so your product looks like it's been built from random parts bins. Im taking this is an off the shelf product that you want to just shift in boxes? Why add the complication?

We never planned to have multiple knob choices, we chose a knob, designed the graphics etc around it and then because of the pandemic's impact on supply chains we couldn't get enough of them for the first production run. Then I had the idea of offering knob choices so we could make something positive out of this problem. I've got two of these pedals on my board (one at the start and one near the end of the signal chain), one with one knob style and one with another style.

[EBS_freak]

13 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

It's been quite clear how difficult NeuralDSP / Darkglass have found it to get their new Quad Cortex to market this year. Should have been out already. I hate to think how long and how expensive the R&D is for a next gen modelling unit without the pandemic getting in the way. Could easily sink a company.

I called it when they announced it. It's all vapourware until you get it in your hands.

We've seen this time and time again. Yet everybody gets emotionally obsessed with things then can't deal with the delays.

[Cuzzie]

The more you look at the knobs with the cool overwriting graphics, the more they make sense to me - i think they are fine, and one you know what they do, it doesn’t matter

[fretmeister]

11 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

The more you look at the knobs with the cool overwriting graphics, the more they make sense to me - i think they are fine, and one you know what they do, it doesn’t matter

As a fan of old DOD pedals where the control names had nothing to do with their function at all, I think the graphics are easy.

And let's face it - by the time we're ready to gig with a new toy we don't read the knob descriptions anymore. We already know them.

[EBS_freak]

6 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

And let's face it - by the time we're ready to gig with a new toy we don't read the knob descriptions anymore. We already know them.

To be fair, it looks like we have a hell of a lot to time to learn before the gig right now.

[Cuzzie]

4 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

As a fan of old DOD pedals where the control names had nothing to do with their function at all, I think the graphics are easy.

And let's face it - by the time we're ready to gig with a new toy we don't read the knob descriptions anymore. We already know them.

Exactly - I had the Mantic beef bag, other Mantic pedals have different names.

Do we really have to be so descriptive of everything? Maybe I should write to the people that make emoji’s and say we want one of a Pen15 instead of the Aubergine as I am getting confused between someone asking me for dinner and someone asking me for ‘coffee’

[stewblack]

I have played through it so I don't have an opinion on it. 

As @chris_b says, I wish them well with it. 

[Al Krow]

I think it's very sad that no one has bothered to ask the really important questions about the pedal, so far, on this thread.

So in the interests of the wider community, Alex...

 

Is it any good for metal?

[itu]

6 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

To be fair, it looks like we have a hell of a lot to time to learn before the gig right now.

Old Growth Fuzz (by Spruce Effects) has controls named Ring (Vol), Bark (Fuzz) and Girth (Tone). I had to use a white paint marker to write those letters (V, F, T) to respective pot hats. I would not change the unit because it sounds so good, but without a little help from the paint marker, I would certainly do funny things on stage every now and then. The RMA Crustacean is far more complicated (7 pots, 4 switches, and the footswitch) - I have written some text under the unit to describe the settings.

There could be some "standardized" markings in pedals, but it may be complicated. Potentiometers have letters that differ, as everybody knows: A = Audio or Linear depending on the manufacturer.

My modest suggestion is pots with letters. There are also good graphics in many big desks, they could be the key to legible units.

[EBS_freak]

10 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

I think it's very sad that no one has bothered to ask the really important questions about the pedal, so far, on this thread.

So in the interests of the wider community, Alex...

 

Is it any good for metal?

Probably.

Also - trying to be helpful, dimensions on the site would be good, so you know how much room it's going to take up on your pedal board.

[Beedster]

19 minutes ago, stewblack said:

I have played through it so I don't have an opinion on it. 

As @chris_b says, I wish them well with it. 

Did you mean to suggest that you haven't played though it Stew?

[GisserD]

1 hour ago, alexclaber said:

 We're all musicians, even the drummers! 😉

Ok now youve gone too far!!!!!

 

[ped]

I think it would look good with a random assortment of knobs on. 

Good luck with it Alex

[Salt on your Bass?]

@alexclaber - is this a long term partnership with cog then? Or specific r and d collaboration to deliver you a range? Curious as to any exclusivity and the direction of cog as part of this as well. 

Also, what are the drive and fuzz circuits based on (is it a moded tarkin and knightfall?) and have you got demos coming online soon? 

Cheers

Edited November 26, 2020 by Salt on your Bass?

[alexclaber]

9 minutes ago, EBS_freak said:

Probably.

Also - trying to be helpful, dimensions on the site would be good, so you know how much room it's going to take up on your pedal board.

Yes, I can't believe I forgot to put that on there! Would it be useful to know where the jacks are so you can see how well they nest with other side-jack pedals?

[mcnach]

2 hours ago, lemmywinks said:

It's probably going to be an extremely good product, you would expect so with it being an expensive pedal made by Cog. However when a company that makes active/passive bass cabs releases teaser photos showing an old school knob on a brushed metal chassis most people are going to assume it's some sort of bass amp, not a drive pedal made by an entirely different company.

The downside of having a dedicated and sometimes feverish fanbase is that they don't like being let down.

 

You're probably right, but reading the 'history' about this pedal was quite interesting and it makes sense to me how it came about. Barefaced + COG doing something together, made in the UK etc especially in these difficult times... is something to applaud, I feel. The product won't be for everyone (is anything ever?) but would it be better if they hadn't bothered at all? I don't think so.

 

[stevie]

To me, this is a 250-quid fuzz box - so I'm definitely not the target market. However, I can see the business logic behind the move and I'm sure Alex knows what his customers want. This is a tough time to launch a new music product and I wish him well with it.

[krispn]

33 minutes ago, alexclaber said:

 

Maybe the pedal will have an information sheet/manual explaining the knobs/symbols and what they do so people have the option to not read it before coming online to whinge about it. 
 

[Kiwi]

2 hours ago, alexclaber said:

OK, I'm sorry everyone. Running a business that specialises in making gear for live music is really hard when pretty much all live music is currently on hold. It's harder still when you have two small children and a very challenging baby. Can you just ignore my last comment, I'm just trying to stay the right side of a nervous breakdown whilst trying to not have to make all my staff redundant.

Not so far away from my own situation, Alex although my kids are 8 and 3.  Then slap a significant business loan AND mortgage payments on top of that, too.  We're desperate for the borders to open so my wife's business and my export start up can pick up again.  It's been a horrendous year financially.  The one good thing I can say is that one of the other businesses is still managing to grow albeit slowly but it's a real balancing act to stay out of the red at time.  I hope you see the light at the end of the tunnel soon.

[krispn]

Hey @alexclaber looks like you’ve had a stinker of a day but you’ve inspired a new thread idea. 

I was thinking about a thread where people post openly and honestly about times they had a really bad day and said/did something which in hindsight appears a bit misguided. I dunno maybe you slapped the missus, slept with a work colleague or built a bass effect pedal and didn’t put words on it? 

Going by some posts on this thread there appears to be loads of folk who love to have their say and I’m confident they’ll all get the ball rolling with some proper cathartic sharing, no holes barred so we can endow some righteous outrage/judgement at their antics! I’ve got a few great symbols lined up to reply to the ones I really like! 
❤️ 🐀  🔔🔚 🎽aka👰🥊

Edited November 26, 2020 by krispn

[Beedster]

2 minutes ago, krispn said:

Hey @alexclaber looks like you’ve had a stinker of a day but you’ve inspired a new thread idea. 

I was thinking about a thread where people post openly and honestly about times they had a really bad day and said/did something which in hindsight appears a bit misguided. I dunno maybe you slapped the missus, slept with a work colleague or built a bass effect pedal and didn’t put words on it? 

Going by some posts on this thread there appears to be loads of folk who love to have their say and I’m confident they’ll all get the ball rolling with some proper cathartic sharing, no holes barred so we can endow some righteous outrage/judgement at their antics! I’ve got a few great symbols lined up to reply to the ones I really like! 

What a silly post, people were objecting to Alex coming on as he did, you go and slap your missus as you put it, I'll just object when a manufacturer is rude to his customers who were having a pretty normal discussion.