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Ashton SF50CH Chours Pedal: Review & Impressions

Two things I must confess before starting this review. For once, I’m not a particular fan of chorus pedals. Not because I dislike the chorus effect (well… it is not among my favourites either), but because I find myself spending more and more time playing with reverbs and delays. These latter effects just seem more pleasing for me when sculpting sound and making music. Another confession I need to make is that I was quite reluctant about buying this pedal from a friend.

That being said, my friend convinced me on taking the pedal home earlier this year. A few weeks later, one of my gear suppliers was having a sale with a lot of pedals at 10, 15 or 20 euro. So I now I have quite a few chorus pedals. Indeed, the Behringer UC200 I reviewed last month came from that lot. As you may have read it, I was not impressed with the UC200, but the Ashton SF50CH is a whole different matter.

The first thing to notice about this pedal is that it is a solid (and heavy) metal case. It is smaller than my Berhinger pedals, yet it carries a substantial amount of weight (specially when compared against the X200 series). It is a mono pedal, with only one input and one output, so you won’t have those autopanning and stereo-widening effects you can do on other chorus pedals. Continue reading “Ashton SF50CH Chours Pedal: Review & Impressions”

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Behringer Ultra Chorus UC200: Is it worth it?

There are some pedals, like the EM600, that take a lot of time for me to review because of how great they are. Then there are pedals like this one: the Behringer UC200. This is a very cheap pedal (usually less that $20 – $25 on Amazon). Because it it so cheap, i feel compiled to lower the bar and see what this pedal can offer on such a low budget. As usual, a demonstration of this pedal is provided on my YouTube channel.

As the code name implies, the UC200 is a pedal from Behringer’s early 200 series. This alone should summarize the build quality. Although I found no issues with the jacks and the knobs being decent, there is a low budget plastic feel to the pedal that improved as the series evolved. There is a single mono input, and a stereo output (two mono 6.35mm TS sockets). So at least we know the pedal will provide us with some widening of the stereo field. Continue reading “Behringer Ultra Chorus UC200: Is it worth it?”

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RV600 A New Perspective

If you happen to follow my YouTube channel more than this blog (and why should you d otherwise, as most of the good stuff comes in video format?), you’ll notice I posted a new video demonstrating the Behringer RV600 in combination with Korg’s Volca Keys. If for some odd reason you came across this post before listening to the video, you’ll find the video here:

I have originally reviewed this pedal here, and made an accompanying video for it. Actually, this was the first video I I did demonstrating a pedal, and it is still the most viewed of the Gear Demos playlist. However, this video was done in poor lightning, with an ageing camera and the sound quality, either by personal lack of experience or by bad programming of the synth, did not really came up to par. After more than a year using this pedal in many of my productions, and noticing an ongoing interest about this little reverb unit, I decided it was time I did right by this pedal, and re-do its demo. I also wanted to add in some of my personal notes about its sound and capabilities. Continue reading “RV600 A New Perspective”

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Nux Flanger Core Review

I brought this pedal during the Spring of 2016: I was walking through a store and saw it at a reasonable price (about 30 euros). Now, there are three things to know before reading this review: a) I’m not a big fan of flangers in general; b) this pedal is more subtle than your average flanger FX (compared, for example with the Flangers in the MiniKP2, this one is very, very shy); and c) I think NUX stopped making these pedals during the summer of 2016, although you can still find it on amazon and other retailers. As usual, I recommend you to complement this reading by watching the demo on my YouTube Channel (see bellow).

Ok, so let’s start with the obvious: this pedal is white with a purple background in the control area. It is a metal case with the same dimensions and overall Feel of the NUX Time Core (reviewed here). I must say the NUX Time Core has been with me for about a year now and is my main delay pedal. I don’t use it as a stomp box (i.e. I don’t have it on the floor and use my feet on it), so I cannot state it was built like a tank. Nevertheless, if you’re not going to take it to some physical mistreatment, the built quality is fine (specially considering the price). Thus, I’m expecting the NUX Flanger Core to be at around the same build quality, which is not bad,  and it is perfectly adequate for my usage. Continue reading “Nux Flanger Core Review”

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Arturia Microbrute Through Guitar Pedals

Not exactly a “Berlin School Experiment”, more of an improvised experimentation using the MicroBrute and five guitar pedals. There has been quite a few videos on this theme, so I decided to add my own personal twist to the experiment.




The music starts at about 01:00. For this video I decided to include the end of the preparatory stage where I program the sequence on the MB. This is an arpeggiation on the chords of a Portuguese (more precisely Azorian) folk song “Charamba”, but on a 5/4 time signature.

I also took advantage of the double (almost triple) output of the microbrute (Main mono and headphones) to make a more complex FX chain. The Main audio (Path A) goes directly into the Behringer EM600  and then goes though a passive mixer to serve as an attenuator. At the same time the headphones output (Path B) is split into two channels: one of them goes into the FM600 and they are re-joined using a passive mixer to give me a sort of Wet/Dry balance on the FM600. PathB then continues to the FX600  for some chorus. The two Paths (A and B) are joined at the inputs of the Nux Time Core  for some Ping-Pong delay and then carried the the RV600 for some Space Reverb.

The session was recorded live using audacity and the OpenCamera app. Calf Plugins (EQ, Compressor and Multiband Compressor) were used for mastering. The final video was assembled using KdenLive.

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Behringer DW400 Review

It has been a while since I make a review for an audio effect. This little yellow wah pedal was found at a second-hand store for about 20-25 euros. I’m not a fan of the Wah sound, but the Human Voice label was interesting enough to separate me from my cash. The video bellow shows how this pedal behaves when fed by the Volca Keys.

First, lets talk about build quality. As I mentioned in the Vlog, there is an evolution on the way Behringer produces stuff, with the older gear being more fragile and less well build. This pedal’s construction is a shy improvement over that of the UV300, but it is still far away from that of the RV600 and the other pedals I have from the 600 series. As usual, this pedal can run out of a 9V battery, of using a 9V center-negative pin power supply. There are 3 inputs to this pedal and only one mono output. The inputs on the right hand side are for plugging in a guitar or a bass guitar (depending on which socket is pluged, the parameters for the internal filter are adjusted). On the left side there is the mono audio output and also an input for a control or an expression pedal. Continue reading “Behringer DW400 Review”