Moog Voyager and effects pedals

Electroboy · Post by **Electroboy** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 4:31 pm

Having played synths for years, many of which were RomPlers, Im beggining to move into the realm of analog. Having just purchased a Moog Voyager, im interested to hear which effect pedals seem to compliment the sound of this new aquisition. I guess id be looking to drive some sort of delay, distortion/overdrive, chorus and reverb to expand its sonic capabilities. I run my Nord Electro thru the Line 6 DL4 and like its tone, but am looking for something a bit more compact and straight-forward to run the Moog thru. I suppose its a personal preference, and I should just start experimenting. Id be curious to know the opinions of others who rout their synths thru stompboxes.

maindeglorie · Post by **maindeglorie** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 5:53 pm

I run my Little Phatty through an Electro Harmonix Holy Grail and Memory Man, and it's like heaven!

evening · Post by **evening** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 6:01 pm

Find a guitar player and start borrowing pedals!

I like the line6 stuff too and have the DL4, MM4 & FM4.
(I bought them kinda beat up and cheap at GC.)
They are large but having 3 or 4 variations is nice, as is the CV input.

Inserting effects between the mixer and filter on the voyager can be fun.
I've recently been playing with a crybaby connected that way.
(I wonder what a whammy pedal would sound like in there...)

there's always moogerfoogers - I bought them all at one point, but have only kept the phaser and the Murf. I really like the phaser a lot and the murf is just !@#$% strange, in a good way.
I haven't tried the Freqbox yet, but I'm looking around for one used.

zmd · Post by **zmd** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 6:27 pm

i use a tonne of em, and love em all!
i use danelectro leslie simulators for my organ patches, i have a behringer x vamp on my mixer loop for basics like delay and verb and a swell pedal, then i use a boss japanese made flanger on my cs01 (the only acceptable use for a flanger

), and i usually back that up with a proco turbo rat to drive that sucker!

i have everything from ring mods and pixellators to simple distortions and delays, and i am in the school of thought that fx are as important as anything else when it comes to getting your sound.

i highly recomend the ehx pedals for synths, i use the ring mod and the small clone chorus, and they are both top notch pedals for synths.

derma_tek · Post by **derma_tek** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 7:29 pm

maindeglorie wrote:I run my Little Phatty through an Electro Harmonix Holy Grail and Memory Man, and it's like heaven!

not to hijack this thread but...

i've been looking for a few pedals for my little phatty. how do you like the memory man on basses from the LP?

MarkM · Post by **MarkM** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:36 pm

I use an EchoPro which is fantastic. You could use its little brother the DL4 and get similar results. The Moogerfooger ring modulator is extremely useful. You can roughen up the sound as well as get great tremelo and those wacky bell-like tones. It also offers a triangle/square LFO output to modulate your Voyager even further. Also the Mooger CP251 would be outstanding with the Voyager. Finally, see if you can find any of those Alesis ModFX pedals. They were short-lived but offered great sounds for the buck.

maindeglorie · Post by **maindeglorie** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:27 pm

derma_tek wrote: i've been looking for a few pedals for my little phatty. how do you like the memory man on basses from the LP?

I love the Memory Man on it. When engaged, the bass frequency remains intact, which can be a problem when using pedals on synths. I strongly disagree with the ol' "any pedal will do" cause no, any will not do. I picked up an EH Small Stone phaser, and it's terrible on mono synths, because it KILLS the low end, and there's a volume difference. I like good sounding, true bypass pedals that don't squash or kill the beautiful analog tone. The Holy Grail and Memory Man are on the top of my recommendation list. Also, as mentioned, the Line 6 DL4 is good. I use that for my Nord because it has stereo ins.

Definitely check out the Holy Grail too. I put it on leads from the LP and space out!

astro_tiki · Post by **astro_tiki** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 12:28 am

I've had good luck using Boss guitar pedals w/ my synths. Right now I'm liking the TR-2 tremolo and the DS-1 distortion pedals. I don't know if anyone else is doing this, but I run the signal coming out of a synth into a Pro Co attenuator before it hits the any of the pedals.

Post by **nathanscribe** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 6:53 pm

I've been trying pedals out recently, and found the following:

MXR Phase 90 (new block script edition): lower the input levels and you're fine. Works well for Numan-stylings.

Belcat delay (aka Nevada): uses a PT2399 (IIRC) so is not analogue, as some claim, but it does sound OK and is cheap. Could do with a longer max delay time, but seems to be easily mod-able by replacing a resistor.

Boss RCE-10 digital chorus: one of those half-racks, and has an annoying switch that only covers -20 or -10 dB. However, it sounds very nice and works particularly well in stereo. Can provide slightly crazy chorus at top end of its control range.

EHX Small Clone: not a success. Seems to be too weak for synths really, or maybe that's just my tastes showing. It's a mild, subtle effect but does sound nice within its scope. Mono only. I might replace it with a Clone Theory later.

JHS MX-99 analogue delay: random cheap ebay find, and even though the max time could be a little longer, it has a lovely gritty lo-fi sound.

EHX Deluxe Electric Mistress: absolutely smashing analogue flanger. Plenty of range in the controls, loses nothing of the sound, takes high level input so can be patched in with no accidental overloading.

I think that's it so far, but I've been going off studio-type multi-fx racks in favour of these specific boxes. I'll bee keeping my lexicon & alesis for reverb, but I'm getting into descrete analogue units for certain jobs.

The obvious choice for a Voyager would be a few Foogers...

derma_tek · Post by **derma_tek** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 3:15 pm

maindeglorie wrote:
derma_tek wrote: i've been looking for a few pedals for my little phatty. how do you like the memory man on basses from the LP?
I love the Memory Man on it. When engaged, the bass frequency remains intact, which can be a problem when using pedals on synths. I strongly disagree with the ol' "any pedal will do" cause no, any will not do. I picked up an EH Small Stone phaser, and it's terrible on mono synths, because it KILLS the low end, and there's a volume difference. I like good sounding, true bypass pedals that don't squash or kill the beautiful analog tone. The Holy Grail and Memory Man are on the top of my recommendation list. Also, as mentioned, the Line 6 DL4 is good. I use that for my Nord because it has stereo ins.

Definitely check out the Holy Grail too. I put it on leads from the LP and space out!

thanks i'll definitely check out the holy grail reverb too