player opinions
Korg ToneWorks 411fx Super Multi FX
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Name: Ben
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Band: The Jericohst
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Model Year: -----
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Price Paid: $100
Performance
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It’s a pretty cool multi-effect pedal and it’s the size of a stomp box. Editing and saving programs are pretty easy despite the manual, which was written by trained chimps from the look of it. I also like the fact that it has no program displays or anything, just knobs with numbers. Call me old- fashioned.
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Performance Rating: 8
Sound Quality
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I will rate the effects individually, because hey, I’m trying to make the world a better place. Compression: Good good good. Not fabulous, but very good. Smooths every thing out. Overdrive: A little harsh, a little trebbly. Not too shabby though. Distortion: Still kind of harsh if you have the gain up too high, but properly monkeyed with, it’s good. Fuzz: Great! Not quite as ballsy as my Sustain-Punch modified Big Muff, but with better definition and great tone. Three band eq: gotta love it. Also a gain knob, useful for smoothing out the harshness of the distortion (by turning the gain down). More grrr, less crrang! Chorus: Pretty good, but kind of thin. Stereo Chorus: Good, but I don’t really use it. Flanger: Sucks. Too thin, too wimpy. Phaser: Pretty good. A little thin, but I thicken it up with my Danelectro Cool Cat chorus. Phaser with unique peaks: Neat. Weird alien noises. Vibrato: Okay I guess, I never use it unless you’re talking the kind you do with your fingers. Tremolo: I like it a lot. Good for clean sound on Radiohead’s “Creep”, plus various REM songs from Monster. Auto Rotary: Kind of a rotary chorus thing. Can be a little subtle but it’s pretty cool. Old fashioned chorusy, but has that flanger jet sound when used with distortion. Interesting. Auto Wah: Kind of blah when clean, but pretty cool with distortion. (Adding chorus from my cool cat helps too — you can’t mix two modulation types on this thing, and you can’t use modulations with reverb — bummer.) Pitch shift: Good for chimey chording on one setting, kind of cool for twisted soloing if you shift the pitch to an octave below normal. The shifted tone sounds kind of keyboardish. Delay/Echo: Good sounding, but limited in its editability. Reverb: Really nice, but I never use it because you can’t use it in conjunction with modulation effects. I just use the reverb on my amp, no problem. Noise Reduction: Very effective, doesn’t hurt your tone or your gain or anything. Volume: What can I say, it’s volume. It does what it’s supposed to do. Overall, I give it a 4. If there was some depth control on the modulations (there is only speed control), and if the flanger didn’t suck, I’d give it a 10.
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Sound Quality Rating: 8
Construction
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Very reliable. It does have a problem once in a while with bank 11 going out, but that’s probably because I dropped it twice, once down some stairs. It’s built solidly, in a thin metal housing, but it’s not indestructable so don’t throw it around. It’s my main pedal, I use it in all my songs, and I’d be a bit of lost without it. I didn’t give it as high marks as some of my other pedals (Cool Cat and Snarling Dogs Wah), but for the price this does a lot, and it does most of it well. I wish I could find a pedal guru to fix this up with depth control and maybe warm up the overdrive and make the flanger sound good (not to mention fixing bank 11.) This is a really cool pedal, however, despite its imperfections.
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Construction Rating: 8
links
Average Ratings
- Performance: 8
- Sound Quality: 8
- Construction: 8
Ratings Key
- 10: Excellent
- 0: Useless
Company
- Korg