Polytone in a Pedal

[GuyBoden]

You could buy a Baxandall Tone Control kit in the UK for £29.
CopperSound Pedals 3 Band EQ Cir-Kit DIY Effects Pedals | CopperSound Pedals DIY | FX Pedal Planet Limited

"3-Band EQ Cir-Kit:
Take control of your sound with the Baxandall EQ. Dial in the perfect balance of bass, mids, and treble to suit your playing style and preferences"

[GuyBoden]

Polytone minibrute 3 in a NAM file:

Polytone Mini Brute III - 15" (Jazz Music Only) NAM Profiles by @matz . TONE3000

You'll need a pedal that accepts or converts the NAM file.

I've not tried this Valeton GP-5 pedal (£65), but it looks more robust than cheaper alternatives I have.

[GuyBoden]

Currently, I'm using the Polytone NAM file on my inexpensive plastic Sonicake PocketMaster.

I'm trying to get the courage to make a very short demo track.

My Sonicake PocketMaster is this colour (1980's game console colour?):

[Cunamara]

I suppose I just hadn't thought about it, but I didn't foresee cheap digital modeling the size of a pack of cards as something to make a splash in the marketplace. But here we are.

[GuyBoden]

I suppose I just hadn't thought about it, but I didn't foresee cheap digital modeling the size of a pack of cards as something to make a splash in the marketplace. But here we are.

The plastic Sonicake PocketMaster etc are cheap NAM file players for Hobby players like myself, previously you could always play NAM files on your computer DAW and other software.

These are not professional gear to withstand extensive gigging conditions.

[Cunamara]

But still, what used to be a nearly thousand dollar rig taking up a few square feet of stage is now a $100 rig that would fit in your shirt pocket, with parameters controlled from a laptop or tablet or phone. It's really quite remarkable. Here we have gone from two forum members building a Polytone preamp circuit into pedals, with soldering and op amps and ICs and capacitors and resistors to a digital representation of a Polytone loaded into an inexpensive box of silicon.

Now, bear in mind that this is written by a guy who has been fooling around with guitar for 47 years and just put his first pedalboard ever together about six weeks ago. I am not exactly up-to-date on this stuff and my perspective is mainly one of befuddled ignorance. I am the Mr. Magoo of guitar technology- my pedalboard is based around a Yamaha MagicStomp! I've had that probably 15 years and it mostly sat in a box that whole time, until somebody reversed engineered computer software to control it (called MagicStomp Frenzy; the original software hasn't worked in as long as I've had the pedal, because Yamaha didn't bother to update it for modern operating systems- stuck at Mac OS 9 and Windows XT! Yamaha is a most puzzling company).

My experience with that suggests to me that my 17" carved archtop with floating pickup is perhaps not the best signal generator for a whole lot of signal processing. Clean tones with some reverb seem to work best because the output from the guitar is so complex- and by the way, the MagicStomp has some tasty reverb options and the guitar sounds great through it. My solid bodies, which to my ears send a less complex signal, seem to work better with all the digital gewgaws that the pedal has to offer, like the Allan Holdsworth patches.

I have no doubt that there is much better stuff that has been developed in the 15-20 years since the MagicStomp. Helix and Boss and Eleven and what have you...

[Bach5G]

I am the Mr. Magoo of guitar technology.



oh my. Did that ever hit home!

[GuyBoden]

Here is a short recording of the Polytone NAM file played thru a Sonicake PocketMaster device. No reverb