[Forensic Scene]

Is the Electro Harmonix Frequency Analyzer Pedal/ Synthesizer any good? I have heard sound samples and they seem incredible. Can anyone give me like a little review of what you think of it? Do the Sonics use them? Are they worth it?

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

I have one. Sonic Youth doesn't use the frequency analyzer, they use the moog ring mod.

What a ring mod does it takes your input and a base frequency, and it adds and subtracts them. If you play a 440 A and the frequency analyzer is set to 220, it will output 660 and 220 at the same time, the sum and the difference. Those would be pretty desirable results. If you play odd chords and notes, you can get into microtonal and atonal territory. So it modulates the two signals together essentially, which can give you bell, robot, sci-fi, sitary, sounds.

The frequency analyzer has a mix knob, a fine knob, and a shift knob, as well as a filter switch. The shift and fine tune the internal pitch of the frequency analyzer, which allows you to get a ton of different sounds. The mix knob lets you mix in your clean sound, which can allow you to get some interesting cross distortion from it. The filter switch is pretty much a bass boost to the sound (you can get some very fat low end with it on.) The knobs are nice and big, and since the pedal is big and flat, you can tweak them with your feet (or shoeless with your toes!)

Ways to use the frequency analyzer:
Make the clean overpowering so that the extra notes from the frequency analyzer act like distortion harmonics to shape your tone- you can get some cool pseudo synth and sitar this way. If you turn the filter on, it can add some nice subtle low end to your chords.

Putting it 100% wet and tuning to a major chord. You can now do microtonal and atonal work, and use that base chord as the consonance that you move into so that you are not just making noise.

Running my acoustic electric set up, I do two small amps and put it going to the wet amp. That way doing solo acoustic stuff, I can do theremin like noise solos with my toe while I do rhythm with my hands.

If you put a magnet to your pickup, the internal pitch will start to "bleed-through" and you can hear what it is playing. So you can get extremely theremin like sounds out of it with some tweaking and a magnet.
I also will get a feedback amp pointed directly at a single coil guitar, and move it around while playing rhythm so I can get interesting ring mod feedback melodies over my rhythm playing.

It is a solid pedal, the switch is strong, I love it.

Drawbacks:

No expression pedal jacks (moogerfooger does have this, you don't need expression pedals to do interesting stuff, but it adds to your abilities)

No LFO (an LFO in a ring modulator is a vibrato basically on the internal pitch which can give you nice oscillating sounds, moogerfooger has this)

No internal pitch in (so you can replace the internal pitch with a sound source, moogerfooger has this)

The internal pitch generator cannot go low enough to do tremolo (moogerfooger can)

Some additional pros:
Easy to mod- the chip that generates the internal pitch can do sine, triangle, and square waves, but is only set to do triangle. You can easily do a square wave mod (the moogerfooger has square and triangle for the vibrato, but not for pitch's wave itself.) Schematics are readily available, so there are a lot of cool things you can do to it.


For the price you can get them used, they are a really good deal. Ring mods IMO are instruments in themselves. But if you are willing to spend some more, get a used Moogerfooger off the 'bay.

[CHOUT]

I ended up with both the EH and Moog ones. I like them both for different reasons.