Riddle : Qballs for guitar XO

Setup changes. Ibanez Blazer guitars mainly. Lots of pedals. I wanted to get this pedal when i saw it the first time. i'm a bit fond of pedals. Especially delays, phasers and envelope filters/wahs. i liked the idea of this pedal and i love EHX pedals, especially the newer XO ones! the stereo polyphase is one of the best pedals i've used and heard! the riddle has a very great sound range. it's very practical to have "start/stop"-option for an EF (envelope filter) and very great to dial in good and different sounds. dials are "blend" which mixes the effected sound with your uneffected guitar tone, "mode" which lets you choose between LP (lowpass) BP (bandpass) and HP (highpass) filtering. this makes a great change and is very important with different styles and guitars. attack and decay are self-explaining and interact with each other and with Q and sensitivity. last as mentioned above are "start" and "stop" to dial in your frequency! great option! the riddle's got two foot switches. one true bypass switch to engage the effect and one distortion to add a little grit. more like an overdrive/boost. this last function is imho one of the two flaws of the riddle. most players have their OD or dist-pedals to add grit and boost and this one is not very good. it adds loads of mid frequencies and volume. the second flaw i liked about the polyphase, was the ability to switch on-the-fly between envelope, lfo or expressionpedal. this would've been great here too! you have the ability to plug in an expression pedal and the riddle acts like a great wah pedal then! you can dial in so many great sounds - even U2-like filter-sounds are possible. but you have to unplug the pedal if you want envelope filtering and that's not practical! the distortion switch for me could have been a switch between envelope and EXP mode! would've been great. btw - a LFO-autowah would've been great here too. sound is fantastic, action phenomenal. it's very smooth but can be very gritty if you want it! the filter closes very fast, so it's possible to play very fast quacky lines! great! as a wah-pedal it's fantastic to dial in your setting. very musical! great work!

EHX pedals seem to be well done. and expecially on the new XO pedals the housings are very sturdy. also the printwork is much better then on older housings!

This pedal is not straight forward. First, it's definitely great if you know about envelope filters or use/d one! Secondly its not too bad if you know about EHX-Pedals. They are different speaking of Layout, Dials and of course Sound (that's why they are popular!) But still, it's not easy to get a sound you have in mind. you have to learn to use it, and - don't give up - you will be rewarded! as with most EHX-Pedals! And as for most EHX-Pedals, the manual is very basic. It tells you pretty good, what every Dial does to your sound and the interactivity of the Dials is explained a bit. Not too much for people who never used an Envelope Filter, though! It's fully analogue, which imho is the only way to go in Envelope Filtering! It's very musical and special and responds to the way you are playing AND to your gear, so fool around with it! if you're not able to get a good sound, try a different guitar and setup and maybe even a compressors or booster in front (if your guitars output is not high enough).

pretty fast with emails. otherwise i won't know. website and forums are great!

i play many different styles and this pedal is great for me. if you learn how to use it, it doesn't depend on musical styles, it just depends on how you use it! i would buy it again. only two flaws i mentioned would've been great, but only with practical use. sound is amazing!