FX30-B Gate/Loop

if you're not able to use a noise gate that doesn't mean that it sounds bad, but that you're an idiot. so far, only an idiot would put it after delay/reverb effects complaining that it gates... place it after distortions and find best setting for you, it will work perfetly. Of course, if you have crap pickups, crap distorion and crap amp don't complain about this pedal. It's click-free, doesn't color the sound, and works great as a/b box too, so i give it a 10.

rocks! it's with me since a lot of years and never had a prob.

it's really easy to use, learning how to use knobs takes 5 minutes.

don't know

it's a great box, it helps to make things simpler. i'm a pro musician, work both in studio and in live gigs since 20 years. had almost everything, and during these years only a few things survived, including this pedal. I prefer its sound clarity over the Line Selector, its gate works great and as a/b box is way superior to morley. my experience includes different guitars/amps/effects combinations; name it and i'd probably used it in some record or gig. If stolen, i'd take one from my backups, i own several of these magic boxes ;-) Besides, it's plenty of idiots selling it to buy Boss crap, so i'd easily buy another one.

It's really a shame that so many pedals, especially DOD, have such a negative effect on your tone.  From a function standpoint - acting as a loop for my digital delay pedal and parametric EQ for playing leads - this is exactly wanted, but it muffles my tone horribly when bypassed!  There is also a very brief delay before the pedal activates, which was not a surprise but still disappointing.  I run an ART Xtreme distortion pedal into the FX30-B, with a Boss DD-3 Digital Delay and ART Tube EQ (parametric) in the loop, then out to a Rocktron Guitar Silencer and into one of several Peavey 2x12 combos.  I wanted a different sound for leads, which I can achieve this way, but my rhythm sound is weakened badly by the DOD.  I had the same problem with a DOD EQ pedal.

I bought this to experiment with it, and based on the sound quality, would never take it to a gig.  I take care of my gear, so I suppose it would hold up.

Purchased used without a manual, this pedal is easy enough to work with.  I already have a Rocktron Guitar Silencer (older rackmount Hush unit), and bought the FX30-B as an effects loop on my pedal board, but I experimented with the gate controls and had no trouble finding workable settings.  Nothing complicated here.

I am the lead guitarist for a thrash/death metal band, and needed one pedal that could activate 2+ other pedals for solos.  The DOD FX30-B Gate/Loop seemed worth trying for $25, as oppposed to $100 for a Boss or ADL equivalent.  From a function standpoint, it works exactly the way I want, but the tone and volume loss created by the DOD are unacceptable. Maybe I'll find something to boost my signal, so that I can get some practical use out of this pedal, but I'm probably better off saving my money for something of better quality with true bypass.

I'm using a roland-ready (american standard) strat and an acoustic dreadnaught-style guitar with a fishman rare earth humbucker pickup mounted on the neck side of the soundhole. directboxes and straight-into-the-board, as I'm mostly using this for recording. I use the fx-30b for two things: 1) to cut the noise off of a danelectro black coffee pedal. the black coffee mini is noisy as hell with the treble over halfway (but it sounds like mud with any less treble). it's especially bad when I'm using heavy distortion on my humbuckered acoustic (don't ask why I like this sound -- I don't know). it's tough to get the gate to the right sensitivity to not cut off the attacks, but it can be done with a few minutes of tweaking. sustain isn't an issue, because I only ever use the very raunchy black coffee for extremely dirty rhythm guitar... it's not much of a solo-friendly distortion. the only problem I have is that even with the release knob on the fx30 rammed all the way up, there is still a half second of fuzzy noise before the gate kicks in. needless to say, you're not gonna get a really clean stop-start with distortion like in a helmet song. on the other hand it does a good job of saving you from the idle hum when you're not playing. 2) the other thing I use the fx30 for is as a loop without the gate. guitar through the in, out to the amp or direct box, and whatever effects chain I want all at once attached on the chain's in to the send on the fx30, returning to the fx30 from the out on the end of the chain. with all the sensitivity knob all the way to the left, the gate won't engage, so the pedal functions pretty much as a loop only. when the pedal's off, you get whatever's coming into the in (albeit with a little coloring, particularly in gain if you listen well--this is not a true bypass pedal). with the pedal on, you get whatever's coming in going through the whole chain in the loop. this is pretty nice for turning on multiple effects at once (i.e. chorused distortion from two different pedals a la big muff through danelectro cool cat). just leave all the effects on in the chain and punch them all through with one stomp. I haven't figured out how to get the gate to work very well on the loop. it seems it's much more sensitive to small adjustments than it is when simply gating the input. I assume the "gate" knob (which goes from "in" to "return") is supposed to adjust where the gate is working, but like I said, I haven't noticed any effect no matter where it's turned. not a 10 because distortion under a gate is still slightly audible (though most line noise disappears). also, the pedal messes with gain when it's in the chain. thankfully, it doesn't change gain when engaged or bypassed, but it drops the gain quite a bit when compared to the same effects chain minus the fx30, regardless of where it is in the chain. you can improve the gate a little bit by sticking reverb on the other side of the gate in the chain. some slight reverb goes a long way to cleaning up some of the more abrupt half-second-of-fuzzy-noise releases. gotta mess with it for 15 minutes to get it right though.

I bought it used, and it's the design before the last one they made before this pedal was discontinued. so it's a least a few years old. I've already dropped it a few times. standard well-used dod pedal complaints... battery door drops right off, tops of the knobs fall off sometimes. doesn't really matter to me. duct tape works fine as a battery door anyway. I've never used this at a gig, and the only reason I would use it is to use the loop as an entire effects chain switch. I'd use it without backup. I also plan to get a couple more gate/loop pedals, though I'm checking out other models (boss ns, etc.) to see if any have better gates.

Simple gate controls... sensitivity determines how loud a signal has to be to pass through the gate, release determines how long it takes for the gate to clamp back down once the signal drops below the minimum. there's a third knob on here which seems to switch the gate between the main input and the loop send input, but honestly it doesn't seem to have a noticable effect on anything. I don't have a manual (bought the pedal used), so it's possible I'm missing something here. so yeah, easy to use, though knowing how to use it doesn't make it any easier to get a good gate out of it...

never dealt with dod. then again, I've never owned a dod pedal that I didn't buy used, so I never qualify for warranties, etc. the few dod pedals I like are also relatively cheap used, so if one craps out and I can resolder something, I'll just buy another.

I play genre-hopping indie. a good gate/loop is pretty helpful for a lot of different styles. unfortunately, the fx30 isn't a terrific gate, though it works fine as a loop. mostly I use this to fire more than one effect simultaneously (leave them all on in the loop) and occasionally to stifle idle noise on loud distortion pedals. I've been playing for a little over 8 years.. I have a lot of danelectro pedals (mini and standards) because they are nice, affordable general old-school effects (with a few exceptions). I do most recording through a computer with a lot of plug-ins, so I don't have pedals for some effects because I can do it in software. I'd like to get a few gate/loop pedals in my stash for various purposes. it's likely that I will find a better gate at some point, and there are other ways to set up a good loop, so if this pedal disappeared, I wouldn't have to get a new one necessarily. on the other hand, they are discontinued and crawling all over ebay at cheap prices, so I'll probably end up grabbing another at some point. I'd like to get one with the damn manual so I can see what I'm missing about the gate knob. hey, if nothing else you can definitely stop the hum from a distorted acoustic or an overdriven single coil. it's not the most responsive gate, but it'll save you a trip to the amp's volume knob when you have to stop playing at home and answer the phone.