Green Ringer

My setup is: Guitar (Yamaha AEX 502 semi-acoustic with P90 pickups for most of the time) -> Boss TU-2 tuner -> Green Ringer -> DIY multi-distortion pedal (has Tubescreamer, Rat, Fuzz Face and more) -> Morley Bad Horsie -> Volume Pedal -> Behringer Bass V-amp -> DIY monitor mixer (only when playing with my band) -> Audio Technica ATH-M40fs Headphones. The Ringer produces a ringing (hence the name) clean octave up effect and let's you create all kinds of crazy sounds (see above). Among the octave up pedals I've testet, this is clearly the most musically sounding and it reacts to your playing style best. It won't make your guitar sound like played an octave higher, it will change the sound entirely together with an audible octave up. It's not noisy at all and mine has true bypass (can't comment about the original one, read below).

Can't comment on the original thing, cause I don't have it. I got the schematic from the web and built it myself. Mine is in a die cast aluminium box and has a nice big and robust footswitch, so it's built like the cliche tank.

The Green Ringer does not have any controls other than effect on/off, so it's really easy to use. Getting a good sound out of it is just a tad more difficult. If you want it so sound "nice", play single note lines ONLY, if you want it to make strange noises (which can be a good thing as well), play chords, especially minor chords sound like the devil himself. When playing single note lines, you have at least the following options: (1) to get a fairly clean octave up effect, use your neck pickup, play high on the fretboard, pick near the center of the fretted portion of the string, and possibly turn down the tone knob on your guitar a bit (2) to get a synth-like sound, play low on the fretboard and do some palm muting. A fuzz face after the Ringer sounds great too. (3) to get a sitar-like sound, use your bridge pickup, play below the 8th fret and pick the strings closer to the bridge. This is only part of what you can do with it, experiment a bit and you'll find even more different sounds, and all that without a single knob on the effect itself.

Never dealt with them.

I play Rock, Funk and Jazz and everything in between and while the Ringer will never be in the center of what is "my sound", it's a very nice addition and really inspires me when jamming. I don't think that these are made anymore and the original Dan Armstrong effects have severe limitations in that they are not footswitchable, so it's probably best to build this thing yourself. The schematics are available from www.geofex.com and www.generalguitargadgets.com, at the General Guitar Gadgets page there is also a well-played sound sample by someone named Claus, listen to that to see if the Ringer is for you. You can also buy a "Ring Dinger" from General Guitar Gadgets, which is essentially the same thing, but paying about 100 USD for a pedal that I can easily make myself for 20 EUR doesn't seem too reasonable to me. If you make it yourself you can also add a volume trimpot at the end of the signal chain, which is advisable, as you otherwise can't get rid of the additional volume boost this thing produces. So heat up your soldering iron...