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NPD! (warning: shoegaze content herein)


onyxrhino

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Look what my mailman gave to me:

 

p1014276gk8.jpg

 

p1014278dd3.jpg

 

p1014280fe9.jpg

 

Penny Pedals Fingerprint!

 

I've played around with it a bit. It sounds great. I'm not sure yet if it's the be-all, end-all shoegaze distortion sound I'm looking for, but it's definitely in the ballpark. I've already played the opening to Swervedriver's "Sci-Flyer" through this thing for nearly an hour and it sounds amazing. On more extreme settings, it does the broken fuzz, clanging robot sound pretty well. Overall, an awesome pedal. The only drawback is that it's too pretty to step on. It's sitting on my couch now and I've been switching it by hand. I'm thinking I might wrap it in plastic before I put it with the rest of my board.

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nice! have you tried any other penny pedals?

 

 

no, this is my first. I was really intrigued by the description of it as being based on the MBV and JAMC sounds. That was right up my alley. I'm not sure if their other pedals fit my playing style as much, I haven't looked into them. But I wouldn't hesitate to buy from them again. It took a little bit longer than expected, but not as long as alot of boutique builders take. Plus TweedBassman was cool to deal with. He kept in touch throughout and let me know how everything was progressing. Plus, free shipping! I hadn't noticed that mentioned on their site, so it was a nice surprise that the price was all inclusive.

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Tell more about the pedal! I was interested a while back but was put off by the soundclips...

 

 

Yeah, I wasn't enamored with the clips on the site. I started a thread here to ask more about it (you can probably find it by doing an HCFX search for "Fingerprint"), and Tweed posted some more clips there. They sounded pretty nice, so I figured I'd take the plunge.

 

It's a very nice sound, fuzzy but articulate. With the gain all the way up, I can still play complex chords and the high voicings don't get lost like with alot of distortions or fuzzes. With power chords and single notes + open strings, it gives you a really huge sound, but one that's definitely more shoegaze than hard rock. It's got a sort of hazy character to the distortion that's hard to describe. I would try to get some clips up, but right now, I'm limited by a {censored}ty mic that makes everything more fuzzy than it actually sounds, so I might have to wait a bit to do that.

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What make this pedal "shoegaze" other then the mention of it on the site? Hell a DS-1 can be "shoegaze" in the right hands and cost much less.
:idk:
I agree that the clips on the site are not very good and the paint is quite nice.



Well, here's the thing - I wasn't using "shoegaze" as a buzzword as much as a shorthand to describe the sound. Actually a DS-1 does do a pretty decent distortion for the type of droney, open string, suspended chord riffs I use. But, the DS-1 can sound a little thin to me at high volumes. But I think its a very underrated pedal, especially given the awesome price and its usefulness for "shoegaze"-type music.

I've gone through a lot of distortions and fuzzes. I can't list them all here, but many just didn't seem to mesh with the types of chords/riffs I was playing and the sound I had in my head. I loved the sustain and the raw square waviness of the Big Muff, but on open or more complex chords, the bass drowned out my high end articulation. With tone knob turned to eliminate the bass, it just sounded too whiny and "lo-fi". The Rat was cool for heavy rock riffs - it made me sound like Jerry Cantrell. But when I played something like "Only Shallow" through it, I still sounded like Jerry Cantrell.

Basically, those have been the two poles of my experience with distortion pedals. I've either found that a pedal sounded too "booming", so that my riffs seemed more in-your-face and cock-rocky or that a pedal would get too fuzzed out at high-gain, so that it swallowed chord voicings or made the notes ring together in an un-musically intermodulated way. I've been searching awhile for a pedal that can really distort my signal, but does it in a way that open chords and high notes really sound big and still ring out against the lower frequencies.

The Fingerprint isn't perfect, but it does sound pretty great doing this. It doesn't make me all of a sudden sound like Kevin Shields, but when I play his riffs or my own riffs that have some similar voicings, they sound a bit more right on than with many other pedals I have used. When I play more conventional riffs, like the power chord derived Swervedriver stuff, the sound is a bit more organic, or retro, or hazy (I can't find the right word for it) than what I've gotten with something like the Rat.

Shoegaze guitar to me is mostly about creating a really big, hi-gain sound that washes over you rather than bowls you over. I think that this pedal does a good job of that, hence the "shoegaze" moniker.

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Well, here's the thing - I wasn't using "shoegaze" as a buzzword as much as a shorthand to describe the sound. Actually a DS-1 does do a pretty decent distortion for the type of droney, open string, suspended chord riffs I use. But, the DS-1 can sound a little thin to me at high volumes. But I think its a very underrated pedal, especially given the awesome price and its usefulness for "shoegaze"-type music.


I've gone through a lot of distortions and fuzzes. I can't list them all here, but many just didn't seem to mesh with the types of chords/riffs I was playing and the sound I had in my head. I loved the sustain and the raw square waviness of the Big Muff, but on open or more complex chords, the bass drowned out my high end articulation. With tone knob turned to eliminate the bass, it just sounded too whiny and "lo-fi". The Rat was cool for heavy rock riffs - it made me sound like Jerry Cantrell. But when I played something like "Only Shallow" through it, I still sounded like Jerry Cantrell.


Basically, those have been the two poles of my experience with distortion pedals. I've either found that a pedal sounded too "booming", so that my riffs seemed more in-your-face and cock-rocky or that a pedal would get too fuzzed out at high-gain, so that it swallowed chord voicings or made the notes ring together in an un-musically intermodulated way. I've been searching awhile for a pedal that can really distort my signal, but does it in a way that open chords and high notes really sound big and still ring out against the lower frequencies.


The Fingerprint isn't perfect, but it does sound pretty great doing this. It doesn't make me all of a sudden sound like Kevin Shields, but when I play his riffs or my own riffs that have some similar voicings, they sound a bit more right on than with many other pedals I have used. When I play more conventional riffs, like the power chord derived Swervedriver stuff, the sound is a bit more organic, or retro, or hazy (I can't find the right word for it) than what I've gotten with something like the Rat.


Shoegaze guitar to me is mostly about creating a really big, hi-gain sound that washes over you rather than bowls you over. I think that this pedal does a good job of that, hence the "shoegaze" moniker.

 

 

Crap... just when I promise myself I'm done, I come across yet another description of this particular pedal that makes me want one real bad. The third and last paragraphs in particular really resonate with me as I'm in the hunt for that sound.

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I like the paintjob! I can't wait for the DOT to come out too. Should be an awesome combo. Hopefully Matt will respond to my emails about one :poke:

 

Did anyone get one of the dual switch Fingerprints yet? I read about them but have yet to actually see a real live one...

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Did anyone get one of the dual switch Fingerprints yet? I read about them but have yet to actually see a real live one...

 

 

Yeah, I saw where he said that those were going to be out in the future. I read that after I had ordered mine, or I might have waited to pick one of those up (I love dual switch pedals). Apparently the second switch engages a booster. I'm interested in hearing how a booster sounds with the Fingerprint. Mine came with "instructions" that suggest trying a booster in front of it.

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