New user Modfactor comments

[playon]

First, thanks much for this forum that allows us end users to interact with the makers of these products. 

 I'm a new owner of the Modfactor and I just wanted to chime in after
playing with this box for a couple of days. These are initial impressions and suggestions, I apologize in advance if I'm repeating things that have already been brought up. 

I agree that most musicians will be running this box mono, (and most of them will likely be guitarists).

A delay time control for the chorus effect (and flanger too, for that matter) would be *most* appreciated.

Other suggestions (not knowing if it's possible to implement them or not):

I wish there was a choice of ways to route the second LFO.

I
wish some of the settings were more extreme and less hi-fi… for
example the Q wah, if it was a bit grittier sounding with more extreme
midrange control, it would sound more like a real analog wah.

In
general, some way to access settings for EQ would hugely expand the
possibilities of many of the effects. Even just the most basic bass &
treble controls would do a lot.  There are several patches where the X
knob does nothing, perhaps this could be dedicated to an EQ function?

Minor
irritation – you cannot go backwards through the sound banks, only
forward.  I realize you can pre-set a limited number of banks to scroll
through, but even if you are using say 8 different sounds at a gig,
there might still have to be some time consuming back-tracking, unless
you loaded certain effects twice into two different banks.  This would
work but it kind of defeats the purpose of having a bunch of different
sounds in one box.

 2nd minor irritation – you cannot name your stored presets, you must remember a number instead.

 I tried a Digitech FX pedal, the RP-250, now this thing is a
cheesy toy compared to the Eventide Modfactor, in sound, concept and
build quality — but, they did get it right as far as the interface, which is extremely user friendly… and you can scroll thru
the presets in both directions.  The user interface on the Modfactor is a bit opaque, especially the second row of knobs. 

With a box like this I think you are primarily dealing with rock n roll guitar players as customers or potential
customers, and I'd wager that many of them do not have the same
studio/midi background as Eventide's traditional customer base.  I don't know if the Eventide stompbox team has ever listened to an assortment of popular analog stomp boxes, but it might be a useful thing to do.  

OK, now the stuff I like — the sounds are fantastic, especially the Rotary sim, the phasers, tremelo, and vibrato.  These effects alone eliminate several pedals on my board.

[Burger666]

These are great ideas and ones with which I wholeheartedly agree. I too use these stomps in the 'traditional' format – guitar > mono output > amp input.

I especially support the idea of being able to 'name' presets rather than 'number' them.

I have the Modfactor and the Timefactor and I have to say that the quality of sounds (generally) in the Timefactor are superior to those found in the Modfactor. I'm hoping that future Modfactor firmware versions will address what appears to be a universal cry for closer 'analog stomp' like emulations (particularly in the chorus department). Such emulations are fantastic in the Timefactor in things like the vintage and tape delays. Even the chorus's that can be coaxed from the Timefactor are superior to those found in the Modfactor. Still, I guess it's early days yet in terms of versions…

[playon]

 Yeah I'm starting to wonder if I bought the wrong pedal!  Everyone seems to love the Timefactor but the Mod is getting mixed reviews.  I'm not sure how long it will be until the have a new revision of the firmware, I guess I'll hang in there a little longer and try to work with it.  Some of the sounds are a bit dissapointing but the main frustration for me is the architecture of the pedal, it's kind of like the parameters that are available to tweak the sounds aren't the ones that I'm wanting to tweak.  I wish less of the Modfactor's resources were devoted to the filter stuff, and more was devoted to paramters like EQ, delay time, feedback, etc.

[playon]

As an addendum, perhaps some of the Eventide people might want to read the comments in this thread, some of which echo my own impressions: 

http://tinyurl.com/48su5l

[Author]

Posts