Microsynth : Death to Ming!

This pedal sounds great. You can get the swirling, sub-octave synth sound of the Ming's Palace theme by Queen from the Flash Gordon soundtrack which, in itself, was enough reason for me to buy it.

It took a while to get used it and I find that, compared to fuzz, vibrato, and the more usual fx units, it can be quite difficult to dial up a new sound that sits well on the fly during a gig. To counter this I wrote a few of the settings that provided cool sounds on the handy record sheet that comes with the unit and am now quite comfortable with it.

The starting tone slider broke quite easily within the first month of having it and i now need to keep a ready supply of tooth picks handy to slide between the gap in order to change this parameter. It has the usual, sturdy metal chassis of an Electro Harmonix FX pedal

You get a lot of control with the unit leading it to the kind of versatility that makes it very good value for money.

The sound quality of the Electro Harmonix Microsyth improved greatly when i added a compressor before it in my FX chain and it sounds fearsome with my Strymon Echo pedal after it.

Without the compressor, long sustained notes can die with a bristly farting sound at a moments notice, depending on how you set the trigger. This was fixed by the compressor and allows for some far out, 70's Sci Fi film sounds.

I've never really managed to get a clean guitar to sound nice with a compressor so I intend to get a line selector and keep the Compressor->Synth->Echo on a separate line so i can turn them all of at once(much easier than trying to turn off all three in succession while changing guitar parts).