Electro Harmonix HOG2

One of the most unique pedals ever made

I own the 1st generation HOG, it was actually one of my first pedals and it defined the sound of our band back then. It does whammy style dive bombs, evolving drones, glissando nd so much more. This is an inspiration tool. When my younger brother started his band i bought him the HOG2 and he loves it. Would i update mine, no. It is quite the same but with the ability to do more presets. Would I buy it if something would happen to my HOG, you bet.

Pros*

Creative tool.

One of a kind.

Great tracking

Great sounds.

Great hands on layout

Cons*

No major updates

nice but missing something

I had it for 3 years, the sound quality is nice and very versatile, but it's missing some fundamental feature for such a pedal, for eg. is not possible to memorize any preset unless you buy an external switch. Eventually, I sold it.

hidden treasure

very strange pedals, capable of many things. provided ehx expression is weird. pedal has many features but not so much instructional videos. poor manual.

Simply brilliant!

Wow. Wow wow wow wow, wow!

10 voices, from -2 octaves to +4 (+5 with octave pitch shift!).

Imagine this, add a 2 octaves below to your dry sound, turn on your distortion (in front of the hog 2) and then hit the spectral gate - you now have a very clean sounding octave below and a distorted guitar sound. turn on the filter and envelope features and maybe add +2 octaves above and a +5th, or a +1+5th and then set the attack and decay of both the lower voices and the higher voices to create a high attack bass note that decays quickly and a pad like upper range which sounds like angels singing(all keyboard pad sounding). Then use the expression pedal for wah, filter, step, octave or freeze and gliss features. Amazing!

I set up a nice Hammond organ sound using a fast sweeping chorus after this pedal as well, and used it as a straight octave with a fuzz and a wah for some great Jimi sounds.

The polyphony is really good, sounds very organic and I've heard no 'glitching' of sounds, even with jazz chords.

My favourite toy, and also fully midi programmable so you can add filter sweeps using simple midi commands from your DAW.

Expression pedal is lovely once you get used to it, on carpet, and easy to turn off if you tip it forwards. tipping forward again turns it on. Only thing it doesn't allow you to do it 'cock' the Wah open halfway, but you can always hold your foot on it.

Simulates 12 string, keyboard, cello, bass and loads of other weird stuff, check out the youtube videos.

Basically hours of really great quality sounds, worth every penny!

meh

try as I might I couldn't get it to sound better than a guitar synth from the 80s. tracking sort of ok but even with very minimal higher partials added, it sounds pretty bad with more complex harmonies, even with the 'spectral filter' on - you'd be insane to turn it off. like many I got it in the strength of the gliss/freeze effect - and this is brutally hard to control with the EHX single-piece pedal *seriously not helping matters there. if only ehx would put gliss/freeze in a box alone they'd sell a million. the other features are pretty mediocre. for superb tracking and a clean sound and 75% of the effects - get two digitech whammy pedals and turn em both on. probably about the same price ...

Almost a necessity for the experimental guitarist

Not much different from the original Hog; they have replaced the input gain with a master volume slider and tweaked the algorithms so the sound quality is noticably improved but that's about it - everything else is the same.

Such a versatile pedal, everything from 12 string emulation through to organ and mellotron sounds and lots in between. With the supplied expression pedal it can do a crazy whammy-style thing, strange wah sounds and filter sweeps - and it has the ability to freeze chords and let you play over them. The (optional) foot controller is essential as it lets you store 100 presets (including the master volume level).

This pedal along with a volume pedal, reverb and delay allows you to create an infinite array of soundscapes - you can get lost for days!

There is currently nothing likke the Hog 2 on the market - recommended!