Do They Need Knobs? — The JHS Show

In this article, I want to explore an idea. Has it been explored before? Has anyone been brave enough to plumb the depths of this mystery? I honestly don’t know. But I want to answer a deceptively simple question: do they need knobs?

That’s it. That’s the article. It's just a bunch of pedals with no knobs, and Nick and I are going to decide whether it needs a knob or not. It's pretty simple. It's straightforward. It's not complicated, but I'm going to make it complicated, because that’s what I do.

As always, going back and watching the JHS show episode this article is based on will be a huge help, as you’ll actually be able to listen to the demos that I’m referring to. If you have a few minutes to spare, open up a new tab and watch it real quick. You’ll be glad you did.

Okay? Cool. Moving on.

Morley Just Distortion

First off, let’s take a look at the Morley Just Distortion. I don’t honestly know as much about this pedal as I would like. I prefer to have all my ducks in a row. In this case, I’m looking at the serial number, I see that it starts with 98, so I'm going to assume these are from 1998? That’s the best educated guess I can make with this pedal. I've never seen another one like it.

Here’s what matters: there's a battery hole, and there's a foot switch that sometimes works, but there are no knobs. We jammed with it, Nick and I weighed the evidence, and we decided: yes, the Morley Just Distortion needs a knob. This is a good pedal with a totally usable amount of distortion. Yeah, the volume was a little low, but who cares? My only complaint is that it really needs something to help with the whoofiness. It was so whoofy, y’all. I could barely hear my guitar through all this woofiness. The guitar was just really hard to predict and feel out.

So, to summarize: good pedal, but too whoofy. A knob would help balance that out.

Vintage Technology Orange Sunshine

Next up is the Vintage Technology Orange Sunshine, and it doesn’t have knobs. This is from a series of pedals that I'm trying to collect, but again, there’s not much information available on these pedals. In fact, it's very confusing. I'm not sure when they were put out. Maybe they were actually a vintage limited run? Maybe they’re currently being produced? I don’t know.

There’s an even weirder conspiracy theory with this pedal. There’s a possibility they’re currently being produced by a guy named Tracy Sands. It's further confusing, because the name Orange Sunshine is a reference to a new form of LSD invented 1967 by a guy named Nicholas Sand. Are Tracy Sands and Nicholas Sand the same person? Are they at least cousins? It’s a mystery.

We do know that this pedal is probably based around the Vox V816 Distortion Booster, which is pretty much the same circuit as the Fuzz Face. It just does its thing, because it has no knobs. You turn it on, and then there's fuzz. It cleans up really nicely.

But the question of the hour is: does it need knobs? Also, does this pedal have LSD in it?

Yes to the first question, no to the second. Personally, I'd like to see a few knobs on here to help with the fuzz control. If you go back and watch the demo, you’ll see that there’s also a strong possibility that this pedal just hated the guitar I was playing, because you can’t please everybody.

TC Electronics June-60 Chorus / TC Electronics Third Dimension Chorus

Now, I want to show you two pedals. Sort of one pedal, actually. It's confusing.

Are you noticing a theme with this article? Confusion. It’s what’s happening.

I'll just get right into it. The June-60 Chorus by TC Electronics does not have knobs. It has two buttons, conveniently labeled one and two. It's from a Juno Roland Chorus unit that’s basically modulation pulled from that synthesizer circuit. I played it, Nick and I put our heads together, and decided that in this case: no, it doesn’t need knobs. I’ll be honest here: part of me really wants to slap some knobs on this. That would make me happy. But does it need knobs? No. I understand that this is from a classic synth circuit, and in light of that I don't think we need anything here. It's not detrimental to this circuit.

It has a good sound. I’m calling it. I'm going to say it doesn't need knobs.

There’s also a second TC pedal made around the same time: the TC Electronics Third Dimension Chorus. It has four buttons, but it does not have any knobs. It’s a pretty solid clone of the BOSS DC-2 Dimension Chorus. For reference, a vintage DC-2 goes for about $12,000 used, whereas the Third Dimension Chorus by TC Electronics is about $28. I know the DC-2 is sacred, but Nick and I went ahead and demoed the Third Dimension Chorus. Our assessment?

Leave it alone. It's classic. If it's classic, don't fix it.

DanElectro Bacon N’ Eggs Mini Amp Plus Distortion

Next up is the DanElectro Bacon N’ Eggs Mini Amp Plus Distortion. Yes, that’s a long flippin’ name for a guitar pedal this small. Google a photo of it and you’ll see what I mean. This pedal does not have knobs, but it has a built-in miniature speaker that is pretty much useless. Basically, all you can do is plug your guitar in, go out into another amplifier, and use this as a boost/overdrive.

Nick and I jammed with this pedal, we made our notes, we did the math, and we decided that, yes, this pedal does need knobs.

This is honestly a really interesting pedal. It’s basically an amplifier that I put into another amplifier. Amplifier inception? When we demoed it, it was just chaotic, high-pitched feedback with this guitar. Nick said it best while we were playing: “It's like a car where you just screw the gas pedal down into the floor.” If I need to back this off, I can’t. If I want to vary up the volume, I’m stuck. I think it would be a great boost pedal if I could control it. But it's uncontrollable. It is a raging fire of volume so nuts that I didn't even bother to listen to the miniature speaker.

I don’t think I can put it any more plainly than that.

DOD 270 A-B Box

I'm going to move on with the vintage DOD 270 A-B Box. This whole segment of the episode was a little bit of a disappointment, to be honest. We already know that the pedal does not have any knobs, but I do have the box. It’s kind of my trademark. It’s my thing that I do. But when I pulled out the original DOD sticker, I discovered…

I almost can’t even type this out. It’s that awful.

The back of the sticker had come off in the box. Yup. So it dried out, and it’s not a sticker anymore. It doesn't stick. It just sits. It’s plastic, paper, and disappointment.

Nick and I still played the pedal, because we know the show must go on, but the demo was pretty much a flop. I was emotional. It happens. Our consensus was that this pedal does not need knobs, since we couldn’t get it to work properly without them, so why would you add another step for no good reason? You wouldn’t.

Lovepedal Believe

Next up is the Believe by Lovepedal. This pedal did not have knobs...until about five years ago.

That’s when I opened it up and modified it, because it had it on my board forever. It didn't have knobs until I put knobs on it. And honestly, I was so excited for this episode to show this pedal, but now that I’m looking at this pedal, and these two goofy knobs on the side, I see what I did: I ruined it. I unknowingly ruined my own future episode of the JHS Show. I'm sitting here in the future, wishing I could go back to the past and take these knobs off.**

**Robert Zemenkis, if you’re reading this, I have the plot for Back to the Future IV ready to go.

I wish I’d never touched it, because these are rare. You don't see them every day. There's a pink one out there that I’ve been dying to get my hands on. It’s a killer pedal that does this dirty octave effect that you really hear down on the 12th fret. Honestly, though, if I had one it would just serve as a daily reminder that I should have left well enough alone.

But, like a dodo, I put knobs on it. I gilded the lily. I played the fool. It hurts my heart to admit this, but this pedal doesn't need knobs.

I messed up everything for myself. I am my own worst enemy. If you go back and listen to this demo for yourself, you’ll probably agree that I should just leave the knobs off. I think that you need to type in the comments, “Josh, leave pedals alone, and do not put knobs on pedals that don’t need knobs. Josh, you messed your own episode up. Josh, you're an idiot!”

I promise not to get mad, ‘cause you’ll be right. Do me a favor and put that in the comments, and I will try my best to unmod this by the time we air the next episode.

Ibanez PDS1 DCP Distortion

The 1980s gave us those wrist watches that had buttons and calculators in them. Very high tech stuff. Ibanez followed suit with their PDS series, including a distortion pedal that does not have any knobs. That said, what it lacks in knobs it more than makes up for in buttons. Eight buttons, all told, plus a weird SEDI cable out. This actually reminds me of that Bird VS Jordan: One on One video game I played when I was a kid, in a good way.

But does it need knobs? I’ll be honest, I prefer the analog feel in this kind of pedal. I’d rather turn a knob versus pushing the same eight buttons a thousand times to get to the correct menu. I hate the buttons. I hate them with a fiery passion that cannot be tamed by a million oceans. I hate these buttons, but because it's the ’80s, because it's nostalgic, because it reminds me of that Bird VS Jordan video game, and because I was born in ’82 and it links me to my childhood and probably fixes a lot of psychological issues--

Okay, I say let's leave it alone. No knobs.

Jen Variospectra

Next up is a pedal that Nick and I were so excited to try. Someone mailed this to me during the COVID shutdown period. I've looked for one of these for a long time. I’m talking about the Jen Variospectra. Wait, isn’t that that one dinosaur from Jurassic Park that chased those two kids around when they were just trying to enjoy some jello? Close, but no.

The Jen Variospectra is a truly classic pedal. Now, before we go any further, can we give this pedal a 12 out of 10 on the name? Thanks. Now, different versions of this pedal were made with different labels, but they were made by this same company, Jen. Jen was an Italian company that made tons of stuff, including the original Crybaby Wah.

Now, like everything else on this list, it doesn't have any knobs, but it does have five footswitches, including low and high, plus it's got a fuse. Since it’s European, we made sure we used a power adapter when we plugged it in. When Nick and I demoed this pedal, it was a reveal for me as well. I’d literally never played it before this episode. I’d dreamed about this pedal. I’d longed to hold this pedal and experience the five footswitch bliss of what it's supposed to do.

So, it was fairly disappointing when the pedal just didn’t turn on.

Yeah, it was broken. If you go back and watch this episode, you’ll see my face in the exact moment this pedal fails to turn on and it’s intense. It’s like staring right into my broken soul when I see that broken pedal. In light of that, Nick and I firmly judged this pedal as “does not need a knob.” We decided to leave it alone, ‘cause maybe if we added a knob, it would further the brokenness?

It happens. I mean, yeah, I fix stuff every day in my shop, but I break things, too. Constantly. At the end of the day, I'm broken, so maybe everything I touch is broken--

Okay, Nick’s telling me that this is taking a dark turn. It's fine. Let’s move on.

Land Devices Domino

The second-to-last pedal on our list is the Land Devices Domino, which functions as an analog octave. This pedal does not have knobs, but it has a footswitch. It's a small enclosure; honestly, I really like the size of this. This is based around the old Dan Armstrong Green Ringer, which is a classic and one of my all-time favorite pedals.

When we demoed this pedal, we jammed with the Orange Sunshine pedal, which helped add some gnarly octave-up craziness. Afterwards, Nick and I compared notes, we crunched the numbers, and we asked: does it need knobs? Here's the deal. Go back and watch this episode if you haven’t already, and you’ll hear our jam session. That pedal is incredible. It sounds fantastic. It even made the LSD pedal sound awesome. It does not need knobs.

If you ever put knobs on this, Future Josh, I will come and find you from the past. I will invent a time machine with the sole purpose of hunting you down. I will be Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Looper. Yes, you are Bruce Willis in this scenario, but don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security. I will hunt myself down and I will not allow anything to ever happen to this pedal. Do we understand each other? Yes? Good.

Cusack Outside the Box FX Signal Diverter

Last, let’s take a look at the Outside the Box FX Signal Diverter. These are made in Holland, Michigan by my good friend John at Cusack Pedals. Whether you like it or not, this pedal is iconic. It’s unique. It has two alligator clips, a footswitch, and an LED. “Basically,” the copy says, “Just clip these on to anything conductive and see what your guitar sounds like going through things like a license plate, a metal paperclip, an empty soda can, etc.”

So we tested it out. You can’t read something like that and not experiment. Nick gathered up some various conductive objects, and we tested them out to see if this pedal needs knobs. We played a guitar through a cymbal, handbells, an empty Bubly can, and (briefly) through Nick’s face. Again, the video shows this better than I could ever describe in an article. Suffice it to say: it worked.

I'm not going to make a statement about this pedal. All I really have at this point are more questions. This pedal fills me with thousands of questions, a lot of them starting with “why.”

But let’s tackle the one question that we can probably answer: does this need knobs? Honestly, I don't know because, as Nick demonstrated, your face could be the knob. A soda can be the knob. So, I’m going to plead the fifth here, and say that my answer to “Does it need knobs?” is going to be, “I have a lot of questions.”

I realize I’m leaving you guys with more questions than answers here, but this is just that kind of article. This is The Twilight Zone, and I’m Rod Serling. Or maybe you’re Rod Serling? Maybe I’m Jordan Peele?

Nah, I’m just going to end it here, before things get weirder. Have a great week, y’all.