Arion MEQ-1 Equilizer

I bought this second hand off a mate so didn't come with a manual or anything, but you don't really need one. Simple 7 band EQ with level. For help getting different sounds out of it i used the manuals and suggested settings off the BOSS website as it's pretty much identical to the GE-7.

I'm using a Epiphone SG at the moment through a vox cambridge and bought it primarily to use as a boost. It works well as this but sounds a little noisey the more you put the level up and mids. i can't compare this to other EQ pedals so im not sure whether it's meant to be like that. If you use it on the clean channel with the level pretty high it gives a nice break up sound, good for blues and rock 'n' roll.

It's made out of plastic so it could easily crack if stomped on too hard, and the battery compartment is at the front, behind a plastic cover where it says 'equalizer' (if you look at other arion pedals you will see where i mean). This looks like it could break pretty easily and i've seen other arion pedals on ebay with tape over this bit so it probably happens quite alot. I'd probably gig without a back up, purely because it's not essential to have, not because i think it would last.

Never dealt with them.

I play lots of stuff but mainly indy rock stuff. like i said i use it as a boost for solos and other bits where i need a little extra volume and punch. It sounds good as this but could probably be used for something better. It's not true bypass which is something i normally have to have in a pedal, but it's only an EQ so it can't be expected. If it broke or was stolen i'd probably get a behringer EQ i've seen. They're metal and look alot better built, would probably last alot longer. Plus they're only 15GBP new which is very cheap considering this cost me 10GBP used.

This pedal is a simple equaliser. It has 8 controls which are simple enough to under stand: Bass to treble from left to right.

I was using it with a Ds-1 distortion pedal, a Jim Dunlope cry baby wah, a Death by audio sonic annhialator, a DOD delay and a boss compressor through a 200Watt peavy keyboard amp. For a simple but good distortion, I mainly used it to equalise the DS-1 which greatly improves it's already fine sound. The pedal, however is hard to negotiate with multi effects and tends to be good for a bit of kick, but not universally useable.

No you can NOT! Listen to me. My band had two guitarists at one point. We had a few songs which we decided would sound good if we had exactly the same pedals. After my first one broke I bought it again for 80 Euro, which is pretty close in dollars. Then the other guitarist bought one. After 6 months we both were experiencing the same dificulties: 1- The knobs were easily bent and lost as they are made out of flimsy metall. 2: The lights stopped working. 3: The input output jacks began to snap crackle and pop and these are annoying pedals to fix. Finally the last treble knob (the most decisive and sensitive) stopped responding on all three pedals. In other wrds, I have seen this happen three times! After that I bought a Boss equaliser and I never looked back.

I never dealt with customer service, but we erected an evil monument to curse them forever for costing us so much money.

For rock this pedal is adequate, but noisy. For any experimental people, keep clear of this pedal it ties your sound down, once it is on. For a further 30 or even 10 dollars, you can find a Boss equaliser which will greatly improve your sound for you with no problems. I have had my Boss for two years now and it is far better in every way. People with strotocasters should espessially keep away from this thing as it renders your pickup switch useless.

I cant really rate this one, so Im going for no opinion. I dont know what each and every little switch does by itself, but it's pretty easy and interesting to just play around with one or two at a time and go along until youve set them all.

I am using this with a Fender princeton 112 plus and a fender supersonic. I run a boos metal zone, Arion MEQ-1 EQ, and a vox wah wah. It isnt very noisy at all, but depending on how you have it set, it could be more noisy or less noisy than before you had it. The effects are awesome. You can easily get anything from a heavyier chugging drag muted heavy riff, or just a simple volume boost, or lower/highten the tone of your stuff. I personally have it set to where it enhances harmonics and pinch harmonics, and with the wah wah, bring solo's and high strings to life. With this thing You can get everything from dimebag darrel style, to zakk wylde style, to a raging easy-noise Nirvana live sound. It's strange though, when you first start messing with it, its confusing, but as soon as you turn it off, you realize how much it really improved your sound.

Ive been playing for 9 years, and this is my first Arion pedal, but so far its done well for me. The battery placement doesnt seem to be the greatest place, its gonna break soon Im sure. But it seems fairly reliable so far...Although it is more plastic than most.

If it messes up, Im not going for customer support, Ill just get another, they arent expensive.

I play from 80's metal, grunge, and heavy metal (no new stuff, its pretty much sucks...damn MTV). Im big on solo's, so I play alot of fast stuff. I have been playing for 9 years, and currently use a metal zone, vox wah wah and Arion MEQ, and Im satisfied now. If It were stolen I'd do the honorable thing and go kick some A$$ and get it back. But if that didnt work, I'd buy another one.I love this thing, you can get a volume boost or drop, you can get harmonic enhancement, and you can get downright heavy with this thing. It helps in most things now, I usually hit it on when I go for solo's.

It is a 7 band equalizer.
Fairly easy to use no presets suggested or offered. I Really can't fault the manufacturer for that. Just need to take a few minutes to get it create a fabulous tone. The battery compartment is easy to access.

This little box is fantastic! It adds no extra noise with my amps (rocktron r50c and Behringer gx-112 guitar workstation). I use an epi LP standard /classic. I also run a Zoom GM-200 with it in the fx loop.

Seems fairly reliable sliders are recessed so they won't be dammaged during use. I may be gigging with it soon (crossing fingers that I pass the band's audition). =)
I would gig w/o a back up for this, I wouldn't sound as good.

Never delt with them doubt I will. If it breaks I'll get another.

I'm playing all sorts of music from Classic rock to alternative to 'country'.
I was going to get a Danelectro EQ but this one was on sale I couldn't resist.I figured an EQ is an EQ why pay extra for a brand name.
I think everyone should have some sort of EQ in their rig. It helps clean up the neck pick up on my les paul and that's a good thing.
This lil' Arion EQ has quite a bit of boost for soloing, too.
Take some time and get to know the freqs that this box will contour and you will be ,< pleasntly > surprised.
If it were stolen, I would have to get another EQ of some sort. I absolutely would get another one of these.

Only reason for this review: JUST PASSING ON THIS TIP:
This pedal makes a great little pre-amp for recording on a PC to Cooledit, Cakewalk, Guitar Studio. Even my Les Paul sounds thin through a PC soundcard, this pedal fixes that quick. All you need is a lead from the EQ into your 'line-in' port, and you can shape your guitar sound how you like.

This pedal is very easy to use you just have to take a bit a bit of time playing about with it.

I use a Fender Strat & a Hughes & Kettner amp. The pedal boosts volume for solo's. The best thing is to play about with EQ's rather than just turning the volume up on the pedal (may I add that this feature is an added bonus!) The simple set up of pedals I use are a distortion, Chorus and last in line going to the amp is the EQ pedal. On a clean sound if you set the EQ's high enough you can get a nice mild distorion sound.

It is very dependable but make sure if you are using batteries, that the LED light is bright. If the battery signal is dull the pedal will not perform properly. Being a lead guitarist this pedal is vital to me now. Alhough I don't use it to boost solo's for every song, it is a very handy investment.

When I first bought it I was playing in a 3-piece acoustic band plugging direct into the PA so it worked great for a volume lift. Now I'm back to playing electric and I use this to boost distortion sounds. I would definately buy a new one if it got lost. I play general rock from The Beatles to Green Day.

As with all EQ pedals, it just takes time to find the tones you're looking for. This being a 7-band EQ, it's easy to scoop those mids if you're a death metaller, but it's just as easy to boost the mids as well. It just takes time to find what works best for your own tastes.

The sound on this thing is great. The 7-band EQ is great for just searching out those elements of your tone you feel are missing. The clarity of the highs and mids and bass are phenomenal, especially for an EQ of this price. The volume bar is an amazing addition; a producer I know uses this pedal straight into a Marshall JCM800 just for the volume boost to drive the tubes, so when I found one on E-Bay (blah) I had to pick it up (esp. for the price).
A couple of things I've tried: setting the EQ pattern like most would normally do, with bass and treble just a little higher than mids, and drop the second lowest EQ bar all the way down- this creates a really cool 'radio-ish' sound that I thought was cool. No one else will probably like it, but it amuses me. Another thing: I bought one of those AnalogMan-modded TS-9 RI pedals and liked it, but it wasn't until I put this EQ pedal after it that I REALLY loved it. Straight into the TS-9 to this EQ and into an old Panaramic all-tube amp (about the size of a Fender Twin reverb, only with tube vibrato and no reverb). AMAZING tone. Definitely will be playing that TS-9 more often now.
Haven't really investigated whether there is a change in tone when it's in the effects chain and off. The purpose of the pedal is to change your tone, so I just leave it on.
I sort of noticed a slight difference between the performance of the pedal between the battery and the power supply. When using the battery, the LED light was a bit brighter than when using the power supply. When I tried the TS-9 thing with the power supply, it sounded sweeter than with the battery. This could be due to the fact that my tubes need to be replaced, as they've been acting temperamental lately, but I figured I'd mention it anyway. Maybe if you use the batteries that are almost dying from your other pedals it'll sound nicer? I'm probably just drinking too much while playing.

Well, Arion pedals are made of plastic. It's heavy plastic, but the battery covers are famous for coming off. Mine still has the cover, but I can definitely see the potential for falling off. Duct tape will fix that, but then if you have more than one Arion, there's that potential problem of stepping on the wrong pedal when playing live if it's too dark because the battery cover is the only discer. Which would probably happen to me. Other than that, the pedal's pretty dependable. I don't think I'd need a backup to gig, but I've only owned it a few months and I don't gig much. If needed, they're cheap, so it wouldn't be a big deal.

No idea. Haven't had to actually contact Arion for anything. I don't speak Japanese anyway, except for counting to 8 (summer camp, learning Taiso exercises once...Ichi, Ni, San, Shi...).

I'm very glad I spent the $15 ($23 or so with shipping) for this pedal. It was definitely worth it, and I'd buy one again if it were lost or stolen. I very much like the volume boost bar; it works as a great clean boost- doesn't distort at all, unless you're driving a distorted channel like in the JCM800 case I mentioned (which I do for live stuff, with an Ibanez Tube King for more boost). I like very much the control you have over shaping your sound, which I guess comes with any EQ pedal, but I just like this thing a lot. I use a Voodoo Labs Microvibe sometimes, and it seems to add a bit of treble, so using this thing after the Microvibe in the effects chain reduces the tone change somewhat. For the price, you can't beat Arion pedals. Actually, for twice the price, you can't beat Arion pedals. I'm surprised more people don't use them.

Well, this is a basic equlizer. They aren't intended to be extreemely easy to use. Just play around with it, and it will respond to what you want it to do.

I use this thing to give a volume and bass boost to my amp. I run guitar to dod overdrive to crybaby to eq to amp. Works great. It is a seven-band eq, but also includes a level switch, so you can get the volume boost, which I love. It has a little noise, but isn't bad, sounds good with distortion and without.

Well, to be honest I think the case is pretty cheap, and its made by some japanese company named Arion. However, this thing is pretty sturdy and won't break unless you try to break it. One thing I hate about Arion pedals are the on/off switch on them. Sometimes when you step on it, the effects won't turn on/off, or the thing will fall over. Luckily, with this being an eq, I never leave it off. It suits my needs, and that's all that matters.

Never delt

I bought this thing from a friend used for $10! An awesome deal. Really any eq is good, there isn't much to it, so buy the cheapest one. For what I paid, an amazing value, but the case might discourage others.