DOD FX13 Gonkulator Modulator

There are four knobs - one for distortion amount, one for ring modulation wet dry signal, one for distortion gain and one for overall volume level. The pedal does not really sound weird unless you turn the second knob up. this controls the ring modulation amount. It can be difficult to work out this pedal without the manual.

A Ring Modulator is very rarely used in guitar music because it is an atonal effect. It takes two signals, mixes them together and adds two new signals based on the sums and differences of the original signals, one higher and one lower. This makes a bell like chiming sound. Bells contain very strong non harmonic elements. With a guitar you only have one signal so the second signal is generated by an internal ossilator.
This is a very simple fixed frequency ring modulator in a pedal. There is also a distortion. This is the same as a DOD grunge pedal with the grunge knob on zero and all knobs at 12 O'clock.
The ring modulator and distortion are in parallel to each other (not in series) so you can blend them together.
This pedal makes all kinds of atonal noises and to the inexperienced it sounds totally "out there" and unique. However please remember that Ring Modulation is not unique to this pedal. There are other pedals that will give you the same sound.

Here is the deal with this pedal: This is yet another so called "vintage" pedal that was good value for $30 when it came out. It was discontinued and suddenly became worth a great deal of money because some famous artist used it. We've all seen Jonny Greenwood and his Shredmaster. A very mediocre pedal and it's suddenly worth a great of money just because you can't get it anymore. In this case it was the guy from Incubus. I've seen these pedals go for $200 on ebay. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY! This pedal is so not worth it.
This is a bog standard fixed frequency ring modulator. You can't even tune it and it is completely useless for anything except playing "Glass". It is very limited and very noisey and any other ring modulator will get you the sound that this pedal does and much much more too. Come on people - an Electro Harmonix Frequency Analyser does all that this pedal does and much more besides for over half the price. It makes me feel sick that people spend all that money on a used Gonkulator only because they are ignorent at what a ring modualator does and how to use one. I guarentee that anyone who has any experience in using any other type of ring modulator will agree that this pedal is a waste of time.

This is not a bad pedal if you see it for less than $30. If you see one get it and sell it to make yourself some money.
This is a very simple cheap basic and extremely limited ring modulator pedal. If you use it to make occasional silly noises - great you'll have fun with it. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to use ring modulation in a serious way please consider that there are other ring mods available. Every single one is better (and often cheaper) than this extremely rare and funny little pedal. I'd even go as far to say that the ring mod in my zoom multieffect is better than this one.

PLEASE don't waste your money. You can do so much better than this.

Like everyone else has said.. you cant get a 'good' sound so to speak.. because the whole point of this pedal is to unbelieveably mess up your sound, but you can get some cool noise from it.. combines really really well with a good phaser or flange.
Its basically a run of the mill distortion with a ring modulator attatched, the distortion sounds like a DOD Grunge pedal.. and its actually quiet good if you want to back off the ring mod and use it as a dirt pedal.
No editing patches... stomp box ;)
The manual for this thing was ... basically useless whoever wrote it was definatly using some sort of mind altering drug, best to play around with the thing and figure it our for yourself.. not real hard.. give it an hour maybe.
For those that cant be bothered figuring out the weirdly named knobs....SUCK is Distortion level... SMEAR is the ring mod level ... GUNK is the distorion gain... and HEAVE is like a master volume.

I run an Epiphone LP Standard Plus -> BOSS PH-2 Super Phaser -> DOD Gonkulator -> Marshall VS100.
This pedal is ALWAYS noisy... i found it puts out a noticable hum when plugged into your signal... and thats when its not even turned on! Turn the pedal on and the fun really starts... as others have said.. the 500Mhz signal that drives the thing is horribly loud.. less noticable when youre playing.. but horrendous during silence.. i recommend a good noise gate if you plan on using this pedal.
The effect does get real loud when you engage it, and distortion has a large effect on what kind of sound you get, i dont recommend mixing the pedals in-built distortion with the ring mod... it just sounds crap, put it through the distortion of a good valve amp and it sounds quite nice.
The only artist ive ever heard use this is Mike Einziger from incubus.. he plays it in the song glass.. and fucks around with it a whole lot when he plays live, i believe some other artists have used it too .. i found it easy to mimic mikes sound after messing around for a bit.
Effects that mix nicely with this pedal would be any good phaser or a flange, or a distortion pedal to drive it. I use a BOSS PH-2 and the clanky metallic sounds blend nicely with a washy phase to make some crazy sounds.

DODs are build very solid... despite what everyone says about the plastic cover on the foot switch and battery i dont think theyd break unless you jumped on it a whole bunch of times.
Id gig without backup.

Havent had to deal with DOD.

I give it a 9... i only bought it cause it had been discontinued and i wanted to get one before it became near impossible... good for messin about and experimenting. I Play pretty much anything that interests me.. so its good to have it available. IF it were lost or stolen id definately get another one.. theres NOTHING else like it out there, i know a lot of people think its crap.. but hey sounds good to me :D.... try before you buy. you will either love or hate it.
The only thing i wish it had were some bloody proper labels on the knobs so you could understand what the thing does.
Thats about all... if youre looking to buy one of these theyre slowly becoming harder and harder to find.. if youre american i feel sorry for you because people selling them on ebay are charging to much, check out small music shops and second hand stores.

First of all - it's impossible to get a good sound out of this pedal. However, it's easy to make it sound like shit - which is of course great if you like that.

It's a stomp box - no presets.

The manual is fun, with totally freaked-out pictures and stuff. Really, there is little need for a manual, because words can't describe what this thing does.

I use this with a 12-string Chapman Stick (melody side) -> DOD FX10 BiFet Preamp -> Gonkulator -> Line 6 POD 2.0.

There's always a constant 500Hz tone present, louder when distorsion is dialed up. The pedal makes everything sound f*cked-up, so I don't think it matters that much.

Have to give it a one (1), because frankly, it doesn't sound "good". But it sounds cool.

Seems to be very sturdy, except for the worthless battery cover.

Haven't dealt with them. However, they suck for discontinuing this effect (and other great pedals, FX10 for example).

I play almost all sorts of music, but this thing is good mainly for improvised stuff, freaked-out sounds and stuff.

I got this thing brand new for about $35, because the store didn't know what to do with it. No one had ever liked it so they were just glad to get rid of it.

I won't let this out of my sight, since it's discontinued. I love it for strange sounds.

This pedal is pretty easy to use. As soon as i got it out of the box and plugged it in it sounded great. I fooled around with it for a little while eventually got the hang of it.

I use a fender stratocaster and a fender front man amp. It is a bit noisey with the gain on it the whole way up (the first nob). I like the kind of metallic sound i cna get out of it. I tought myself how to play the incubus song glass pretty easily by watching the morning view sessions dvd.

This pedal is very well built and it is very solid i dont think it will break for a long time.

I got this pedal from a place called www.sonicflux.com this place has so many old pedals for a reasonable price the guy was really heplful and stuff.

I play alot of incubus and this pedal is great. I have been playing for aout two years. I have a boss ds-1 and an old ibanez flanger. If i lost it i would defenitly by another one. And if you a guitar player and you like incubus you defenitly need to get this pedal. But the only problem is is that it is discontinued. I think DOD shouldn't of discontinued this pedal.

This pedal is difficult to get the hang of without a manual. the bloke i bought it off screwed me by not giving me the manual, so it was a steep learning curve

it hums alot, but you need a noise gate or noise suppressor (i use a boss). i use a '52 tele and orange amp with jim dunlop wah, proco rat, big muff pi, boss flanger, boss chorus, boss DD3 and the noise gate. words cannot decribe the kickass sounds made by this setup

its top notch for reliability. does eat up battery's though.

never had to deal with them for this pedal. they were very helpful for another dod pedal i used to own

I play lofi alternative stuff (like blur, pavement sebadoh etc) and thi pedal is the pinnacle of my setup.
If this muddaphucka was nicked, i'd be very pissed as they are very rare and hard to find (id probably go nick my mates!)
When i play a gig, i just cant wait till the end so i can piss about with all my pedals for about 5 mins... this is the ultimate adventurers pedal. if you play all this wank twiddely text book shit, dont even go there.

it is east to get a very good type of bell chippyness type sound if u really want to here this pedals true potential listen to incubus song glass at the beginning

i do love this pedal it does make some very space age sounds the efect is very great i only use it when im jamming alone i braught to band practice the other day and the reest of the band says it to whacked for our style i do have lots of fun with it but one thing i dont like it got a high noize ratio i use a boss noise gate it helps i also use a electro harminix silecer on it it works better at cuttin out the noise on this pedal than the boss cause thias is one noisy pedal i use it with a mesa boogie subway rocket i have used it with a solid state fender and it alsdo was noisy on that as well i seem to notice that when you keep the 3rd knob down it keeps the noise down as well i have used it with a boss metal zone it sound good wit distortion

i own over 50 dod pedals and so far the only one i had to have had fix is the digital delay these pedal are notoroius for thier batter covers gettin lost do started havein them contected to the pedal it self

they have a very use full customer service ill called them ionce and got all the parts i needed

i love this pedal and clad i baught one when i did i just saw 2 of these go for 110 a piece on ebay the other day

For me,it was pretty easy to find a couple of neat sounds while in the shop(impulse buy).The cat who sold it to me was pretty helpful in explaining what those silly fuckin knobs actually did.I had no idea Beavis and Butthead worked fer DOD.

Epiphone SG thru peavey amp.There is this septic,fuzzy hum that is omni-present.Can enhance or hinder.It doesn't interfere,in my use of it anyway.For guitar and melodious things,I use light ring mod(smear at about the halfway mark),the SUCK switch(no it doesnt make you automatically play bad)at slightly below the halfway mark,no gunk(distortion)and halfway up on the HEAVE.This setting produces a "plethora of bells" type sound when playing arpeggiated chords.Good shit.Another neat thing you can do is hook it up to a phaser at max quasi-ring mod rate(a small stone works perfectly for this;color switch down)to achieve a steel drum sound.Throw an envelope filter into the equation and you have a full-blown percussion synth.Play with mallets while muting,strum percussively(as with porn-style wah), or simply tap your pickups in time.It also works pretty well with a good fuzz pedal,toned down a bit.It is not the most advanced effect in its class,but it was named by Beavis and Butthead.Were you actually thinking it was gonna sound like that schnazzy moogerfooger?

not actively gigging at this time but shouldn't need backup if I was.People wouldn't stage dive to my shit anyhow and I drank my beer before the show back in the day

Never dealt with Beavis

I'm playing some spacey,melodic,guitar-oriented breakbeat tunes these days and have been exploring musical possibilities fer 15 years and this thing suits my needs fine for now.It helps add really pretty church bell tones to my chords and I can turn my guitar into a drum which is pretty cool.It's not the moogerfooger so foog yr own mooger,but if it were lost er stolen,I'd save up some cash for the BigBriar.However noone in my town would use a ring mod cuz Ted Nuggets doesn't play one.Ok here's a list of all my pedals:EH smallstone,Big Muff,Bassballs Boss pitchshifter/delay,DOD envelope filter and Gonkulator,Danelectro french toast,Pepperoni,Tuna melt,Hashbrowns,Danecho,modified Ibanez soundtank phaser(see my review).I don't use all these at once.I'll be reviewing each of these and including the combinations I use to help my brethren on a budget.

The names of the knobs have strange names and so you need to look into the manual. I normally play with a new pedal for a bit without looking at the manual but when I did this just got distortion sounds. For anyone without a maunual the knobs are from left to right: Distortion level, Ring modulation level, Distortion gain and master volume.
There is no tuning for this pedal unlike most Ring Modulators so it's quite easy.

I use a Telecaster with a Laney Amp and the following effects:
DOD volume pedal, Lonax Analogue delay, Pro Co Rat, DOD Gonkulator, EH frequency Analyser, Marshall Shredmaster, DOD flanger, DOD grunge, Boss DD3, Boss overdrive.
The first thing to say is that it is not a ring modulator with Grunge distortion mixed in like the press sometimes says. I have the DOD grunge and it sounds nothing like this (just as well because the Grunge is too heavy and noisy for most uses, I only use it for "wall of noise" parts). This sounds closer to the Boss DS1 distortion or an overdrive. It's very Lo Fi sounding.
Many people don't understand how to use a ring modulator or what one does. They take two signals and make two new ones related to the diferences in the two. If there is only one signal (from the guitar) then the second signal is generated by an internal ossillator. Yes, if it is untuned then you can make all kinds of atonal clanking & ringing noises. But the key to using them is to tune the ossillator to the key in which you are playing and it sounds like a kind of harminiser, but not in a bad synthetic cheesy way like most octavers (see Boss) or digital and sterile like a pitchshifter. It sounds metallic and industial sounding, kind of difficult to describe. It also adds a note ABOVE yours, not just below.
This pedal has no way to tune the ossillator so you can only play in one key (Bflat, or even slightly lower than Bflat). Another part of the fun of ring modulators is turning the controls while you are playing making shortwave radio and moogish sounds (see Devo). You can't do this with this pedal.
The ossillator is clearly audible all the time this pedal is on, kind of like a drone in the background, So you may want to get a noise gate if you want to use this a lot. I think it's quite cool, like another feedback channel.
The actual ringmodulation is quite soft sounding compared to most, one guy on here said it sounded like an envelope filter, which it can sometimes. I like that you can mix the distortion in, you can't do that with any other ring mod pedal as far as I know. I sometimes use this with very subtle ring mod and distortion to add a few harmonics in the background.
It doesn't have true bypass but I wasn't expecting it to. It doesn't suck tone too much unless you use like 10 similar pedals at once. Using just one won't make much difference. If you worry about it too much then use a line selector.

DOD pedals allways feel more reliable than Boss because they are chunkier despite plastic parts. The footswitch is plastic and my DOD flanger's switch sticks a bit, but all my other DOD pedals are fine including this one. I guess it depends.
The battery cover often gets lost, I've never seen a second hand DOD pedal with a battery cover.

Never delt with them.

I play Noise rock/shoegazing/Lofi. This pedal was my holy grail for a while because I decided I wanted a Ring Modulator a few years ago. This seemed to be the only one I could find that I could afford, but it was discontinued. I looked everywhere. There are very few Ring Modulators on the market that arn't #200 like the moogerfooger or Lovetone.
I eventually saved up and got a EH frequency analyser. I saw this on Ebay a few months ago and got it because my younger self would have been annoyed otherwise after all that time I spent looking for it.
It is kind of disappointing in the end because you can't alter the pitch of the carrier wave at all. This means it is only designed to make silly noises, not to have any serious use (hence the name). This may be for the best because my EH frequency Analyser is VERY hard to tune and beginners may find it daunting. This is for beginners only, but most DOD pedals are aimed at beginners. I do like DOD pedals as they all sound unique compared to Boss et al.
I WISH SO MUCH that the distortion gain knob (3rd one) altered the ring Modulation pitch. It would make this pedal a 9 or 10. It's such a shame.
This pedal is fast becoming a collectors item because it is very unique and discontinued. This means that it will become very expensive soon. I suggest getting an EH frequency analyser because you can get all the anarchic noises that this box does, but lots more for the same price as this "vintage" pedal. The EH one has a different analouge sound as well (but different to this. This has it's charm too. This is softer sounding and would be wonderful if you could tune it).
For sure if you see this cheap it's fun to play with, you may even find a use in a noisy break in a song or two. It may even be worth getting for an investment. But there's less and less chance of it happening as it gets rarer. This pedal is not worth "vintage" prices.
I do sometimes use this, but it is by no means an essential part of my sound.
The 3rd knob, distortion gain is never used and I just wish you could use it to alter the pitch and tune the ring modulator. It would have made a fairly good pedal into a great one.

hard to use, well thats because i dont exactly know how to get an awesome effect out of a ring md, and it doesnt have a manual either. i know heave is a master volume and gunk is drive, thats all i know for sure lol. (ps. i know ring mods are nasty boxes that are supposed to give you a wacked out creepy disguisting tone, im just not sure what im looking for yet.

i use a fender american standard telecaster, american fat strat texas special, fender hot rod deluxe, digitech whammy, dunlop crybaby wah, proco rat, boss metal zone, boss overdrive, boss phaser boss flanger and boss dd5 delay and then this. this thing sounds awesome, but it is a select effect most definately, not something you should use too often like a wah.

dude, i dont know too much about dod, looks pretty sturdy, but the on/off cover looks a bit ???? i dont stomp on my effects anyways

???

id definately buy it again...its awesome. im into rock (tool, radiohead) so it suits it pretty well. im not an effects junky like those dorks from korn, so i mainly use the clean sound on my guitar, overdrive or distortion and wah. but it works for when i want it very well

OK morons.....all you dumbasses saying that this pedal sounds like shit....your right...it does sound like shit....IT IS SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE SHIT!!!! If you like stuff like that, thats great. But if you don't like stuff like that, don't whine that it has no tone and that you can't get get certain peoples tones out of it!!! This pedal is for the adventurous only!!!! Not for tone purists!!! Trying to get a tone purist to like this is like trying to tell a 14 year old boy that his Metal Zone going into a Crate practice amp sounds shitty!!!! He won't listen!!!! So, please...take this warning!!!