Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer

Err I'd give it an 8/10, because it's impossible to figure out when you first get it (bought it 2nd hand, didn't get a manual but I hear there's not much point anyway) but once you know what everything does it really easy. Now I change between settings with my toes whilst i'm playing, but you gotta be careful you don't break the sliders

As said before, this works best with hot pickups. I usually use my old strat that i've customised. I ripped out all the electronics, screwed a Gibson 500T into the body and filled the space where the neck and middle pickups should be with the insides of a DS-1. If you turn the DS-1 up and then turn the synth on, it sounds really cool. Canget any sounds from it, to Corgan / Hendrix octave fuzz to a lo-fi bass to a kind of auto wah. It can add loads to solos. If you put a ton of gain on your amp, run your guitar through a distortion pedal before the synth and get loads of feedback, you can alter the frequency settings along with the rate to get really cool sweeping sounds and beeps. I love it! 9/10

It is kinda dodgy, if you stamp too hard on it it cuts out and needs some loving kicks to get it back. However, i never stomp on them hard (what's the point, and i usually play barefoot so i can adjust the settings whilst i play) so this isnt much of a problem. It does take a while to warm up, but it sounds amazing when it has. Sturdy case, even though it's started to rust on the folds, paint scratches easily and the sliders look very delicate, but they shouldn't be that hard to fix or replace. 5/10

E-mailed EH for a .pdf of the manaul. About 3 weeks later they sent me a file with the manuals for every pedal EXCEPT the micro synths. Thanks guys. Hope it never breaks, if it did i'd go to an electrician instead of sending it halfway round the world.

I play mostly loud, fuzzy stuff from the smashing pumpkins, dinosaur jr, mudhoney etc. to zeppelin and hendrix. Really usueful for some stuff, shit for others. If i lost it (don't know how, it's huge) or it was stolen i'd probaby get another but only if I could find one for the same price (new they cost nearly #200 here). True bypass doesnt bother me, I can use a screwdriver and have set up the trim pot - it's not difficult! I would like sturdier sliders but most of all a way of knowing if its on or off! Will probably get it modded soon, but it should come like this.

Not the world's easiest. WHY NO NUMBERS ON THE FADERS!!!!! It is quite easy to tell if you were between 7 and 8, but inbetween two quite far apart line markings? Difficult to us ein that respect. I found that it took a while to get usable tones.

Bypassed it sounds awful - WHY NOT TRUE BYPASS? It beggars belief that pedal makers are still not putting TB in pedals.

Using - Fender Jag into LS2 - that splits off into two circuits - MicroSynth on it's own, and all my other effects (all 10 of them) in another, and amp when bypassed.

IMPORTAAAAAANNNNNTTTTT!!!!!!

You have never lived until you have played this pedal through a blender of some kind, it makes it much more musical and usable. Simply buy a Boss LS2 and put your current effects on A. Then put the Micro on B. Set the pedal to "A+B Mix/Bypass" and set the micro for bowed sound no.4 in the manual. Ok, now put some distortion and flange on your regular effects, and let rip. Is that not the coolest sound you have ever heard? Chords! POWER CHORDS! ON A MICROSYNTH! IT CAN BE DONE!

It can also be blended clean with other tones - I get excited thinking about it.

Teh quality of the sound is well covered in other reviews.

Using it with a valve amp (Peavey Classic 30)

Apparently reliability is dodgy. I would err on caution and give a 5 - it is my first EH pedal.

As above

I play dark Noir-ish acoustic/electric rock/pop/ Think CSN being raped by Sonic Youth with a female vocalist.

I love this pedal and it is ace but YOU GOTTA TRY IT BLENDED< IT IS THE BBBBEEEEESSSSTTTT!!!!!

Anyone out there wanna swap patches or tips? Email me!

Not so easy at first, particularly as stomp boxes go, subtle changes to the controls make very unsubtle changes to the sound. The manual is pretty thin for a box with this much depth, the examples eh provides do help. I got mine in January '04 and it isn't true bypass. It has a little built in pre-amp that boosts treble a little, but it was easy to compensate for with my amp tone controls. It doesn't suck tone, but does change it a little. The pre-amp has to be calibrated for each guitar you play through it so not so great if you switch from singles to bucks, etc.

I'm using this with an SG->eh double muff->microsynth>hiwatt wah->boogie nomad. Putting it after the fuzz is a great move as it treats fuzzed tone differently than clean. I LOVE the sound quality, it's unlike anything else I've heard and the versitility is AMAZING. From crazy-assed distortion to goofy filters, this is the only signal proc I'm using. My only complaint is I'd like to see it with polyphonic octave (it's monophonic now)

So far so good. I haven't had the inconsistancy others here have reported, but I write down all my settings. This is very important as the slightest variance really changes the sound. I wouldn't back it up on a gig since I'm already travelling heavy enough and I can live without it.

I'm using this for rock, on the heavy side. I primarily use it for solos, but there are a couple songs where it's on the whole time.

the sliders are quite touchy and may take a couple of days to get used to. the labels are pretty much self explanitory and they do as they read. the manual offers little more than suggestions to get you started with (so i hear. mine was absent!)

previously to purchasing this box i highly recommend that you use YOUR guitar, or one EXACTLY like it if you are trying it out in a store/shop. i heard some demos of this machine and went ahead and bought one without ever trying it. i already knew what it was capable of. since the purchase, i have used this with 2 guitars. one (single coil) which i use more frequently (Fender Mustang) gives the Micro Synth less to work with than a humbucker (SG copy.) the results differ dramaticly! that being said, it is difficult to get much out of this effect without an extra kick when using a single coil pick-up. with the right set-up (and quick fingers) you may find your distortion/feedback/sustain pedals and octave pedals obsolete. BTW: if your guitar is "hot" enough, tracking is nearly perfect! i suggest active pick-ups.

for what i am doing this effect works very well. (noise/feedback/fuzz/sustain/long, resononant, synth swells.) also, it is really fun to be a guitarist and sound like Rick Wakeman! total fuzzed-out Moog squares! this can drip too. sounds to be speaking. wish i could emulate Mellotron with it but, you can't have everything. i chose to go with the Micro Synth instead of the Line 6 Synth thing based on looks alone (you have to admit that purple "retro" thing is ugly!!!) i have heard that some people do mods for the Micro to give it "true by-pass" and to set the light from always-on-when-the-power-is-on to only when it is stomped (recommended.) i am certain that most players are using this box for there prog/fusion acts. i am using it for more of a lo-fi space-rock. it works well.

Take it out of the wooden case, plug it in and move the switches. It comes with a manual which is very useful. But i like to experimentate so it's just a-easy-to-start-paper.

I am using a strat,tele and a jaguar, so there is not much need to turn the little screw. If you learn how the put the settings you'll have plenty of pedals! Those people who get annoyed by little sounds and cracks: DID YOU READ THE WORD "ANALOG" ???? Next time by a digi/dagi/fx/compu-hifi pedal and don't touch a Electro Harmonix again for the rest of your clean digital life !!! I love the sound this unit provides me!

I am very careful with my stuff,it is a pedal and do not need to drive my over it. It is solid but take care of the switches.

The so called stop frq. swich didn't work.So I contact info@newsensor,and I got a very friendly fast reply.I am living in Belgium so they said I could send the unit to their German repair service and they were very friendly and fast.No extra money paid. Excellent service

I play mith my musical partner our own songs with a bit improvised music in the sprit of Sonic Youth and Ash Ra Tempel with a touch of Joy Division/Kraftwerk,and I can say proudly that this is my favourite pedal. if it broke I will search for another one. Offcourse it is not a bargain,but IT IS A MASTERPIECE !!!!

quite a difficult pedal to get used to but i was synthing within the hour of it being out of the box! it takes time to set up the preamp gain with the guitar ur using but other than that its ok!

this is wher it hits the top! the swells, the bleeps, the shwooshes and the crunch, they all sound brilliant and flawless! the atack delay is brilliant for those bowed sounds!! i have a Holy grail hooked up next to it and when both of them are turned on its like HOLY SHIT!

im paranoid about scraching the paint work!!!! and the sliders seem a little delicate, i will gig without a backup becuz i take good care of my gear and make shure they work properly in advance! i go to evry length to make shure they dont fail me! but becuz its quite xpensive i woulnd be able to afford a backup!

never dealt with them!

brilliant for weird/diffirent/original guitar sounds! i bought it to sound like billy corgan on siames dream but ive noticd it does a hell of a ot more than that!!!!! all in all a brilliant pedal, its a pitty ther discontinuing it in a couple of years!

compared to the navigation of a digital processor, this thing is simple to use, just exeperiment and use your ears. the manual for this thing is o.k. it doesnt really tell you much.

I can get a real fat synth sound with this thing. I use this thing with a true bypass Looper, cause the thing messes with your dry signal and often shuts on and off, a disaster for live performances. there is a little screw on the back to adjust the level I could never find a balance between when the unit was off and when the unit on. This unit has some really good sounds, I just wish they could come out with a digital version of this so I could toggle between sounds.

I had to send mine back to the company because I could not get it to turn back on. They fix these units for free if you pay the shipping. they fixed the problem but the unit still turns on and off so thats why I use it with the loooper.

They were very helpful and fixed the unit for free with no warranty

You can get some great sounds with the pedal but the reliabitly factor is sad. Mine is used not abused. I suppose if you baby this thing it might not develop any problems. When I get the money I am going to buy a roland gr-20 synth. I will still use my micro synth but I will never buy another one if it breaks.

You have to fiddle around with this a lot to know what the sliders do. The very basic setting (which I use quite a bit) is to have all sliders except for the Trig and Attack Delay all the way up, and those two all the way down. From there, experiment and see what all the sliders do. It's a matter of personal preference as to what sounds you like, there are a lot of good ones.
Minus a point for the adaptor. What the hell? If it breaks, you can replace it unlike the AC cord on my Memory Man. But you can only replace it with another EH adaptor.

Epiphone Wildkat + Hagstom I -> Microsynth -> EH Big Muff (vintage) -> Boss TU-2 -> EH Small Clone (reissue) -> EH Small Stone (Russian) -> EH Memory Man (vintage) -> Ernie Ball Volume -> Line 6 DL-4 -> Gibson Discoverer and Fender Ultimate Stereo Chorus. This box plays very nicely with all my other EH effects, even when they're all turned on at once.
Watch out how you use the octave-up and square wave sliders. With both all the way up and the amp cranked, it can hurt my ears. I usually back off the volume if I'm using both up.
Don't think you'll suddenly be playing a synthesizer if you've got one of these. It's basically a distortion with octave up and down, an attack delay, and a filter section. You can get synthesizer-LIKE sounds, but no one's going to mistake it for a Moog. That said, I love the sound anyway. I use it like a sophisticated distortion. With all the voice sliders up, you get a fat and amazing sound. I also use this as a bass imitator when I'm doing loops (just putting the octave down and filter ones all the way up, the rest all down) and blend in various voices with the distortion to get good tones. It does get a bit muddy with chords, but if you leave the filter section alone you can definitely play fifths and octaves. My favorite uses for it were above the 12th fret, which made me wish my guitars had more than 22 frets. If you turn down the start frequency and turn the attack delay up, you can get some more synth-y sounds. But I've had this for a few months and am just now starting to get a hang on the filter section.

It does take a minute or two to "warm up", but so do tube amps so that's ok. Still, it's an EH product, and although mine have been good to me, I've heard a few horror stories. So although mine hasn't quit yet, I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Never had to contact them, I've always been able to fix any minor problems I've had with EH myself.

I'm going to give this an 8 because I really love this pedal. The only ones I stomp on more are my Big Muff and my DL-4. It's got a nice fat sound, and I usually kick it on during solos and such. Still, it's complicated, and I didn't get a manual with mine so I had no idea what anything did until I started playing around with it.
I'm considering getting a second one, if I can get a deal, so I can use one for synth-y stuff and one as a straight distortion. But I also might just get a Whammy pedal, because that also does octave up and down (in fact, 2 octaves up or down).
Overall verdict: good, but you shouldn't expect more from this pedal than it's capable of.

Not hard to use after a a month or two. You need to know its limitations. It won't give you those metal sounds, unless you chose to slap the strings. It will give you fat, warm, and bewow tones for most applications. Lots of cheesy, fuzzy, spacey tones that you might not want. You have to find about two or three settings, because the unit hates to be adjusted. Great noise gate that does too good of a job, I will collaborate.

Once you have found your two or three favorite tones, you will rate it a nine or ten. The built in noise gate will eliminate noise from an active bass that has treble noise issues. The problem seems to be with the unit adding its own fuzzy noises, when its not warmed up. It is almost as if it needs 15 minutes or so to wake-up out of its slumber. You will have to be careful with your settings, and limit them to four or less so that you can zero them in. The problem is that you can get too much crap in between the real deal.

I would think that this will last for ten to twenty years, based on the past reviews that I have read. Lets hope so, because I now cannot play without it. I would have to search for a digital unit, or maybe two to replace this one.

I would not try to contact customer support. I have learned that the company has stopped making this unit, because they no longer have the transistors to make or repair them. Don't waste your time, throw it away and buy a used one.

I like this box for the two or three effects that I can get out of it. It has lots of distorton, fuzzy, or twangy sounds that are useless. The built in noise gate could probably quite the worst amplifier or screwed-up bass eq. I need it for the phat and that's that.

It doesn't take long to get *a* sound out of it. As far as good sounds that usually takes a bit of tweaking with the filters and voice mix. The most difficult thing to set properly is the trigger or "trig". The grading next to the sliders is nice and it's nice that they are linear, not circular.
The tracking is okay for single notes. Definitely the most difficult aspect of this pedal. You have to really play clean, but there's nothing wrong with that.
5ths and octaves track fairly well. Other intervals are sort of useless harmonically speaking, but can create some weird noises.
You have to memorize your patches and get good at changing them swiftly. To do this you pretty much have to stop playing.

Worked better with my strat on the neck pickup with the tone rolled all the way off.
The octave is pretty much useless. I can't figure out why they put distortion on the octave instead of just letting you distort it yourself.
The square wave is not a square wave at all, but just saturation distortion. Your guitar's harmonics are still present. Don't expect it to sound like a square wave. I wish it really was a square wave. Rolling off your tone knob will help here.
The filter is pretty good. Bandpass/stop would be nice. Of course, that would make the qtron obsolete.
If the filter responded smoothly to playing dynamics it would be infinitely better. Instead it just has a threshold and the filter envelope is full on or off depending on how hard you play.
I used this in an electro band and it could make some really nice bloops and zaps.
Our keyboard player had a couple of synths so unfortunately this really paled in comparison.
The thing about it that I don't like is that whenever you use bends of vibrato it just sounds like you're playing a guitar and trying to sound like a synth. I would almost inveriably rather hear a guitar or a real synth.
Using it for voice has produced some interesting effects.
Using it on bass guitar has produced one of the funkiest plunk bass I have ever heard.
Using it on electronic beats can be very good.
Other effects obviously expand it's possibilities immensely.
While I personally find it rather limited, for the things that it can do, I give it a 9.

I could depend on it for about 6 months after I bought it new.
It's now so finnicky I can't even be bothered trying most of the time.

Never dealt with them.

For the price I paid I was expecting it to be a lot better. I was too quick to buy this pedal. For $400+ CDN, they could have packed a lot more into this- I bought a JX-8P synth for $500 CDN and they are not even in the same league.
I suppose I wish I had tried an Octavia.