Eventide ModFactor

The ModFactor is not the easiest processor to use, but it's not difficult either. There are way many awesome sounds, even in the presets. The manual is okay, could be deeper in specific info but does explain what you need to know to get going. It is definitely a "tweaker's delight" but as long as you're aware of when the knob functions change it's not frustrating (here's where the manual really comes in handy). I don't know the firmware or whatnot as I got mine used and don't see any need to update it.

The ModFactor's sound quality is incredible. I don't understand why it's getting panned on these reviews. My favorites are the modfilter, the rotary, and the flange, although there are so many possiblities that it'd be hard not to find some good sounds (and some bad ones depending on your tastes). The Q-Wah is surprisingly good, I use it alot and the ModFactor has replaced my Pigtronix Envelope Phaser. The chorus, phaser, trem, and vibe are sweet. The undulator is far out cool and I'm still finding our what can be done with it. As I said earlier, it's extremely tweakable and excellent sounds can be found with patience and an open ear. The only effect I don't like is the Ring Mod; they could have done without it in my opinion. I play acoustic electric Takamines and Fishman Loudbox amps along with some Damage Control pedals and a Loop Station. The ModFactor fits right in.

Seems well built. It was like new when I got mine used a month ago.

Great web site.

At the moment I also own Damage Control Time Line, Glass Nexus, and Liquid Blues, a few Boss Twin Pedals (Giga Delay, Space Echo, Drive Zone, Loop Station), an Emma Discumbobulator, and a Roger Linn Adrenalinn III. I've had Lexicon and tc electronic rack units over the years as well. I'm very impressed with the ModFactor and plan on acquiring their TimeFactor. It's some bucks, but if you want the best then ...

This is a pedal for know twiddlers. Depending on how complex you want your sounds to be and to what extent you want to control them via expression pedal an aux switches, the programming can be a bit too demanding for the average guitar-playing Joe who just wants to plug in his gear and be ready to go (hey, that's a rhyme ;-).
Having a synthesizer-programming background, it's no problem for me to get a lot of good and some very unusual sounds, but be aware of the fact that you have to spend some time in setting up and programming this baby. If you do, your reward will be a versatile sound palette with a lot of live tweakability.

The sound quality is superb and the unit isn't noisy at all. You can get chorus, phaser, flanger, wah, filter, rotary, tremolo, vibrato and ring modulator sounds from subtle to wild and extreme. The unit can be controlled via an expression pedal and three additional aux switches (the Digitech FS 300 works like a charm), giving you six switches in all, so you can control things like tap tempo, bank switching (there are 40 program slots) slowing down or speeding up the rotary simulation etc.
The presets are good, but you have to spend some time to get everything from this box.

I haven't had the unit for a very long time, so I can't really say anything about its reliability, but the box itself is sturdy and built like the proverbial tank.
I would definitely use it on a gig without backup.

I haven't had any real problem with the ModFactor yet, but Eventide has a very good support/user forum where at least my questions were answered by Eventide staff quickly and friendly.

I'm into weird and experimental stuff, so this unit is quite a good match. If it were stolen, I would definitely buy it again.

When I first got the ModFactor I thought, "What was Eventide thinking?" I was not hearing at all what I was expecting. I tried twisting some knobs and couldn't seem to dial in the sound I wanted. It took a few days for me to get to know it...and then I had much better results. I use this in my recording studio - not live. I have the time to goof with it - I would not recommend this pedal for live players - unless you have a midi control pedal that will call up your presets (which you will have previously edited and stored). For live use you are better off going with cheaper Boss/MXR/EHX pedals. For studio work this thing makes better sense.

Sound quality is so subjective - but I really think the pedal sounds awesome when you use it in stereo mode. Again, you will have had to probably tweak the s*** out of the patch. Some pedals are made to be used with an amp - others are more studio oriented, and I think the ModFactor is more of a studio piece. I am familiar with modular synthesizers so the term of "modulating the modulator" does not throw me - but it has to be confusing for the regular guy who just needs to plug in and play. I like the feature of using a volume envelope or the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) of your sound to modulate the effect. I immediatley found uses for it in my recordings. But I am a studio geek.

So far, so good - for this price it better f****** be!

not needed, yet

A typical recording setup for me is my Strat or Les Paul into a Pigtronix Attack Sustain for compression into a Damage Control Demonizer or Marshall JMP-1 pre-amp into the ModFactor and that into a Damage Control Timeline or TC Electronic D-Two Delay - I record directly into my M-Audio firewire interface. I also use the Modfactor on my synths.

I also have a a TC Electronic G-Major and Lexicon PCM-80. Out of the box the G-Major has much better chorus/flange presets than the Modfactor - but once you spend some time with it the Modfactor really comes alive. I was very disappointed the first day I had it - but then over time I came to love it. Now I use it constantly. If you have the time and patience this could be a good investment. If you are looking for instant gratification this pedal is WAY overpriced.

The Mod Factor is not very user friendly, if you don't like to spend hours dialing in your sounds this unit is not for you. I found that most of the presets included in the unit were not to my liking and need to be redone to my tastes, I think that I really only liked the Rotary and Vibrato patches out of the box. My friend and I spent 4 hours making patches up for the Phaser, Flanger, Wah and Chorus. I basically only use those 4 effects. I found the manual was good enough to be able to figure everything out. The patch switching in the Modfactor sucks, there are 40 patches in this thing I disabled all the patches except the first 8, this way it is not so time consuming to scroll through your patches. I may disable more patches time will tell.

This unit can replicate any modulation pedal that is out there My friend and I did it ! We were able to replicate the Mxr Script logo Phaser for funk and EVH, Mxr Grey Flanger, Area 51 WAH and get a really nice Chorus sound. We tried the buffer and hardwire bypass settings and the buffer won, no switch clicks or pickup loading and a consistent volume for effects in or out. I am now only using 2 pedals the Mod factor and a Fulltone TTE, I cut out 3 feet of patch cable and 3 separate pedals, that alone improved my overall tone. I run my pedalboard through a Mesa Stiletto Ace 1X12 combo and a 68 Plexi Half stack, my guitars are Les Paul R9, Music man Axis Super Sport and a Stratocaster. I am getting great sounds and the right feel without any tone sucking. I had no opinion for this category since sound quality is subjective but I will say I am very happy with the settings that my friend and I created today. The key to getting good sounds out of the Modfactor is to learn what each knob does and how it interacts with the sound you are trying to achieve. It is very easy to over do your patches, listen very carefully it helps to have the pedal you are trying to replicate available for reference.

I have not had any problems with the Mod Factor so far, It seems well constructed but made in China............... only time will tell. I will not sell my original pedals just in case. I will also make a hard copy of my settings.

I have not had to contact them yet

I sold a bunch of pedals I quit using for one reason or another and raised enough to purchase the ModFactor, I have had the mod factor since May, only now is the pedal living up to my expectations. I thought that a company that makes such high dollar effect processors would have made the Modfactor more user friendly and have better stock presets. Overall the learning curve on this pedal is very steep, IMO most guitarists don't want to tweak effects they would rather play......
Overall the ModFactor has worked for me. Now that the hard part is done I will be able to enjoy the great sounds that the Modfactor is able to produce. Patience is a virtue when it comes to this product but the reward is great if you are willing to put in the time

First, the bad. It is not that east to get the sounds you hear in your head. Editing patches can be difficult if you attach an expression pedal, as you can only reprogram a particular patch by first rocking the expression pedal to either heel or toe position to activate reprogramming mode (which means the led next to your patch will begin to blink), then turning the chosen knob or knobs to adjust your sound before the LED stops blinking after about 3 seconds and your sound reverts to where you began. Fortunately the LED will continue to blink as long as you are turning knobs but as soon as you stop (or you immediately save what you have just done)you go back to where you were. This sucks because if you want to just adjust a knob and kick back to jam on it for a while to hear how it sounds you're screwed because within a few seconds you're back to where you started.

The manual is terrible. It gives you a basic overview of what's going on but offers no details on what the differences between each effects' types are (like when choosing a chorus you have a choice between three basic types: liquid, organic, or shimmer - what the hell does that mean?). How will the different shapes and waveforms affect my sound? How many guitar players know what ADSR is? It just lists stuff and expects you to have enough magical knowledge to realize the difference when you hear it. That is just a few examples of many more that I won't even bother to list. So very not user friendly. This pedal is capable of so much more more than what the manual gives you to chew on. Maybe too much.

I've spent a lot of time with it in the 4 months that I have had it and am just now beginning to understand what's going on with it. A pedal should not be this difficult to work with.

And another thing: Having to scroll through all of your patches to get to the one you need is not very stage-friendly. There has to be a n easier way to access your 40 presets without a MIDI controller, yes? No. Not here. Scroll away, Mr. Happyfeet.

Now some of the good. If you are willing to wade through the programming swamp of knobs and parameters you are are able to get some incredible sounds. I took the time to a/b it with some of my favorite pedals (MXR Phase 90, Ibanez early 80's yellow flanger, Digitech XP-300 and a few others) and over some time was able to replicate almost every sound I wanted. But it took a while. Yes, I am a tone nerd with too much time on my hands. And if you are like me you will probably enjoy the torture of spending the days and hours getting your sounds. Because once you find it, it will be worth it. If you are not you will probably return it for your money back.

Had it since February and been through several gigs. No problems so far.

Have not had any issues to where I needed support except on how to understand the manual. You can get a few good ideas from other users on the Eventide website forums.

I play mostly rock in a three piece band where I have lots of space to fill and this pedal helps me achieve that. I use a Mesa MKIV and Dual Rec with a USA Strat and late 70's Les Paul Pro w/p-90's with a fairly large board of effects and this pedal compliments everything very well. The reason it gets a 5 is because it is so hard to get it where it needs to be. If stolen or lost I would go back to my trusty old blue Line6 ModModeler and wait until the next more user-friendly version of the Eventide came out.

The organization of the bypass function and the bank select function will discourage you from using this pedal for more than a couple sounds. A lot of foot tapping for what should have been simple. Unless you can memorize the bank numbers, or have a chart, the extra patches are more of a liability than an asset.

Like the other reviewers, I have spent a lot of time trying to get usable sounds from this pedal. I too had hopes that I would get multiple sounds from this box. I have owned their rack units and this box doesn't resemble their sound quality at all. A regular Boss flanger pedal sounds better, Boss chorus sounds better, rotating speaker is pretty good, but doesn't cut through like it should. I had trouble with it dropping in volume, which I haven't figured out, but seems to have gone away. Doesn't really sound better than anything else.

Unit is probably reliable, using the pedal live is more of a liability than an asset unless you use a bypass loop switch to kill it if you get lost.

The only time I talked to Eventide I got the same feeling as when I talk to my company IT folks, kind of short and uninterested in my input. The firmware upgrade worked well and maybe they can fix this by starting over with the algorithms.

Pedal promises a lot and delivers little. I bought this because also have the I have the Time Factor and it kicks *** in almost every category, Mod pedal not anywhere close. Has this bizarre tempo indicator that would probably induce seizures in some folks, yet cannot easily tell what patch I am using. I would not recommend this pedal unless you needed a dedicated rotating speaker sound, and there are better ones out there. Guitar player gave a glowing review. Maybe I got a defective one. If there are defective pedals, Eventide should own up to it because the more than a few have been disappointed by this pedal.

I'm pretty upset about this pedal so I'll try hard to not get too sensitive in my review and focus on the facts:

Getting a good phase or flange effect is nearly impossible. The chorus is good and some of the vibe like effects are ok but in all, I'd say getting a good sounding effect is not easy at all. Editing patches is confusing and the manual is pretty weak on details. The description of some of the knobs and what they do is hard to figure out and there are in several cases no setting with the second row of knobs that do anything useful at all. It's almost as if, they had the knob layout per the Timefactor and needed to add a parameter to the knobs because they are there.

The MIDI control ability is the biggest problem for me because you cannot use a program controller (i.e. Ground Control) to send program changes to the unit to choose a patch AND control the Bypass. To control bypass you have to use MIDI CC control (whole different MIDI data send). Basically what this means is, while the pedal is MIDI capable, it is really only partially MIDI capable. For example, you cannot program an effect like Phase 2:1 AND control if the effect is on (bypassed) or not. What is the point? Who wants to change effects with MIDI control but not be able to activate the effect? One of the big purported advantages of this unit is the "True bypass" ability. Presumably so users could bypass the effect and not rob tone from your signal while not in use. Well that's great if you don't mind tap dancing to turn it on an off. Even with an external MIDI controller, you will still need to manually switch the unit on and off to use it. The whole reason I bought this pedal was because I was told that I could use my MIDI controller to choose an effect/patch and open or close the bypass relay (effect on or off). Well, it can't.

This is however now a "Wish List" feature according to a forum moderator. Nice, huh?

The sound is ok for most effects except the Phase and Flange effects. I spent hours on these two effects alone and I simply cannot get a good patch. My old Line 6 MM4 does a better job and I'm not too impressed with that unit either. Also, when using the buffered bypass and the effect is bypassed, I got a pretty noticeable hum/buzz. When I changed the unit to go with the relay bypass (btw, they do their best to discourage you from using this method in the manual for some reason), it is better but I get a audible "click" when the unit switched between bypass or on. As far as "tone sucking" goes, it is fairly transparent but like all pedals, not 100% clean.

I use several guitars, mostly Les Paul's, Rick's and ES's into a Diezel VH4 and a Mesa large 4x12 with vintage circa 1985 G12T75's. I use George L cables and all of my pedal gear is housed in a custom pedal board. Other than the Modfactor, I use a Boss DD5, Crybaby Q, a Looper switcher and a Vox tone...someting.... TS clone. All top notch gear.

SO far it hasn't broken so, I don't know.

With the exception of the Forum, there seems to be no way to communicate with anyone at Eventide so I'd say, Customer Support is pretty poor.

Again, I'm pretty disappointed with this unit. The sounds are fair at best, it was very expensive, the MIDI abilities are not logical and the manual is weak. I went with this pedal and planned on getting the Timefactor so that I could replace my old Rocktron Intelifex rack unit and get everything in my pedalboard and still have the single program ability (via MIDI) to choose an amp channel, delay and effect (or no effects) like I've done for years with my rack gear. Alas, it looks like my search will continue. It seems that a company like Eventide could/should be able to pull this off but.......maybe not.

No comment

No comment

I purchased this unit without having tried one out first, mostly because of the Eventide name. I also liked the idea of having a good selection of modulation effects in one pedal. Another feature I liked was that it could be upgraded via USB cable. This feature turned out to be my undoing.

After getting it out of the box I hooked it up to my computer, registered it, downloaded the update utility, and attempted to upgrade the software. The upgrade utility erased all the software from the pedal and then locked up on the upload. Then the pedal died. It wouldn't power up either. After digging around on the internet, I figured out that I could boot it up in update mode, which kept it from turning off. (That wasn't in the manual). Five hours later, and after uninstalling ever other piece of software from my computer, including my virus protection and firewall, I gave up and returned it. I figured: (i) it was broke; or (2) it wouldn't be worth the hassle to keep even if it wasn't. The most frustrating part of the ordeal was the total lack of any information in the manual. It really stunk. I expected a lot more after spending so much money on the pedal, especially given it's a no brainer to expect that someone could have trouble updating the software.

I did hear from customer support after returning the pedal. It didn't take them long to get back with me and they were very friendly and helpful. While I appreciated the good service, I would have really liked the update to have worked. The whole reason I tried to update it was that I had seen on the internet that the pdeal had several bugs that had been fixed by a recent update. Anyway, the customer support was good.

I won't be buying another product from Eventide soon. While I was excited about the features and potential of this unit, I was disappointed with the overall experience to say the least. I ended up getting some T.C. Electronic Nova pedals and have been happy ever since. My advice - beware if you buy this pedal! You may need a PhD in computer science to get it working correctly.

I'm going to hold off on the numbered reviews, mainly because the pedal is so new, and I don't think it's fair to rate it before they've had a chance to get the bugs out. Nevertheless, let's just say that it's easy to use to the extent that the interface is user-friendly, but it is NOT easy to get the sounds you hear in your head. I found the second set of modulation controls completely confounding, not to mention the fact that the different "flavors" of each effect--like 'liquid', 'organic' and 'shimmer' chorus--are never fully explained in the manual.

Again, no number rating. I had trouble getting a simple classic old-school chorus sound out of this unit, which was the reason I bought it in the first place. I ordered it sight-unseen, and I figured it would replace my several chorus pedals, perhaps a phaser as well, and I'd get the rest of the effects as a bonus. It didn't work out that way. To my ears, the chorus was digital sounding, and not nearly as versatile as I'd hoped it would be.

The presets--and presets are notorious for sucking ***, so I didn't expect much--were actually pretty decent, and with some tweaking I got usable flanger and phaser sounds, excellent rotary, wah and trem sounds, and the rest were fun but more in the novelty category as far as my needs are concerned.

Not good, but again, I would attribute this to the initial release, which may in fact have been a premature release. The intensity knob began acting strange after about 40 minutes of use. I would turn the knob, and the display would switch back and forth between the graphic bar display, and the intensity display slowly catching up to where I had set the knob. Finally, after 20 minutes of this, and after re-initializing the unit, the knob ceased to work entirely.

This seemed like a software--rather than mechanical--malfunction, so again, I'll chalk it up to a yet-to-be-addressed bug that needs fixin'.

Didn't bother, because I'm sending it back and waiting until this thing is more mature to revisit it.

I have two comments on the overall rating. First, DO NOT BUY THIS UNIT WITHOUT TRYING IT FIRST. It has many features--the second set of modulation controls in particular--that are not at all intuitive, and may not be useful to you at all. And it might not sound anything like how you think it will sound. It didn't for me.

Second, I'm not convinced that this is a finished product. If you like the idea of beta testing something you payed full retail for, that's one thing, but if you want something more "mature" and refined, I'd wait a few months at least, and let the dust settle on this one.