Lovetone Meatball

Totally mad with each knob changing the overall sound with the slightest movement/rotation. However confusing it may appear initially, the unit is entirely intuitive. The manual is well written and humourous giving a great insight into Vlads madness and commitment to user enjoyment.

I use the Meatball primarily with guitars (Gibson LP and Tele) and have found (as per manual) that the unit is entirely dependent upon the dynamics of the instrument and the way in which you play. The Gibbo's high out put triggers it much earlier than the Tele. Lately I have been using it in conjunction with an Electro-Harmonics mono synth between the left and right outputs of a cheesy TR505 and the desk giving the tired old Roland a steroid injection and producing unbelievable results. It is totally quiet which is more than I can say for my other outboards. Using it to emulate other artists isn't my thing after all, if other artists are using it then it's for the same reason that I am and that is for it's originality and virsatility. Totally exceptional and outstanding sound!

Totally reliable. I bought my first Meatball in '95 from the only non-Lovetone outlet in the country (Ritz Music in Putney, South London) after reading a review in "Guitarist" magazine then, like a fool, sold it a year and a half later when I became so skint. It brike my heart as it had never once let me down despite playing at some of the roughest venues in London. Last year I searched high and low for a second hand Meatball with no luck and finally raised the cash to buy another. The day it arrived I was in the bath when the postie knocked and I ran to the door, signed and slowly, serimonially removed it from the packaging and sighed as if I had been re-united with a old friend who I thought had died! Plugged it in and it was EXACTLY how I remembered it. The business! I couldn't really afford the one unit and Never ever had a failure so I couldn't/wouldn't have a backup

The secong Meatball was ordered directly from Vlad and I think it cost me #200 which was around #10 more than I had paid five years ago. Vlad seems to be a nice chap but I cannot comment on product support (apart from the tempting emails I receive from him, enticing me to buy the Wobulator etc which I find so unbelievably tempting).
Totally reliable so I have no experience of repairs.

My style of music varies with the wind varying from acoustic folk to ambient, vibey guitar based instrumental music and whilst the Meatball has such a diversity of sound it can be applied to distorted cranked up guitar sounds through to jazzy solo's, there is a temptation to either over-use the effect signal (blend) or to simply over use it (have it feature in every bloody song!) but all of these irresistable temptations eventually subside and more even use becomes the norm. I will never go through the pain of loss that I experienced when I sold this unit and so I will never sell it again. If it was stolen then Mr thief would have to have it re-sprayed because it is "Personalised" and there aren't many using this on the amateur scene here in South London so I would find it and KILL. Failing that, I would definately buy another. I would say that it is my favourite unit on the basis of Sound/appearance/feel/anarchic character. One special feature is the flip-top access, Superb for hiding illicit substances within - NO ONE is going in there!!!!
I loved this unit from the day that my daughter and I walked into the shop one cold, snowy afternoon in January and played it. There is no other unit that I have played that matches this (various auto-wahs, Mooger-Foogers etc). Makes me proud to be British (and that 'aint very often, I can tell you!) It's versatility is in the flavours it offers not only to guitarists but to most musicians and most sound engineers and producers. An utter legend!

I've been fiddling with it for a week with no manual. I finally figured it out. More than easy to use or hard to use, I would say it's fun to use. The last time I enjoyed a pedal so much was the Guyatone micro octave or my Mooger Fooger.

It's a dream machine. I'm getting ready to record tracks for an up coming project and one of the things I instantly felt was what apleasure this is going to be to record with. The effects are tight and bold not watered down common denominator stuff.

I don't know yet. I haven't used it live. One big question I have is all the electronics are on the face not the bottom of the box. The more I stomp on my stomp box, the more the electronics will get jolted directly. One joy is the filp top, though. I love how it's like a car hood, requires no screws so I can change the 9-volt painlessly. Reliability, I've only had it for a week. It's just too soon.

Up until five minutes ago (upon looking up the web), I had never heard of this company and have not contacted them. You can;t even get onto their web page right now.

Rock, experimental, new music

Within 10 minutes of receiving the pedal, I was giggling like a schoolgirl at the utter silliness of the sounds I was creating. Going against all in built male traits, I read the manual and it was not only informative, but entertaining as well. I leant the pedal to a friend and didn't give him the manual. He had some difficulty in getting it to happen. It's not easy, but it's not hard. Personally, that's what I like in a pedal. I don't want to know everything it can do in 2 minutes. I like to explore.

The pedal is utterly silent. Pristine, beautiful. All of that stuff. With a distortion running in the loop, you become on the brink of out of control, and what a wonderful place to be. With the ingenious blend control, the effects can be ever so subtle to overwhelmingly ridiculous - the way I like it. For a good demo of the pedal, have a listen to tracks 2 and 3 from Radiohead's Ok Computer. In fact, if your jaw drops at any of the tones you hear on that album, it's probably one of Vlad's creations.

They're very light. I was surprised by that, but they are so perfectly constructed that I would be amazed if something did go wrong with it. I can't afford a back up. I have to buy all of the other Lovetone's first. I'm nice to my babies anyway.

Vlad is the nicest person I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with. He replies promptly to all of my stupid emails, and his great style of writing means I'm always looking forward to hearing from him. The LED on my friend's Cheese Source quit working, and Vlad thought it was the switch, so he sent us out one, and we whacked it in - problem solved. A quick and easy solution to a problem out of Lovetone's control.

I've played many a quak box in my 7 years of pedal collecting, and nothing compares to this. The Meatball is far from being just a quak box. The external triggering facilities, the perfectly positioned FX loop (it's interesting to note that the new Qtron has a FX loop - innovative or what?) the ability to control parameters with a volume pedal means this is a high-end piece of signal processing. This is a very inspirational and creative tool for my music. If it were stolen it would be replaced straight away. I'd be lost without my meatball. I am in love.

You need to read the instructions on this one. Once you get the hang of it you can tweak away for hours. Make lots of duplicates of the control panel layout (included) so you can recall cool sounds. If you're into mad-scientist effects, this is a must have.

I use a Mesa Boogie MK-IV combo, with a variety of guitars. (Hamer Special FM, Strat Plus, Tele, Jerry Jones Baritone, Hagstrom 12 string ) The other effects I use are a Diaz Tremadillo, Danelectro Fab-Tone, Midiverb 4 and a DOD fx-17 Wah. The Meatball sounds great and is very, very quiet. I prefer to run the fuzz and trem before the Meatball. The triggering still works well and this provides the greatest flexibility. You can get all the cheesy "after-school-special" soundtrack sounds you can stand. Plus very cool U-2 Achtung Baby stuff. Turn off the trigger section and you have an assortment of great filtering options. You don't have to only use the extreme settings either. The more subtle sounds are very nice. This is an expensive pedal but if you want something different and high quality you're going to have to pay for it. Just read their client list.

10! I just got mine last week and it seems to be very sturdy. Unlike some other boutique pedals I've seen tried, this has a very professional feel and well thought out design. It can do the trashy thing but it isn't limited to that "vibe". Not a 10 only because I don't live in England.

Vlad seems to be a fine young man! I don't have any other equipment with customer support this good. He answered several of my e-mailed questions when I was trying to decide which pedal to order and was very helpful. The only drawback is the overseas postage.

I play almost all styles of music. If the Meatball only did the Touch-Wah thing I wouldn't have gotten it. It has a great range of sounds that are very "what was that!?" oriented. I know I'm being picky, but a trigger off footswitch would be very cool.

the meatball is not the most intuitve device ever created, but the sounds you can get out of it once you spend a little time tweaking are more than worth the effort. i played a mutron III extensively immediately before purchasing the meatball, and although it was much easier to get a good sound out of the mutron, the meatball has so many more sound-sculpting options that it really outshines the mutron in my opinion. by the way, im using this primarily with guitar, so i would have to disagree with the earlier post which stated "the meatball isnt really as impressive on guitar," or something to that effect. the manual gives you a couple of decent sounds to use as a starting point, but other than that you really have to read the thing thoroughly and figure out how the controls interact with each other. but once you do...

you will unearth some of the coolest, most bizarre envelope filter sounds ever with this device. the greatest thing about the 'ball is the way it interacts with other efx. it has its own buffered effects loop built into it, so that you can run another effect (like a fuzz) in tandem with the 'ball. in other words, you step on the 'ball's footswitch and the fuzz also turns on. it is crucial that you use this loop, too- running efx in front of the unit doesnt work nearly as well. efx like distortion have a minimal dynamic range and wont trigger the filter properly- the built in efx loops solves this problem. i use the 'ball in line with the following efx, geetar, and amp: PRS Custom --> Teese Real McCoy Wah --> Fulltone Fulldrive II --> Meatball --> Z. Vexx Fuzz Factory --> old school DOD phasor --> Carvin MSsomething 2X12 tube amp. the fuzz factory is put through the ball's buffered efx loop, and is the source of some of the coolest squelchy auto-wah sounds i have ever come across. with the versatility of the meatball combined with the ridiculous excesses of the fuzz factory, ANYTHING is possible. ive recreated seagull yelps, pig squeals, belches of the barry white bass variety, and everything in between. basically, "if you tweak it, the sounds will come." EXPERIMENT. oh yeah, this thing is DEAD quiet. course, i run so much other shit in-line that my tone is probably shot to hell anyway, but i love the sounds im getting so its not much of a concern...
maybe youre still wondering, "what the hell does this thing sound like?" well, first of all, its definitely possible to capture all your faveorite bootylicious parliament/funkadelic sounds to a T. you can do a nice quack-quack auto-wah with the filter in the "up" position or achieve a "bow-wow" tone with the filter running "down" (ive also discovered some backwards whooshy guitar sounds this way). but this pedal does so much more than just FONK. the 'ball is featured prominently on radiohead albums, for instance, in order to achieve those insane lead tones during the solos on "paranoid android" (right before the "rain down" sequence) and on "lucky". and morcheeba uses this pedal a bunch on the album "big calm" to get watery wah sounds. it even emulates a phaser on some settings, and has lots of techno type applications (processing drum loops, adding life to digital samples) etc etc and so forth.

very sturdy (altho it seems very light for its size). beutifully simple battery access- the whole unit "flips" open to reveal the battery and carefully shielded, cleanly designed electronic innards. too cool. cant afford a backup- anyway, i dont have backups for any of my other stuff, and i doubt most people do. just go for it...

i bought this used thru harmony-central because i didnt want to pay for shipping and deal with the exchange rate and all that (in case you were unaware, LOVETONE stuff is made and sold exclusively in england). i hear lovetone is very good about satisfying their customers, but since i havent dealt with them i wont rate this category...

this things incredible. i think its the best envelope filter out there- others may disagree with me, but theyre wrong and im right so do the right thing and buy lovetone stuff. they may go out of business soon, and then in five years youll want to buy my meatball for $800 and youll be kicking yourself. DONT SAY I DIDNT WARN YOU!
* id love to hear from other lovetone owners about their products, specifically the doppelganger, which i hope to buy soon. and if youve discovered any amazing sh*t to do with the meatball, please let me know... let the e-mailing begin!

Not the easist pedal to get started with, I first tried it in the studio, Probably not the best idea when your looking for a sound while everyone is waiting for something magical to happen. After some coxing at home the thing started pouring out the sounds. Most effects seem to have a happy zone that they really start cooking at, this one tends to do it when you turn everything up and then start backing the knobs back off.

I use this pedal with many different amps. My main live rig is two selmer zodiac twin tremelo 50's and a AC-30 in stereo. The meatball reacts differently through both amps. as well as where it is in the chain of effects. I tend to like it when it's used by itself. It's quite as hell as are all the other Love Tone stuff I've tried. I own the Big Cheese also. This has got to be my most used pedal. It gets the most reaction out of everone. Not just the name, It's the sound that turns heads.

I never think any pedal is completley reliable. I wish I could have a back up for every- thing I own But that would be crazy. I own back ups for things I can't live without. I spend most of my time touring. So my gear gets tossed around quite abit. But I have to have any problems with the Love Tone line. My biggest nightmares are my amps braking down every couple of weeks.

Never delt with the company. I've bought both of my Love Tone pedals 2nd hand while I was on tour in England. The guitarist in Morcheeba turned me on to them. I'm only having trouble connecting to there web page.

I play a wide array of styles of music but my favorite is your everyday pop music. It's where my heart is. I own boxes of pedals as well as tons of amps and guitars. I purchased a Klon Centeaur a few months ago I can't live without it now. I play guitar for the lovely little Fiona Apple and have done so for the last year and a half. We're on break right now so I've been in town doing sessions and writing. You can hear the Big Cheese and the meatball on the new Aimee Mann record as well as a lot of other new stuff I've been working on. If had to buy another set of these pedals I do it in a heartbeat. You can't live without this stuff it's too good. It's also much different than anything else out there. Do yourself a favor try to find Love Tone Pedals. You will feel like your creating sounds no one else ever has.

At first (for about 3 weeks), I could not turn the knobs so I heard the "right" sound, which in my mind would be along the lines of Bootsy/Stevie Wonder's clavinet...but now I think I've got it. The manual is a piece of paper. According to Lovetone, they are considering phasing out the pedals, so newer versions of the Meatball will probably not exist. Overall: easy to use, but difficult (for me) to get a good sound.

Not noisy. Depth of the effects can be adjusted to your liking. Very broad frequency range. Good for FONK. High-pass, band-pass, and low-pass available. Frequency cutoff switch (about 4). Allows patch thru of another effect, to be used ONLY with the meatball on. Envelope can sweep up or down (BOW WOW, or QUACK QUACK). Other features: email me for more specifics.

I did not think it was very sturdy, simply because of the weight, but I suppose if you use it with care, it'll last a LONG time. Battery changing is VERY easy. Nice stomp switch, secure electronics. I have no problem using it without a backup (not to mention I couldn't afford another one).

Very friendly, and they called me back, FROM ENGLAND, to ask if they could answer any more questions about the Meatball. Also, they changed their webpage address (for a while I thought they went out of business): http://194.164.6.10/lovetone/index.html It has a token one-year warranty, and they've kept me up to date with new stuff.

I am glad that I "ran across" the Meatball, ie. no regrets. I love that I can get funky sounds, and more, out of this effects box. I tried to compare it with a Mutron, but this was done vicariously (through records of the P-FUNK). And it passed. Too bad I didn't wait until Electro-Harmonix came out with their "Q-TRON" (an update of the Mutron III - go to SOVTEK's home page for information on this, but I don't know how it sounds: about $230?) The price is about the normal asking price for an original Mutron III, with the exception of great hidden deals.

After about four hours of playing around with this thing, I was ready to send it back to the company. There seemed like no way to get any useful sounds out of it at all, and to get the filter to wah, you had to pluck so hard your fingers almost fell off. Then I read the instructions. HINT: You HAVE to know what your doing and what the knobs do in order to use this thing. Even the manual isn't real over helpful. It takes time. Trial and Error.

Not only is this the most perfect and professional sounding envelope filter I've used on bass, it is perfectly quiet, and actually makes the line noise QUIETER! It makes your bass DEEPER, and you have so much control over the filter, that you can literally make about any sound you want. From a quick wah, right at the begining of the notes, to a long phase shifting sweep while strumming chords. ANYTHING.

Really hard to judge the dependability, just yet, but it seems VERY well built and sturdy. It is the highest quality in every regard. Envelope filters are weird circuits however, and I can see that even this ULTRA-modern version has glitches. I put an Expandora in its effects loop, and got a high pitched occillating squeal that nearly ruined my speaker.

Those wild and crazy guys at Lovetone seem to be great. Were very helpful and friendly to me even BEFORE I made any hints that I was interested in making a purchase. It comes with a one year warranty from the manufacturer, too.

I would buy it again in a heartbeat. It is the greatest sounding effect I have heard for bass. It isn't really as impressive in guitar, but on bass, it is unreal. The amount of control makes it more like a synth bass processor. And the sound quality is perfect. It keeps the tiniest little growls from your bass, while "wah"ing it very distinctly, and it somehow makes the sound about 2 octaves deeper yet still crystal clear. I've never been more impressed. Beats out my Mu-tron III by far. A Mu-tron sounds better on guitar, however. It is very expensive, however, it is WORTH a lot of money.