Maneco Filter Eko

Many options for use - many features - great implementation of filters and looping and relatively intuitive design.

Lofi - great when it worked but started to fall apart from the day I purchased it used on Ebay. Eventually devolved into a bitcrushed noise box - no clean signal. A real mess of a pedal.

I picked up his Eko-Filter on the Bay used. It was a piece of poop from the minute I opened her up - It began to fall apart from day one - He offered to repair it and after $50 insured shipping the box back to Uraguay he tells me after many unanswered status check e-mails three months later he never received it. US Mail says he has it. Guess he opened up the box & saw what a pile of ca-ca there was to work with and decided to act like he never got it. He offered to sell me a new one at cost (He said he didn't want to lose a friend!). Fool me once shame on you... Fool me twice? Heck no! I verified with another forum member who said he had the same experience with Maneco and his Eko Filter. The guy sells poorly built breadboard constructed junk as new pedals then pawns them off cheap on artists (e.g. Vernon Reid) who then turn them around on the Bay when they get fed up with them breaking.

It is not that Juan is a crook - rather just a total flake who can't run a business at the most basic level. The Looper's circuit boards were actually hot glued together with sub-par parts and wood sides that were covered in some toxic finish that smelled like bug doo doo - Everything was held together on a thread and the various functions eventually started failing/falling apart one by one from everyday use. The stomp switches were some kind of Soviet type like you see on Sovtek Green Muff's. They were intermittent, and never solidly engaged and fell into pieces from regular use - weird stuff. This was an embarrassment - but what you gonna do?

See statement above...

Great idea of a pedal but the communication, service, ad quality of the product is a joke. I tried to get the maker to correct this but after 4 months of waiting I am fed up and felt the necessity to let folks know how I feel about the terrible business practices and poor quality of the Maneco Looper...

This was a custom order device. I've been aware of his high quality electro harmonix 16 second delay clone for sometime. What I wanted was a modulation delay that could also capture and loop just like the 16-second delay. So bounced ideas back and forth, and together we created a very complex device, however, as complex as it is. Juan's pedal design skill made a very straight forward and simple performance tool in the end...

Four switches:

Bypass
Hold
Reverse
filter on/off

many toggle switches and knobs to control delay time/modulation waveform (sine/square) depth/rate. Also has toggle switches and knobs to control filter cutoff/depth/waveform (square/triangle)/rate.

Filter can also be assigned pre or post delay.

expression pedal jack to contro filter rate/sweep

What can I say... this tool easily made me shelve my dml-20. Not many delays cut it in my opinion. The DML-20 was not really happening tonally, but it's functionality kept it on my board. In my opinion, the best delays out there for guitar are the korg sdd-3000, the boss DM-2, ibanez AD-80 and AD-202, and of course the SIB echodrive. The problem for me was always finding a modulation delay with a sine wave. It seems these days that no one wants to spend the cash to include a sine wave in their products. The new Moog Voyager doesn't even have a sine wave. Juan was the first boutique builder I've talked to who actually took the time to understand what I wanted and came through for me bigtime.

For me, the problem I have with delays usually is how they sit in the mix with the source guitar signal. Most of the time with delays, you usually have both the dry and the effect signal fighting eachother for bandwidth space, and what you end up with is a delay that is either too loud or too quiet.

The Maneco is just like the digital SIB echodrive, in that it claims it's frequency real estate, but leaves plenty of room for your guitar's original signal tone.

This bandwidth problem can get especially bad with modulation delays, as the modulation usually causes some phase cancelation, and what you end up with is a very thin guitar tone.

The Maneco just chimes and choruses... My source guitar tone is as pure as ever. The fact that this delay has a buffer even further amazes me.

I should mention here that US Customs stuck it to me big time. They actually cut traces between the two circuit board inside my maneco and did some rough rumaging around so my delay came damaged. I was able to fix it for the most part, and Juan is working with me to double check everything.

don't know yet... as I just got it. One thing I should mention, is that if you look inside, you can tell that Maneco effects are a product of a mad scientist. It is very obvious that nothing can get in the way between this man and his creations. He would tear apart old radios, computers, and vcr's to get the parts he needs to make an effect happen.

I have no choice but to use it without a back-up. It's too cool to not use.

Couldn't be better. The guy is in Uraguay working a fulltime job with a family. And he gives far better support than a few boutique cats I know who live in the same state as me.

Very happy! Worth the Wait. Finally a piece of analog/lo-rez digital gear that lives up to the name.

This thing has everyone in my studio craving one.