What are your four ‘must-have’ pedals? That is what we ask our guests to share with you in our Four On the Floor podcast segment. Aisha is a one-of-a-kind girl who builds one-of-a-kind pedals one at a time! As a bass player, she gravitates towards eclectic pedals too. If you are not familiar with Loe Sounds do yourself a favor and check them out. She gave us a fantastic interview too! You can hear the episode for yourself right here. Check out these choices for her Four On The Floor.
1. Electro-Harmonix – Deluxe Memory Man
“I would say for guitar and bass and just love it. It just does that sound that it does. What prompted you to buy that? It’s interesting. I don’t really know to tell you the truth. I just happened to love the sound of analog delay. There are very few digital delays where the sound doesn’t bother me, especially on bass. This one doesn’t really rob tone from the bass. You know, it has like secret sauce. Just recently I had Howard Davis just pimp it out with all his mods and recondition it. So now it’s just stupid good. I’m almost afraid to leave the house with it at this point. Howard had something to do with the designing that actual pedal. He’s this really amazing older gentleman who’s worked for Electro-Harmonix and Pig Tronics and he offers a bunch of mods on a bunch of the old Electo-Harmonix pedals. He does it out of his apartment in Brooklyn. This guy pretty much is responsible for me feeling confident enough to try building pedals. He is just an amazing guy and really inspirational. So, uh, that’s another reason why I think that pedal just has a special place for me.“
Check out the Electro-Harmonix – Deluxe Memory Man
2. Electro-Harmonix – Bass Micro Synth
“Just because it does that huge gnarly thing it does where it can just sweep from like the lowest sub octave to the highest—like sounds a base shouldn’t make essentially. I was really into Peter Hook and Depeche mode. And I’ve played a lot of electronic music so always played with a ton of pedals until really recently. That Base Micro Synth just has some power to it too. If you just really want to come in on a like a Mars Volta kind of thing, then that’s going to do it for you.”
Check out the Electro-Harmonix – Bass Micro Synth
3. Moosapotamus – Bass Paralooper DIY
“This guy Charlie goes by Moosapotamus and he’s a character in the DIY scene who was really kind and did a lot of tracing work and shares a lot of his work and ideas. As a bass player, when you plug into pedals sometimes it really robs your tone and for me, I never want to not be holding things down as the bass player. Like we can have all these cool effects, but it needs to be, you know, greasy and be holding it down underneath. So the Para Looper is like an independent send and return where I can blend my bass into it and it sounds markedly better. I mean, it probably doesn’t hurt that I spared no expense and pimped it out with all the like quote-unquote mojo parts. It really makes the bass more articulate when using pedals.”
Check out the Moosapotamus – Bass Paralooper DIY
4. Roland RE-201 Space Echo
“Okay, I know it’s not a pedal, but I use it all the time and it’s my number one most favorite effect to have. Also since I do turn it on and off with a pedal that counts right? I included it in this instance because I just think it’s being a huge dub-reggae fan, my dad’s Jamaican and I love Reggae music and the RE-201 is just like the sound of that. It’s like going in my coffin with me when they burned me out after I die—we’re like starcrossed lovers till the end.“
Check out the Roland RE-201 Space Echo
Huge thanks to Aisha for being a guest on our show and please check out Loe Sounds. We wish her continued success!