ring...ring...

by MrMisse

This is somewhat different from previous Gear Gawks as there will not be much technical details being covered... Ok, here goes...

Imagine that you have just left Glastonbury after performing amidst the other not-so-great-as-you acts like radiohead, sigur ros, super furry animals etc... and you have boarded your plane back to Singapore when...!!!!!

KABOOOOOOM!!! Your flight, SQ69 crashes...!!! Right into the Indian Ocean and there you are, with a whole lot of gear and your band mates (yes, and without women). And what's more, the life saving boat that you are on is sinking by the seconds because guess what, you just had 2 chicken chops, 2 glasses of white wine and 5 cans of beer and you haven't got the chance to pee before the crash...

So... what do you do?
Throw off your band mates or your gear?

Just as expected, all of your band mates have been thrown overboard by you and the boat is still sinking... and you can only keep one piece of equipment... so what's it going to be?

Well, for me, it will have to be the Moogerfooger Ring Modulator.

A huge part of the reasoning has gotta be due to the fact that I have been searching for a ring modulator for some time. I first heard the sound clips of the Electro Harmonix Frequency Analyzer on their website and the clips of John Frusciante were rather intimidating and it sorta opened up a different world of sound for me. This is where I began my frantic search for a ring modulator. I embarked on a frenzied search all over the net for not porn, but different ring modulators and there were many times when I was just a click away from buying one from ebay (yes, that evil bid-all-you-want invention by the Americans).

All sorts of ring modulators popped up on my screen and the few that really caught my attention were the Metasonix ones, Frantone Glacier Hyper Modulator, Lastgasp Sick Pitch King, the Lovetone Ring Stinger and of course the Moogerfooger Ring Modulator. However, as much as I would love to own any one of those with the click of my mouse, I couldn't. I had just started working and have not got the courage to splash out at least US$300 on a single pedal (though things have REALLY changed by now). My desperation for a ring modulator was slowly but surely fading away, simply based on the fact that I could not afford one and I was beginning to think that I will never need that pedal after all.

Tragic.

A few weeks later, I chanced upon this classified advertisement on Luthermusic's website where a Line6 Modulation Modeler MM4 was for sale. Knowing that amongst the 16 effects offered in this pedal, there was one that had the ring modulator function, I called the seller up and within hours, I was riding on the train home with the MM4 safely in my bag. Once home, I took it out like a secondary school boy with his first porn vcd and guess what, I did not have the adaptor for it.

It was like the secondary school boy suddenly realized that his house had suddenly been struck with power failure. I turned the *X%$! pedal over and realized that the only other power supply option was 4 huge round batteries and my whole house didn't have one! Imagine that, no batteries in my junkyard of a house. I suddenly wished that I lived in a Mama shop. It was 12 midnight and there I was, at the nearest petrol kiosk a train station away... whipping out another $20 on 4 bloody batteries.

Guess what, the ring modulator function on the MM4 just didn't work for me. I ended using other effects. It seemed my search for a ring mod had drowned.

And then, to my wildest dreams, MISSE Electronics emerged from nowhere. It has been 6 months and all of these still seem so new to me. 2 weeks ago, when I first plugged in my 'dream' pedal, I put my desperation to rest. Never before did I imagine myself stomping on a Moogerfooger Ring Modulator, and even more, marketing them!

And yes, this is the pedal that will make me dump my band mates into the Indian Ocean.

Actually, no. Without them, I might not even know what pedals do.

The Love Experiment lives.