Re: [Harp-L] Electro Harmonix POG2

[Mike Best <mike.d.best@xxxxxx>]

Thanks for the great summary Ken, and thanks to everyone else for their advice. The HOG2 sounds like a powerful little unit, hopefully I'll have some fun with it
Cheers
Mike

On 21/08/2013, at 7:52 AM, Ken Ficara <kenficara@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I have a HOG2 but I actually find the POG2 (which is smaller and cheaper) better for harmonica. The HOG has more features than the POG, but I don't find many of them especially useful:
> 
> The HOG has more frequency bands (+3 and +4 octaves) but those do not usually generate pleasant sounds when used with a harmonica. It also offers some harmony bands (root+5th, octave+3rd) but that's not enough choice to do anything interesting, and doesn't sound good enough to replace genuine harmony parts. For sophisticated pitch-shifting I'd look at the Eventide Pitchfactor, or their rackmount effects (I have an Eclipse which is incredibly flexible). 
> 
> The HOG also offers expression-pedal control, but most of the possibilities are tricky to use well, and sound very bad if overused, or used sloppily. Plus, why do I want to bend notes with a pedal? I play harp.
> 
> Meanwhile, the POG offers only four bands (-1, -2, +1 and +2) but those hit the sweet sport for harmonica. Furthermore, it has a detuning feature that lets you get amazing organ sounds and choruses out of it. The HOG does *not* have any detuning control.
> 
> The HOG also has more flexible envelopes, but the POG's more basic control (over attack time only) is all I need -- mainly to get a "stringier" sound on the lower octaves. The POG also lets you specify whether attack and detuning are applied to the dry signal, which is very useful.
> 
> The HOG also doesn't have presets unless you buy an external controller (and find room for it on your pedalboard). You can control it via MIDI but you have to program it with custom MIDI messages to set up the parameters. Whereas the POG has ten presets easily accessible via a footswitch on the pedal.
> 
> Finally, the HOG has filters, but we harmonica players do too (our hands). For synth-style filters, I use Moog modules which sound better, and are more expressive, than the HOG's. 
> 
> In general for harp I find the HOG large/expensive/complex, versus the POG which fits on a pedalboard and costs a couple of hundred dollars less.
> 
> Ken
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 11:52 PM, Buck Worley <boogalloo@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hello Mike,Like you, I bought one a few months ago on a whim and even though I have not made it a part of my set up yet, I can see that it has a lot of possibilities. It took a few hours of knob turning to figure it out ( I hate reading instructions) and after I got the hang of the stuff on the right side (the octave stuff is simple) I started getting some seriously good sounds and proceeded to make my own presets. I put it in line with an old Boss chorus pedal and that worked pretty good for a leslie sound. Just work with it. I think you will like it. Good luckBW
>> 
>> > From: mike.d.best@xxxxxx
>> > To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
>> > Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:16:25 +0800
>> > Subject: [Harp-L] Electro Harmonix POG2
>> >
>> > I've just bought a used POG2 on a whim.  Has anyone had any experience using
>> > one of these things for harp?  It's got 1 and 2 octaves up and 1 and 2
>> > octaves down, plus various other controls.  The possibilities seem to be
>> > endless.  I'm hoping to get some keyboard/organ/sax/bagpipes sounds out of
>> > it.  Has anyone out there got any tips?
>> >
>> > Cheers
>> >
>> > Mike
>> >
>