Micro POG Review

Make your 6-string ring like a 12. Make your 4-string bass pump like an 8. Convert your guitar into a tight, convincing bass. Generate organ-like harmonic structures. Fast, glitch free polyphonic tracking.

Ease of Use:	9.7
Sound:	9.3
Reliability:	9.7
Impression:	9.7
Overall rating:	9.6
Users rating:	9.6
Comments:	16

overall: 10

Featured review by: Y0UNGBL00D, on october 24, 2007

Price paid: $ 200

Ease of Use: It's got 3 very user-friendly knobs. Dry signal (input signal) volume, sub octave volume (-1 octave), octave up volume (+1 octave). Mix the three like you would any liquor and soda. No matter where you put them, it's awesome. Two outputs, 1 dry one effect. Dry bypasses effect and sends input through, you can guess what effect does. This is what you plug your output cable into unless you are running a stereo setup. Power input is 9V DC center negative, standard barrel adapter. No battery. Plus, as if the thing wasn't easy enough, electro harmonix has taken the liberty of providing some level suggestiosn for different settings. Really helpful for dialing certain tones exactly. Apparently, this is a new practice on their part, as I got the same treatment with the soul preacher (way more helpful in that case, the Micro POG is pretty much idiot proof). // 10

Sound: Currently my setup is as follows: SG Faded Special (500T, bigsby)/Squire Jagmaster - Fender tuner - Danelectro EQ - Soul Preacher comp - Micro POG - Micro Amp Boost - Metal Muff - Big Muff USA - Small Clone - Small Stone - Voodoo Labs Trem - #1 Echo - Valve Junior/Marshall VS100R/some homemade SS Monster (for cleans). Thing is dead silent. Nothing in the circuit dealing with gain or makeup gain really, so nothing to worry about as far as bringing noise to your lineup. Not sure if this box is true bypass or not, but does not suck tone, and the DPDT is easilly modable to TB if neccessary. Effects are full and flavorful on ALL settings. You literally can not find a bad setting on the Micro POG. Great electric organ sounds from the Micro POG, also the best octave down/up in it's price range. Tracks all chords and speed picking, which no octave box can claim. Nice White Stripes tones when accompanied with Big Muff Pi. Works great with other pedals as well. Good early or late in the signal chain. Again, you can't go wrong with this thing. // 10

Reliability & Durability: Solid rock or it's equivalent. Cast alluminum case, solid jacks. Would gig without a backup for sure, sans worries of theft (be careful, someone will steal this box). Walking up to my appartment right after I bought it, I almost dropped it 20+ feet to solid concrete. If I did, I would have been angry at myself, but not worried. The thing is a tank. // 10

Impression: Ok, bottom line, this will make crazy noises or just add a little depth to your tone. 12 string. Check. Bass tone. Check. Anything you could want from an octave pedal. Doublecheck. Lives up to it's word completely. If you like original sounds coming from your setup, this is for you. Only downside what'soever is the price tag of 200 bones. I have a feeling this will decrease soon anyway, if EHX has any marketing sense. Only thing I wish it had was an expression pedal, which if you are electronics savy can be arranged. But again, short of the actual POG or HOG, which are huge and pricey but offer more variables, this is the best octave pedal ever made. Period. // 10

overall: 10

Reviewed by: eyebanez333, on february 12, 2009

Price paid: $ 150

Purchased from: ebay

Ease of Use: The Micro POG from Electro-Harmonix is a cool little octave pedal that allows you to mix your dry signal as well as the 1 octave down and 1 octave up signals. Very simple to control, each feature has it's own control knob. Also includes dry and wet outputs. Essentially, you can make your guitar sound like a 12-string or even an 18 string! Mine did not come with a manual because I got it used, but it did come with the standard power supply. // 10

Sound: I use this pedal with a few different model Ibanez guitars, my other effects, all going to a Peavey Windsor. The Micro POG works well on bass as well. This pedal sounds great all around, clean or distorted. The octave effect is very clean and the tracking is perfect. You cannot catch a glitch anywhere in the tracking. I mainly use it with a little bit of chorus to really bring out a clean section. With the dry knob at 12 o'clock, sub octave knob at 1 o'clock, and octave up knob at 4 o'clock, a clean guitar will sound similar to a church organ. Very clean and full. // 10

Reliability & Durability: I've had this pedal for a few months now and it has yet to give me problems. If it's anything like the Electro-Harmonix pedals I own now, or have owned in the past, it never will! This quickly became one of my favorite pedals I own. I would definitely use this pedal on a gig without a backup. // 10

Impression: I play rock and metal music and this pedal works for the clean sections that I mentioned above. The Micro POG will work for any genre that you would need an octave pedal for though. I've been playing for a few years now and I own quite a few different effects pedals. The Micro POG is one of my favorites. Super easy to use, perfect compact size, and great tones come from it. I hate nothing about this pedal. I've tried other octave pedals in the past, and there was always a register that wouldn't track right. That is not the case with the Micro POG. If it were lost or stolen I would order another one immediately. // 10

overall: 8.8

Reviewed by: MrFlibble, on january 19, 2009

Price paid: £ 130

Purchased from: GAK

Ease of Use: This is the smaller, simplified version of EHX's POG. It is used to generate a tone one octave higher and one octave lower than whatever you're playing. With different settings this can make a guitar sound like a bass, a 6 string sound like a 12 string, etc. It's very simple to use; a simple on/off Switch (the small clicky type, not a Boss-like foot pedal - so don't go trying to stamp on this with bare feet! ), and three level/volume controls; one controls how much of your original signal will be heard, one controls the volume of the sub octave (octave lower), one controls the volume of the higher octave. The manual... well, there isn't one unless it is so tiny it fell out of the box when I opened it. You really don't need one though, it is so basic so long as you understand basic English to read the name of each of the three volume controls, that's all you need.

It also has two outputs; one for the wet signal, one for the dry signal. This basically means in simple terms if you want you can have the sound of the effect going to one amp and the raw sound of your guitar going to another, and it has certain stereo uses. Most of the time thought his can be ignored and you'll just want to be plugged into the wet (effect) output as this can carry your guitar's raw signal too. // 9

Sound: I'm using this as the second effect in a short chain. My chain is guitar > Boss GE-7 Equaliser > the Micro POG > DigiTech Screamin' Blues Overdrive > Boss DD-7 Delay > amp. I use a variety of guitars, mostly Les Pauls. I use a large range of amps, almost all Fender-brand though.

This pedal's pretty decent in terms of basic sound. I believe it does make use of a true bypass, and there's no extra noise or clicking when turning it on, off or while using it. However, do not think that this will actually sound like your guitar is being played higher/lower. It simply generates a second (or third) signal an octave higher/lower, and this in no way will sound like an actual guitar. When using heavy Overdrive or distortion and the original guitar signal louder than the octave this isn't so much of a problem, but playing clean or if you want the lower or higher octaves to be louder than the original signal, it will sound very digital and synthetic.

All that said, it is a bit odd to see a pedal like this used without a lot of dirt on the signal so I doubt many people will have a problem with the tone. You can get a wide range of sounds from this, from a Hendrix-like upper octave chorus to an acceptable enough bass tone (when playing dirty at least), and anything in-between. The best tones seem to come between the 7th and 14th frets, on the A, D and G strings and using the neck pickup of the guitar. The big draw of this pedal is it's one of the few octave generator pedals that will track perfectly with full chords. I put an acoustic simulator in my chain after the Micro POG (to counter the Micro POG's very synthetic sound) and got a good 12-string sound then and it really did perform perfectly with full open and barre chords. Basically so long as you don't expect miracles, this pedal delivers. // 8

Reliability & Durability: This pedal seems to be the most solidly-built pedal I've ever had. It's housing is all metal, input and output jacks are fit snugly, no build problems. I simply have no problems trusting this pedal to perform. The only thing of note is that if you like to run off batteries, you can can forget about it with this pedal. You're going to need this plugged into the mains, pure and simple. // 9

Impression: I mostly bought this for two reasons only; to simulate a 12-string until I can afford a pretty double neck, and because this is the only -compact- pedal on the market that can generate both a higher and lower octave at the same time as the original dry signal. I play a lot of Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora now uses this pedal himself for the lower/regular/higher triple output effect used at the start of You Give Love A Bad Name. Obviously since it's what he uses himself, this has no problem doing the same!

I'd certainly get another if this was lost or broken. I have spent some time with the full POG previously and I would actually advise buying this over that, simply because of how fool-proof and effective this pedal is at just doing what you want it to do when you want it to do so perfectly. If you need to have your original sound plus an octave lower and an octave higher at the same time, this is the pedal to get. I only wish it did have a more Boss or DigiTech-like pedal operation since I do happen to play with bare feet a lot and stamping on the small Switch this has tends to Hurt. I highly doubt this will matter to most people though. // 9

Comments

[fretsonfire74]

this looks awesome *first*

[lazlow325i]

Is it worth it to save up for the actual POG?

[Fast_Fingers]

Would this produce the effect from Map of the Problematique?

[Amitio]

Fast_Fingers wrote:

Would this produce the effect from Map of the Problematique?

For that you'd need some sort of step filter!
The one matt uses is very expensive!!!!

Checked.

Mmm, a POG that small. Hopefully sound quality isn't lost from the original.

[RickyDude]

Fast_Fingers wrote:

Would this produce the effect from Map of the Problematique?

If you are referring to the intro of Map of the Problematique this was one chord played with digital effects put over it. I can't remember what program but Belamyexplained this during a jam session.

[ExtremeMetalFTW]

can you go down an octave only?
(as in, w/o any other effects)

[Y0UNGBL00D]

sound quality is same as real POG. only thing you lose is the detune option (used for more realistic 12 string simulation) and the extra octave up. and yes, you can only go down one octave.

[Ian_Hendrix]

does it work good w/ distortion??

cause if it does, i could get this for the same as an octavia...

[GummiTZ]

How does the sounds differ when you place it before or after your overdrive/dist/fuzz? Where do you prefer it in the signal chain?

And, regarding power: Have you tried it with regular Boss-power? Or any type of shared power-supply (with common ground that is)? I've had serious noise-problems before when running EHX-pedals off a shared power supply with other pedals, and if this one suffers from the same problem, I am NOT buying it...

[guy_tebache]

ExtremeMetalFTW :
can you go down an octave only?
(as in, w/o any other effects)

just mix the +octave to zero and you'll get the dry signal and the -octave signal as your output

[The McManus]

This is the coolest sounding pedal I have ever heard... Its really sweet, havent played one but Im looking forward to it

[Bumcivilian]

GummiTZ:

I have the Micro POG and I always have it before my Big Muff. It has a completely different sound when the other way round, more than I'd have guessed, so play around with it, I just prefer it before.

I use a daisy chained 9v centre-negative adapter for this and two Boss pedals, and I don't have any problems with noise.

[nosaj89]

i use a metal muff in front of mine, w/ a volume pedal and a wah.

[waysay]

Thes pedals can make your guitar sound like an organ.....I love them wholeheartedly.