PATRICK OGLE: We're going to do the experiment where we take a blind test because I have a new one and a friend of mine has one from the '70s [INDISCERNIBLE] and we're going to have somebody put the same thing on a different treatment and try to listen to it.

BILL WEBB: Yeah. You should try that because I've noticed that myself with the -- I've had a Phase 45 and Phase 90s and the new ones are -- they don't quite sound the same, and it has -- it really does have to do with the choice of the parts. A lot of that stuff now has been made with the surface mount devices, capacitors, resistors, or whatever. The physical size and the makeup of that stuff makes that difference. They behave differently when you send a signal through it. Voltage, it's just also proximity, how everything's laid out, it sounds different.

PATRICK OGLE: So say you open them up and see about the proximity, and you see what's [OVERLAPPING].

BILL WEBB: Yeah. They're pretty jammed in there pretty tight. I've managed to fix a few that have gone band, but most of the time, if they break, I usually have to send them back to the factory or they just have to go and buy a new one. You know, there's no way to fix it. Yeah, if you do that, that should be an interesting little project to try that out.

PATRICK OGLE: We're also going to do [INDISCERNIBLE] of the DOD FX-65 Chorus, the old DOD one before they were DigiDesign. They have that chorus and then they have the modeled one, one that they have on like Line 6.

BILL WEBB: Oh yeah. One of those things is the modeling amps.

PATRICK OGLE: You can tell the difference between?

BILL WEBB: Yeah.

PATRICK OGLE: That's going to be easier to tell the difference.

BILL WEBB: Yeah. Modeling is kind of an interesting thing, you know. That's -- I've had a couple of times, you know, had some delay modelers. In one particular rig I had it worked okay. It didn't mess up my tone or anything.

PATRICK OGLE: We were talking about modeling and like modeling effects [INDISCERNIBLE].

BILL WEBB: Well, there's a couple of, you know, things about it. It's just my personal opinion and it’s that the modeling is it's basically taking your signal somewhat. You take your signal, convert it to a digital form, and then run it through some algorithms and some, you know, approximations or whatever of some particular device, and you have some control over them. The delay modeler that I had for a while it was it worked really well with my rig because I compensated for some of the tone change that it makes further up the line, and then my latest system that I use right now is a bit simpler than what I used to have and I tried another delay modeler and it just didn't quite work. It thinned my sound a little much, you know, and I had trouble getting some of my tone back. However, there are some guys that I know that play those things and they sound wonderful, you know. They played modeling amplifiers, which I have a hard time dealing with but these guys can do it and they sound great, you know.

PATRICK OGLE: Some of the other problems that I've talked about to a band yesterday and they're talking about how a lot of those rack-mounted things the problem is just overload. It's just trying that there's so much stuff on them.

BILL WEBB: Oh yeah. Yeah.

PATRICK OGLE: It’s sometimes easier to keep it simple.

BILL WEBB: Yeah. That's what I call option anxiety, you know. Somebody said that and I remembered it from years ago when all these new, you know, digital delay units with the microprocessor that you can just control everything, every little aspect. You get so many parameters that you can change that you get option anxiety. Digital recording systems are like that too.

PATRICK OGLE: Yeah, you can put in just like -- you're not limited to [OVERLAPPING].

BILL WEBB: [OVERLAPPING] You can put like a gazillion reverbs, a bazillion reverbs, and a bazillion EQs and all that stuff, you know. So, it's, you know [OVERLAPPING]

PATRICK OGLE: [OVERLAPPING] [INDISCERNIBLE]

BILL WEBB: Yeah. It just gets into -- I went to that direction for a little while and I ended up just going back to a simpler circuit, a simpler signal chain. It was a lot easier to deal with.

PATRICK OGLE: It's also easier to get pedals if you have -- you know, how many pedals can you have, five, six, seven, or eight. It's just easier to have the pedal.

BILL WEBB: I had one time I counted I had 13 pedals, and I used every one of them, you know. I had different delay time pedals, and I had completely different types of distortion circuits, you know, flanger, chorus, and all that other stuff, you know, a bunch of different things, but if -- some guys use them in racks. I think probably that's the most -- you could preset you know three or four pedals on a button, you know, and make stuff happen, and that's really neat. It's probably if I get a chance, I'll do that the next time. That way, you only step on one button instead of seven, you know.