Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Locobox Choker Pedal


If you've looked at the links to other sites I do, you'll notice a link to www.locobox.com. It's what you might call (for lack of a better term) a "fan site" for Locobox guitar pedals. Although I wouldn't call myself a "fan," I did get pretty obsessed with Locobox pedals at one point. I was reading an article in Tape Op magazine about Jason Falkner, member of the Grays, Jellyfish, etc., and he made a comment about gear he used to make his home recordings sound amazing. He said that he used a guitar effect pedal made by a company in the '70s called Locobox. The pedal was a compressor called The Choker and it just made everything sound great.

Well, who doesn't want that? A magic box that makes all recordings sound great? Sign me up.

Like quite a few other folks out there, I got obsessed with finding a Choker pedal. Problem is, they are really rare and impossible to find. Here's the difference though...I'm a freakin' genius and I will find a way to get one. I checked to see if the domain name locobox.com was taken and found that it was available. I bought it, found some photos of a few Locobox pedals, and started The Unofficial Locobox website. I figured if anyone was going to sell a pedal, they might Google Choker Pedal and find my site. Believe it or not, it worked. Really well. I ended up buying many Locobox pedals and sort of became the accidental Locobox guy.

What I really found is that Locobox made some really cool pedals. In MY opinion, The Choker is not one of them. I say that with full disclosure that I just don't understand how to fully utilize compression. I mess with it. I buy compressors. Pretty good ones. I use them. I don't really know whether what I'm doing is working or why. What I do know is that The Choker was not the "magic box" that I was hoping it would be. I am pleased to have found Locobox Mysto Dysto distortion pedals and Tube Maniax pedals and many others that do sound great.

3 comments:

  1. I've been using the 80's LOCObox compressor for years and have always been very happy with it ....sadly i'm parting with a lot of my guitar stuff now ...so if you’re interested its listed here on ebay...

    ReplyDelete
  2. if you run across a cosmochorus i want one!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Sean Carter, I have a Cosmochorus that I may part with. If you're interested, let me know via maurits[at]checkitloud.com.
    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete