Ranking the Ernie Ball Expression Series: Delay, Overdrive, and Tremolo

Transcript of the YouTube Video

Note: This transcript was made by a machine, which means it’s imperfect. Sorry for any weirdness.

Hey, I’m Emily and you’re watching get offset. And today I’m going to rank the three Ernie ball expression series pedals. If you haven’t watched, I’ve done a demo of the ambient delay, expression overdrive, and the tremolo pedal. So if you haven’t seen those demos yet, please stop this video. Click the links in the bio and watch those videos first.

Alright, so let’s get down to ranking. Just kidding. Before we talk about the rankings, what I want to do is just put a little disclosure out there, maybe a couple of disclosures, just to get some things off my chest. I was sent all of these pedals by Ernie ball in exchange for a demo. So keep that in mind, if you are on trustworthy of stuff, I’m just trying to sit here and give my honest opinion on.

Oh, I think it’s generally a pretty good series. and also don’t let my thoughts on something on my least favorite. If it’s your favorite, it doesn’t mean it sucks. If it sounds good to you and your ears, then it’s a good pedal. That’s the gist of things. That’s how it works. I’m not a big fan of gatekeepers and I don’t want to be one so cool.

now that that’s all, all the way we’re going to start with the pedal that I thought was, well, that was my least favorite. And just so you know, it’s not necessarily saying a lot, but it’s my least favorite because I absolutely love, love, love my favorite, but my least favorite is the expression over. gosh, my least favorite is the ambient delay pedal.

And here’s the thing I got this pedal so stoked. I love expression controls and delay pedals. I have one on the avalanche run. And I would use it a lot. I would use the expressions. You control the repeats because even though the avalanche run has that infinite hole four repeats feature, I feel like I would get into those swells lot faster with an expression pedal.

So when I got the ambient delay, not being able to control repeats or time or anything, kind of fun. that was really a bummer disappointment to me. the control only controls the mix and that’s not very fun. I don’t think that’s exciting or supremely inspiring. I mentioned in the description for that video that I think that pedal works really well.

If you are trying to do like some sort of manual ducking delay, like a manual duct delay. So you play with the heel down, you get your clean notes in, and then you fade in the wet too, to kind of fill in the blank spaces between those that you’re playing. It really requires an extremely active foot, which is fine, but that’s again, kind of the point of the expression series.

So that’s not really a valid complaint in my, my opinion. the, the other thing was, it is. I think you need a tap tempo for it. Well, it has, it had to bow and you need to tap tempo if you want it to be super duper functional. So yeah, that’s, that’s that? yeah, but I really hope to do a V2, in the vein of the tremolo pedal, where you can select which parameters you want to control, set a max, maybe some things are consistent.

Maybe once your time consistent, but you want to be able to change those repeats. Maybe you want the repeats consistent, but you want to do the little woo sound with the, that that’s very technical terms or whoop sound with the, with the changing of the time as you’re, as you’re playing. So yeah, that’s kind of up to you.

I think it should be up to you, but if Ernie ball does that, I think that the ambient delay is a real absolute winner. Cool. next pedal. Is the overdrive. And I remember going to a guitar store once and talking with one of the sales reps and he said, he just didn’t really understand the appeal of the overdrive.

And I’m going to be honest, like I didn’t at the time, but after playing it for awhile, I like it. I think it’s fun to start something a little bit cleaner and then just sort of. Soup and, the overdrive, I think it’s, I think it’s really expressive. and I think it’s cool. I wish there was more gain on tap.

I’d actually really love to see that format with a fuzz pedal. I think that would be super cool and fun. I. I don’t really know what else you would put on an overdrive pedal for the expression sweep? I don’t think that the five to successful as a boost is, you know, super significant. I don’t really see the point in having just such a small amount of news.

in general, I think that, I could figure out places to use it for sure. it’s not a volume pedal and I don’t really think it should necessarily replace a volume pedal because if you do that, then you’re just kind of having you have a volume pedal with, with overdrive, which is not a bad idea. I might write that one down.

no, I think that’s kind of a fun idea. Honestly. I think the expression overdrive, I think it sounds pretty nice. I think it’s a very, very expressive thing. I like it. Yeah. So I like it. but my favorite in the series is the newest one and it feels like they took some feedback and really applied it in a thoughtful way.

The tremolo, I love it. I love being able to control either the rate or the depth. I think my go to is to have the depth consistently just kind of at its max and then to sweep and rates as I like it. I think it was spring reverb on it sounds really nice too. And I really think that having those, those wave forms is spectacular.

I think it’s a great model and I don’t know why it’s not more popular. I it’s a great pedal. Yeah. It really, it takes all those things. I feel like you were missing a little bit with the first two expression series pedals and, you know, Makes makes it, they enabled it to be your pedal, with being able to select the different parameters.

it’s great. I love it. I’m surprised at how good the spring river of sounds the plate reverb on the ambient delay is also really, really nice. and I would almost like the ambient delay for its plate reverb setting sound more than anything else. And, Makes me daydream about, an ambient reverb pedal and the expression series.

I think that could be fun. Yeah. So all together, I think that they’re good pedals. I think that, what they’re currently selling for right now, is about fair for all of them. I was just checking prices on reverb and Sweetwater today and yeah, no, I mean, if you can find them for. The prices that they are everywhere.

I think that they’re, they’re selling to, to pick up they’re a little big, but they’re not too big. I kind of wish that the volume pedals for that size, just in general, I think it’s a really comfortable size. But then again, I have a size six and a half foot in women’s that small for the men who play guitar.

I have a size five boys. Shoo so small feet. I like, I think that that makes the, expressions here kind of perfect for my foot size. I imagine if you have like a size 12 foot, they might feel kind of small, but, yeah, I don’t, I don’t have any real deals, significant complaints about these pedals. I think they’re neat.

if you like them, if they sound good to you for the, again, for what they cost right now, I buy them. I think they’re cool. No, of course our new ball would be happy with me saying that, but, I really mean it. So thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding. Once again, I’m Emily until next time. Goodbye.