DammitWordman, now I have to save my pennies up and figure out how to get that Blackstone into the house without SWMBO noticing! 
That is a pretty cool piece of kit, do you have one?
Yes, I have a Blackstone. Given my little Tweed Deluxe, which sounds crunchy at the volumes I play anyway, I have it on pretty much all the time.
The touch-responsiveness is standout and cool. Simply put: when I pick or strum the strings harder, it really is noticeably different. Also, the Volume knob is super responsive from about 7 to 10 on the dial. I ride it at around 7 for rhythm, and that extra bit when I go for a lead is really nice - more noisy and prone to feedback, in a good way.
Also, I palm mute a lot for rhythm work. I want that sound when I bring my palm down on the strings to get ready to play a chuggy rhythm - where it sounds like I am keeping a big noise under control. I can’t describe it unless a person has played it and knows it. You hear it in songs all the time - it’s that extra something that makes some chunked-out rock rhythms sound bigger and cooler. The Blackstone with the V set on about 7 and the Tone on about 5 for the Tele bridge pickup gets that sound really well.
Again, there are probably more dirt pedals out there than anything. I have heard great things about so many. This was one I kept hearing about right when I was realizing that while I love my first-generation Rat, it is good for one type of distortion only, and wasn’t as touch responsive. This Blackstone met both needs - done!
I’ll throw in another vote for the MXR carbon copy. Bought it as a gift for my girlfriend years ago and liked it so much I got one myself. I put it together with a distortion and chorus pedal for a nice goth-y, shoegaze-y sound a la Cocteau Twins.
You might try some Moen pedals as a super cheap option. You could get three pedals and still be under budget. I have the Pretty Dolly Delay and it would be useful for background layering of your sound, in Gilmour terms it fleshes out your lead sound but is not so good at the Run Like Hell type of thing. I haven’t gigged with my Moen pedals so can’t comment either way on their reliability other than to say that mine are all still working after close to 10 years. The boxes are solid, if a bit on the large size for some, but there is some noise when switching them on and off. As a home musician this doesn’t bother me, but it is the kind of thing that some purists wouldn’t put up with.
I agree completely with the others on the more expensive options. I have a Boss DD-3 and it has been a fantastic little pedal.
BTW a cool Gilmour trick is to plug your wah in backwards (guitar to the wah’s output, and wah’s input to the amp.) You get those trippy seagull sounds from the middle section of Echoes by playing with the volume and tone controls. It only seems to work with single coil pickups though.
Thanks RP, I’ll try that out!
Squee! Amazon Prime is the cat’s ass! I arrived home last night to a steady downpour of rain and a pretty brown box on my doorstep! Tore my new TC Flashback Delay out of the box and plugged in to my pedalboard. The signal path as it stands right now is:
Tele->Vox Wah->Boss DS-1-> TC Delay->Amp.
First impressions:
Quiet. Despite the dire warnings I read online about mixing analog and digital pedals on the same power supply, the bypass on thisis fantastic and dead quiet. Click it on and it’s ready to rock.
This version of the pedal comes with a 7 second looper, which works like a charm. I looped a 12 br blues lick and improv-ed off it. I can’t wait to play with this feature more. I’m also really psyched about the tape delay and analog delay settings. I haven’t played with the Toneprint app or downloading any custom files yet but that’s coming. So far, I am really impressed with it, and it really responds well to attack, especially in conjunction with a bit of fuzz off the DS-1 and overdrive on the amp! Now I just have to play around with it a whole lot more and figure out what the eigth note switch is for and the dip switches in the battery case as the “manual” says nothing about them…
Congrats swampy! Sounds fun. Play a little She Sells Sanctuary for me.