Hello, I’d like to add some FX pedals to my synths, but:
1- I don’t want to spend lot’s of € (I prefer to use money to buy synths);
2- I don’t want to buy the usual known ones. I’d like to buy some “hidden gems”.
Do you guys have some suggestions? Thx!
Good route to take but there are an insane amount of pedals out there. What type of effects are you after?
Hidden gem, Boss RV5 reverb, the mod setting is lush! Really cheap second hand.
Fairfield Circuitry Shallow Water is pretty cool if you can find it cheap.
Any fx 
I just wanna know what’s out there! 
couple of good ones in my arsenal are the way huge pork loin (gentle drive + girth) and the DOD DFX9 (digital delay with freeze that can make loops real crunchy as well as do karplus/ringmod type sounds). russian big muff can make drums disgusting. tumnus is a cheap klon centaur clone that will make your guitar sound better. all the boss half-rack units are also cool as hell, especially the RPS-10 with its janky pitch tracking.
I like the audiothingies Doctor A, it packs a delay and a reverb which sound great to me, and the dry signal is getting out through an analog path so there’s no added latency to it, essential for percussive sounds - unlike my Eventide stomboxes which I adore, but work better as sends because of said latency they introduce. Not huge, but noticeable if plugged directly from the output of my nord drum for example.
Hudson Broadcast is just amazing.
EHX Cockfight is a fantastic cocked wah+fuzz, and is great value for money.
Eventide H9 does everything.
EHX deluxe memory man tap tempo. Fun.
Behringer pedals if you’re on a budget…I knew I needed a compressor/sustainer and a noise suppressor but the fact that the Boss versions cost upward of 80 bucks turned me off buying them at all. Got both Behringer versions on reverb for 40 bucks…Necessary but “unfun” purchases.
There are more fun Behringer purchases, however.
As someone who was trying to get that Mick Ronson sound (literally just Les Paul, Marshall, fuzz and a cocked wah) I wish I had known about this pedal at the time. I ended up buying a Behringer wah pedal which–while it sounds great–can’t be cocked. I also bought a fairly boutique fuzz that is good but I’m not sure it was worth the extra cash.
70 bucks for a cocked wah fuzz sounds like a very good deal.
Pedals are shit.
Get a Quadraverb.
Since there seems to be an ongoing race for boutique pedal to reach higher and higher prices, if I were looking at adding some effects on the cheap, I would go for pedals that fad-chasers are offloading on Reverb.com and the like. Maybe even look at modding some of the most common, cheaper pedals. There are tons of mods for the Boss DS-1 for example. Also, some old outdated digital reverbs and delays might have really bad algorithms for “normal” sounds, but maybe there is unique charm in that?
Amusingly, it does seem that if you have a simple off-the-shelf Boss pedal, you are somehow unique now, with everyone buying the same Strymon/Chase Bliss/Empress/etc. pedals.
Affordable but nice:
Expensive but nice:
Have a look at the Mooer stuff. Dirt cheap, Chinese made pedals, but damn good value for money. I have a Black Truck (which is a more expensive multi-FX) so I can attest to their quality. Also, I really love the TC-Electronics Third Dimension chorus. Less than 30 notes brand new. Really amazing for the money. Or the June-60 for stereo Roland chorus that looks like the real deal 
I second this. I paid £40 for their little Lo-fi machine bitcrusher pedal and it’s really very good if you like bitcrushing things.
Yep, I have a cheap little Mooer Shimverb mini pedal that sounds surprisingly good on a synth. It’s certainly not an Eventide shimmer but it’s very usable for that certain effect.
Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer on drum machines or just your kick.
Boss DC-2w is amazing for stereo width without an overly thick chorus sound. It’s basically the Dimension-D rack unit in a pedal. All analogue.
Meris Polymoon on basically anything.
I’ve not been at all convinced by that TC Juno chorus copy. Not from the demos I’ve heard, anyway. Not that it sounds bad, just that it doesn’t sound like the Juno chorus.
I’ve not tried it to be honest but chucked it in there because some people don’t like the mono-ness of the TC Third Dimension I mentioned. But it really made my SH-01A sound absolutely monstrous in unison and/or poly mode
Plus I have the ‘real deal’ in the form of a JU-06A. I love that noisy bastard of an effect
Do you know what has got a lovely chorus on it?
Quadraverb.
I just bought OTO machines Bim and Bam
They should be here end of this week
I will let you know how they sound