G
Good concept - lacking implementation
I would split my review to two parts, the drive/distortion and the EQ.
The drive starts to kick in around 9oclock and has a rather compressed character. It is NOT a smooth distortion sound, but more like an organic, interesting one. It resembles power amp saturation, that rectangular krrrrrr above the note. I think the point of this is to push an already distorted (smooth) amp into a more interesting (solo) sound. When you max it out, it won't get any more harmonic (nor a lot more distorted, for that matter) it just adds more sonic chaos and that power amp like saturation turns into an "amp's last minutes" kind of sound. All that so compressed actually that the single coil noise just emerges at the very end of a decaying note, indicating a heavy (imaginary) compression slope.
The EQ is not the most versatile either. The slides are not marked for frequency, bummer. But the drive sound is already so dark to begin with that you wont get a flat response when the sliders are at 0. Let me list the slider settings I needed to apply to get it as flat as possible:
-7 /-4 / -1 / 1 / 4 / 7 (max/min being 10/-10) . Much like a diagonal treble boost, and that the flat response.
I have the feeling that you have no more than 8-9dB span on these sliders, and the highest band is an interesting one, boosting also the frequencies of the preceding sliders into a rather ugly clipping distortion.
There is one knob over that I haven't mentioned yet. The volume knob. It is unity gain around 3-4oclock, with veeery little boost available when maxed.
The concept is 9/10, the implementation 3/10. I wont keep it, but YMMV, especially if you use it in front of other drive pedals. But even there you may be better off with the Boss GE7, that is remarkably noiseless since a silent redesign that moved the production to Malaysia in 2020.
The drive starts to kick in around 9oclock and has a rather compressed character. It is NOT a smooth distortion sound, but more like an organic, interesting one. It resembles power amp saturation, that rectangular krrrrrr above the note. I think the point of this is to push an already distorted (smooth) amp into a more interesting (solo) sound. When you max it out, it won't get any more harmonic (nor a lot more distorted, for that matter) it just adds more sonic chaos and that power amp like saturation turns into an "amp's last minutes" kind of sound. All that so compressed actually that the single coil noise just emerges at the very end of a decaying note, indicating a heavy (imaginary) compression slope.
The EQ is not the most versatile either. The slides are not marked for frequency, bummer. But the drive sound is already so dark to begin with that you wont get a flat response when the sliders are at 0. Let me list the slider settings I needed to apply to get it as flat as possible:
-7 /-4 / -1 / 1 / 4 / 7 (max/min being 10/-10) . Much like a diagonal treble boost, and that the flat response.
I have the feeling that you have no more than 8-9dB span on these sliders, and the highest band is an interesting one, boosting also the frequencies of the preceding sliders into a rather ugly clipping distortion.
There is one knob over that I haven't mentioned yet. The volume knob. It is unity gain around 3-4oclock, with veeery little boost available when maxed.
The concept is 9/10, the implementation 3/10. I wont keep it, but YMMV, especially if you use it in front of other drive pedals. But even there you may be better off with the Boss GE7, that is remarkably noiseless since a silent redesign that moved the production to Malaysia in 2020.
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