ahpook Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 (edited) ok so after trying out a number of pedals in a shop on denmark street, london, i thought i'd give this one a whirl. the pedal's basically two things - a clean boost (up to +20dB) and an overdrive with gain, tone and volume controls. first the good stuff...the boost section is excellent - very clean sounding and it drives my ampeg pre-amp superbly...just adding a bit of grind and bite to the sound. yes, there's noise there if you crank it all the way up to 20 (!!), but that's just what you'd expect. now...the overdrive....not so good. it sounded nice in the shop, through a smallish amp, but through my rig it's just ugly sounding at anything over 1/3 gain...past this you start to get a nasty clipping sound that reminded me of putting too much signal into a PC soundcard...horrid and totally unmusical. the tone control didn't help much in taming this either. at very high gain levels it get more musical (less ugly clipping) but then i don't need a high gain pedal...i've a few of those already. so i returned it to the shop, and they were more than happy for me to swicth it for the MC-401, which is basically the boost section only. got a credit note for the balance. 10/10 for the boost, 3/10 for the overdrive Edited August 28, 2007 by ahpook Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 [quote name='ahpook' post='51796' date='Aug 28 2007, 04:02 PM']ok so after trying out a number of pedals in a shop on denmark street, london, i thought i'd give this one a whirl. the pedals basically two things - a clean boost (up to +20dB) and an overdrive with gain, tone and volume controls. first the good stuff...the boost section is excellent - very clean sounding and it drives my ampeg pre-amp superbly...just adding a bit of grind and bite to the sound. yes, there's noise there if you crank it all the way up to 20 (!!), but that's just what you'd expect. now...the overdrive....not so good. it sounded nice in the shop, through a smallish amp, but through my rig it's just ugly sounding at anything over 1/3 gain...past this you start to get a nasty clipping sound that reminded me of putting too much signal into a PC soundcard...horrid and totally unmusical. the tone control didn't help much in taming this either. at very high gain levels it get more musical (less ugly clipping) but then i don't need a high gain pedal...i've a few of those already. so i returned it to the shop, and they were more than happy for me to swicth it for the MC-401, which is basically the boost section only. got a credit note for the balance. 10/10 for the boost, 3/10 for the overdrive[/quote] active bass? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahpook Posted August 28, 2007 Author Share Posted August 28, 2007 [quote name='BassManKev' post='51836' date='Aug 28 2007, 05:05 PM']active bass?[/quote] i wondered about that...i tried my (active) fender 'cowpoke' bass, a passive jazz and a fender vi ...and also my telecaster guitar - same nasty clipping. it's fine if you want a full-bore overdrive sound, but not the 'on the egde' tones. shame, but hats off to the guys in chris chandler guitars on denmark street for providing a no-hassle exchange. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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