Re: Distortion Quest
Definitely the G2D Morpheus
The sound samples are a little too scooped for my liking (I put more mids in there) but here's the best description I've read of it (from Harmony Central):
"Guitars I use are: Tom Anderson Drop Top with H/S/S Anderson pickups, and a Gibson Les Paul Classic with 500T in Bridge, and 496R in the neck.
My amp is a custom designed one called the Cruiser, primarily setup as a clean type amp to work well with stompboxes. 45-watts running into a cabinet equipped with a Vintage 30 and a Vintage 10.
This pedal is a great one to come close to emulating a Mesa Boogie Rectifier tone with a bit of the Marshall smoothness around the edges of the distortion. This pedal has 3 times the gain amount of the G2D Custom/Standard Overdrive on the "Red" side (check out the reviews on that one as well). The tone control is strictly a mid-cut or mid-boost, does nothing with the highs and lows. The lows from this pedal are set at a perfect frequency to get that heavy Mesa chunk, and the highs have a nice vocal, airy quality to them. I own their Cream Tone and their Standard, and love this one equally as well. It stood up well against a Mesa Single Rectifier a friend of mine plays through, and I could get that old Santana type of lead tone using the Paul on the neck pickup very nicely. The main difference between this pedal and a Mesa amp may be a little in the amount of "hair" around the distortion, the amp has a bit more, but that's where the pedal's Marshall quality seems to smooth it out nicely.
The competition for this pedal was my Tonebone Hot British which covers a lot of sonic territory and is as smooth and beefy as you can get. It is totally voiced for High Gain Marshall, and I wanted another over the top distortion with a Boogieish voicing, the guys customized this one nicely and it did not disappoint me when I gave it an acid test 1 day after receiving it. You can hear your guitar ringing out through all the gain, which gives you your own sound and tone.
The gate feature on the pedal is very smooth, and you can take it completly out by turning it counterclockwise, or you can use it to give yourself a total staccato feel for playing tunes like Metallica "One"."
