Okay, spent a couple of hours with this bad boy tonight. I had it in from on my Brenna 40 prototype. (2x5881, 5U4, blackface tone) Single 12 cannabis rex speaker.
Guitar was my Strat with traditional single coils.
Build quality is first rate as with the other SD pedals I own. Built like the proverbial tank. Nice rubber pad thing on the bottom so it won't slip around. Three knobs, volume, gain and a 6 position tone knob labeled Rumble.
Hmm... the name Rumble is oft used when someone is referring to that sweet singing lead tone of the old Dumble amps. I won't make that comparison here, but I was able to dial in some very sweet singing leads.... you make the call.
The Rumble control is basically a low frequency roll off. It doesn't have as much to do with that singing lead tone I refer to above. That has more to do with the gain knob. But, this control nicely adds in just the right amount of low end. I do the same thing with the EF86 channel of my Dierdre 30 amp. It's a tone shaper if you will.
Does this pedal color your tone? Sure. It sounds great. I'm not a big distortion pedal guy, but I liked this one. In fact, I like it a bit more than the twin tube.
Evan and crew wrote a nice manual. They give suggested settings on how to dial in several basic tones. That's a nice touch when manufacturers do that. Oh yeah, unlike some pedals I've bought in the past, this pedal comes with a battery. I can't figure out why someone would sell pedals that cost $100-350 and not include a cheap 9v battery. :smack:
So, where will I personally use this? Well, I'm a "play at home" guy at this point. There are times when I want that killer cranked amp tone when I can't play loud or just want to not make my tinnitus worse. This pedal sounds full and rich at all volumes. So, for me it'll be a lot of low volume playing. I did crank the crap out of it though and it holds up quite nice when the amp is cranked and adds some power tube distortion to the way the pedal is driving the preamp. Nice job guys.
Oh yeah, I got serial number 004. Very cool.
