Re: PowerStage 700 Now Shipping!
Here is a recent review:
So, I used the PowerStage and the Palladium at rehearsal the other night. Honestly, sounds amazing. I'm not even joking when I say it sounds even better than I'd anticipated. Vito is currently running a Peavey 6505+ into a Mesa 4x12 and tends to be pretty heavy and loud. My SD rig had no problems matching that, and I was running the volume somewhere between 9 o clock and 10 o clock, so I didn't even have to crank it up that much. Very powerful, and very clear! Even with only spending about half an hour fiddling with the Palladium I managed to dial in a tone I'd be happy to gig out with right now. It blended SO ****ing well with Vito's tone, I was stunned. Funnily enough, he was pretty stunned too. He was like, "Oh ****, I'm gonna have to get that PowerStage now too." Haha I told him you'd said he was gonna be converted! Can't wait to do the shows next month so I can give this a proper whirl onstage.
Here's the funny thing.......so I know many people's reactions will be, "Yeah but it's not a tube head, it's not gonna sound as good as tubes", etc. And the thing is, to some degree of course they're right, it doesn't sound exactly like a tube head. But the weird thing is that I really LIKE the differences it has from a tube head. I mean, the Palladium + PowerStage gives me all the crunch and tone and sustain I get from my tube heads, but it's so ****ing CLEAN, in a really positive way, that's something I do not get from my tube head. The Duncan rig has no ****ing hiss, no unwanted noise. Loads of head room. And I can turn this thing up very loud, and dial in this ****ing super aggressive tone, and even when I've got the Forza going along with the Palladium, I have no issues trying to control it. Whereas when I kick on my Forza with the dirty channel on my tube amp, I wind up fighting against it a bit too much because it just gets so noisy and difficult to control, unless I engage a noise reduction pedal (which are useful but I find really affects my tone too much). I wish you could've been at rehearsal with us and heard how ****ing good it sounded. I walked out with a grin on my face at the end because I was very satisfied with the results. I plan on spending more time with it to dial it in even further to my liking. curious to see what further possibilities it presents.
You'd laugh too because just for the **** of it I was messing around with the Palladium and managed to dial in this awesome 1991 Swedish Death Metal tone that was just gnarly, haha. I kept playing old Entombed and Dismember riffs and it sounded almost exactly like their tone but better. It's really impressive how versatile that pedal is. If I get a chance just for fun I'll try to record some of me ****ing around getting those different tones like that for you to hear.
Larry Roberts
Novembers Doom