sticky1138
Well-known member
This is supposed to be a blackface-in-a-box, but I went with the much cooler silverface aesthetic. And instead of a Princeton or Harvard Reverb, I named it after a superior university.
The finish is Tayda’s chromium. I bought one previously that arrived chipped out of the box (and got a refund), but I needed another one for this design and took a gamble. This one is much better. The shine is really nice and the pics don’t do it full justice. It’ll probably scratch quickly, but that doesn’t bother me.
The amp knobs are also from Tayda, but I’m not sure if I recommend them. They are compact and look great, but the threads on all four are misaligned with the numbers, so they are a half-step off when fully clockwise or counterclockwise. These goes to 10.5! I guess that’s a good thing if you need the extra 0.5 volume.
Tone-wise, I was a little underwhelmed at first. The pedal is kind of weird and thin sounding through a Marshall stack, not anywhere near a cranked Fender combo. Then I played it through my Blues Junior with the pedal’s bass dimed, bringing out that “flubby” (in a good way) low end breakup. There’s also no mid hump, which is a huge plus. It grew on me quite a bit. It preserves the amp’s natural sound, but with a lot more juice.
It’s an easy build and I recommend it. Probably in the top 25% of ODs I’ve built (and I’ve built a lot). I only do graphics for the ones I like enough to keep, and this one passes. It emulates the blackface sound well if used in the right setup, though it feels like cheating running it through a Fender combo. With any pedal marketed as an amp-in-a-box, don’t have the expectation that it will perform transformative miracles and you’ll be happy.
