MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
- 5.00 star(s)
Well to be totally honest, this whole PRS pedals thing has been a bit of a joke to me and I haven’t really taken it too seriously. I ordered the board and built it more for the novelty factor and curiosity than anything else. I didn’t even watch any demos of it until today after i had finished the pedal. (watched the Studio Rats review).
Imagine my surprise when I fired it up and found that it’s freaking legit!
Very very nice sounding overdrive. Definitely falls in the “transparent drive” camp and you can get some “Timmy-ish” sounds out of it but it goes well beyond that into much higher gain territory.
It‘s also one of those drives that really does sound good at both ends of the spectrum, as a low gain drive, edge of break up kind of stuff to pretty high gain. I’d say the high side of medium gain.
It was reminding me of another overdrive I had recently built and took a minute to remember which one.
It was the EQD Talons (Chela Overdive). That drive also is one of few that really sound good throughout the whole gain range. There’s definitely some similarities between these two pedals although they use different clipping mechanisms. But same gain range and overall vibe.
The Mystery Meat also can act like a Klon-style clean boost with the gain turned all the way off.
But beyond that this is far from a Klon. I feel like it’s really not unique in its sound but an amalgamation of best features of a couple different popular drives. Which of course leads to its flexibility. I bit of a swiss army knife overdrive and I can see different players putting them to use in very different use cases.
There’s the standard complement of vol,gain and tone knobs but there’s a fifth “Voice” control.
Not completely sure what it does without a schematic but it sounds a bit like a presence control.
I‘m definitely digging this pedal and it’s probably going to live on my desk for a while as i figure out what all it can do. Color me impressed….good on Paul.
This is one of the last of my current batch of Tayda powder coated 125b enclosures. I plan to do mostly rattle can enclosures for a while. Yes, I realize the knobs don’t match but I’m back in the situation where I need to use up some odd knobs…..plus there’s a method to the color scheme madness…... (cream for level/gain, blue for treble/bass, and red for Voice.)
For the Ge diodes I used a 1N270 as called for, and the ITT Red bands in place of the 1N34a’s. They all measured very closely around 340 on my tester. (The ITT Red band diodes are my favorite 1n34a substitute. They sound great!)
There were some real oddball resistor values that i pretty much ignored and went with the next closest value I had. except for the 137kr which i teepeed with some 1/8 watt 68ks.
Moderately busy build, but still went very smooth with no issues.
Imagine my surprise when I fired it up and found that it’s freaking legit!
Very very nice sounding overdrive. Definitely falls in the “transparent drive” camp and you can get some “Timmy-ish” sounds out of it but it goes well beyond that into much higher gain territory.
It‘s also one of those drives that really does sound good at both ends of the spectrum, as a low gain drive, edge of break up kind of stuff to pretty high gain. I’d say the high side of medium gain.
It was reminding me of another overdrive I had recently built and took a minute to remember which one.
It was the EQD Talons (Chela Overdive). That drive also is one of few that really sound good throughout the whole gain range. There’s definitely some similarities between these two pedals although they use different clipping mechanisms. But same gain range and overall vibe.
The Mystery Meat also can act like a Klon-style clean boost with the gain turned all the way off.
But beyond that this is far from a Klon. I feel like it’s really not unique in its sound but an amalgamation of best features of a couple different popular drives. Which of course leads to its flexibility. I bit of a swiss army knife overdrive and I can see different players putting them to use in very different use cases.
There’s the standard complement of vol,gain and tone knobs but there’s a fifth “Voice” control.
Not completely sure what it does without a schematic but it sounds a bit like a presence control.
I‘m definitely digging this pedal and it’s probably going to live on my desk for a while as i figure out what all it can do. Color me impressed….good on Paul.
This is one of the last of my current batch of Tayda powder coated 125b enclosures. I plan to do mostly rattle can enclosures for a while. Yes, I realize the knobs don’t match but I’m back in the situation where I need to use up some odd knobs…..plus there’s a method to the color scheme madness…... (cream for level/gain, blue for treble/bass, and red for Voice.)
For the Ge diodes I used a 1N270 as called for, and the ITT Red bands in place of the 1N34a’s. They all measured very closely around 340 on my tester. (The ITT Red band diodes are my favorite 1n34a substitute. They sound great!)
There were some real oddball resistor values that i pretty much ignored and went with the next closest value I had. except for the 137kr which i teepeed with some 1/8 watt 68ks.
Moderately busy build, but still went very smooth with no issues.