BurntFingers
Well-known member
It's a clone of the Friedman BE:OD. Everything worked first time (I think) but I did notice something - the LEDs on the inside. There's 4 of them used as clipping diodes and when I strum only 2 of the 4 light up. I'm not sure if that's the way it is, or if they're not as bright as the others so I can't see them in the daytime but there we are.
So. There's too much gain with this pedal. And too much volume. The bass is more like sub-bass, so you feel this rumble rather than it fattening the sound. The treble is rather toppy too and quickly gets shrill. Not to say it's a bad pedal, there's some good well-rounded sounds available but, after a little play, it does feel like maybe 70% of it isn't hugely useful to me but that 30% is pretty cool. Since I play a Tremoverb I'll keep this around for studio use when a different flavour of gain is required as I think this will work really well sitting on top of the Mesa sound.
It's better as a standalone unit, like another amp channel that it would be for boost purposes and I think it'd be great on an ampless board with a Quilter or Magnum where you needed some growly sounds. It does play very very nicely with wahs too.
And here's the fun stuff:
The resistors in the bottom right started falling out as I had the board upside down and got soldered in that way. No matter, it's just not as neat as neat can be but no metal is touching and all is well.
A brilliant PCB as always. It took a lot of crap today and still worked, testament to whoever is cranking these boards out. They're really nice to work with.
