Update: I was able to give this pedal a true test drive last night at my Dad's shop (where volume can be had!) through both my Randall Thrasher 50 and a vintage Laney Supergroup 50w (rare session model). The Randall ran through a Mesa rectifier vertical 2x12 loaded with v30's and the Laney ran through a custom Orange-spec 2x12 loaded with a WGS Reaper and Reaper 55hz. No other pedals were used other than the Wonder Drive.
My first test was through the
clean channel on the Randall. With channel volume on full and half of the gain (think mild plexi breakup), this thing comes across as a TS from hell. I did not need to turn the dirt up past 1-2 o'clock. It's reaaaaally great. The tight and bite controls are really interesting and will take some fiddling. There's a ton of sounds in this pedal and with the controls being very interactive, it will take a bit of time to find my favorites, but so far they're all my favorites
Through the
gain channel of the Randall it is just wicked. The dirt knob provides a little added saturation but to be fair, the Thrasher put outs a ton of gain even on 1/2 like I had it set. I don't know that I would turn the dirt past 1/2 if already going in to a high gain amp - it simply becomes a "signal noise" control (at least with this amp). The tight and bite controls again have a tremendous effect on the character of the tone. I started with a clear, thunderous tone by setting the amp up with the treble at 10 o'clock, bass at 3 o'clock and middle at noon and the Wonder controls at dirt 12 o'clock, volume full, tight 12 o'clock, bite 8 o'clock. I could have left it there and never touched anything again. But alas, there are so many knobs and tones! I did not find a tone I disliked or one that was unusable. Death metal, to black metal, to modern metal, it's all there (and more) without touching the amp.
Through the "
bass" channel of the Laney SG (I did not test the "treble" channel, it's already obnoxiously bright) I was again blown away. For anyone not familiar, the Supergroup is a true plexi-killer. We started with everything full blast and the bass completely rolled off (a la Iommi and still a very fat tone) and the Wonder with volume on full and all knobs rolled off. THIS was a killer sound and something I was not expecting. To my ears, it sounded like the Wizard (range master copy) through the amp, but with a ton more gain and chunk. And when I say that, I mean to say you have a super group on full volume which is already a bit to handle, but then you turn the Wonder on and it becomes an out-of-control-but-in-the-best-way kind of amp. We had so much fun with this that I never touched the pedal after turning it on. I'm sure there are many more sounds to be had here but I was in love with it at first listen.
What I like best about this pedal in each scenario is that the punch provided by big tubes and power transformers was not lost. The sounds where capable of being very tight and percussive without losing any of that warmth and bass that normally fades away with, say, a tubescreamer. I guess a better way to say it, is that each amp/channel still felt like it had it's unique characteristics, just with a tiny devilish gnome running through the signal chain creating chaos.
This is not simply a "modern metal only" pedal. Anyone interested in tones on the scale of hard rock to black metal will be satisfied with what's coming out of this pedal. It's awesome. Great work PedalPCB!
