Catalinbread Formula 55

JohnPerry

anyone tried one of these yet? Interested in hearing a verdict. I've had the Formula 5 and the 5f6 but the new one looks a more convincing tweed flavour

JohnPerry

Yeah, i have. Terrific thread idea btw, great to hear from you.

I bought one.

For the many of you who i know will care, this is a very good tweed OD for Neil Youngish ragged tones. But i returned it for two reasons. One is that it is not as good as the magnificent Bearfoot SYOD3 which can sound similar but through my J20 sounds more authentically like the amp flat out.

The other reason is there is too much volume boost on tap for home use. By which I mean that if you turn up the gain enough for nice tweedy breakup you have to have the volume incredibly low to get anywhere near unity and that does the pedal no favours...like most, it only sounds decent when the volume is up a fair way. If i was gigging it would work, albeit i still prefer the bearfoot.

hope this helps John. PM if you need anything

Marshall

..and so...a year + later, what does John think now? Still enjoying his SYOD3 or is there a new kid on the block? 

"...For the many of you who i know will care.."  Like me

Funkfingers

JohnPerry said:

if you turn up the gain ... the volume is up a fair way.

My, my. 

fields5069

Keep on rockin'.

JohnPerry

Exactly.

Rust never sleeps, unlike my kids. 

I still love this SYOD3. Almost offloaded it recently but held off because I had to fix a loose connection and am glad I didn't sell it now because still nothing else quite nails the cranked 5e3 tone as well for me. Not even the Revival Drive I now have, which is a magnificent simulation of many amps but not a Tweed Deluxe. It can do a stellar Keef-style Tweed Twin but I can't quite get the Deluxe out of it.

And the Bearfoot doesn't output immense volume to deliver its ragged overdrive 

Grunfeld

A little while back I was faffing about with ODs again and swapped out a Nobels OD-1 which I'd been using for years for the Formula 55.

Absolutely loving it for gigging, dunno what it's like for home use.

The thing is, I don't really think you need to bother about unity setting because it's on all the time.  If I want to clean up then I use the guitar's volume.  The pedal does this extremely well.  I have it going into an Orange CR-120 head set clean and flat -- a basic make-louder box.  

I've never owned a tweed so I'm not a connoisseur of that sound but the pedal is clearly in that ball park.  Doesn't really matter though because it's such a great sound in its own right.

noisepolluter

I quite fancy trying one of these. It seems very similar to a Liquid Sunshine mk iii but with a presence control and a low gain mode, both of which I could see myself finding useful