Progressive review - Palisades

samzadgan

...and how accurate is the PGS demo???

I have a deal if I want it from a guy in the US which will get me the Palisades for a really good price after FX...but not sure i need it.

At the moment my drive pedals are an OCD, Pharaoh (Fuzz) and an Quantum Mystic (Distortion with hints of fuzz). 

If the Palisades was purely a TS pedal I would not be interested. But watching the PGS demo...its alludes to the fact that Gain 1 is TS OD with option of adding more lowend to, Gain 2 can get into Fuzzy Distortion territory and with the Boost it introduces a lot more low end and more fuzz into the mix...thats almost my 3 pedals in one...albeit tonally a bit different...but could be cool.

somebody needs to talk me out of it!

impmann

No can do, Bud... I'm in the same boat.

I have a pathological hatred of Tubescreamers and all the utter bollocks that are spoken about them... but the Palisades sounds way cool in Andy's demo. But to be fair, he does tend to make everything sound cool...

If my other EQD experiences are anything to go by, it will be brilliant - I'm a big fan of their other stuff.

Bellycaster

I just watched the demo, I can't talk you out of it I'm afraid. It's awesome, so many options and the price is £212.74 from Rock Gear, so if you can get one significantly cheaper with your deal, i'd be fumbling for my wallet. You might regret not getting one.

Sorry ;-)

samzadgan

hmmm...yeah...the deal i can get it at almost half the price...and i do love everything EQD do...if i was ever going to put together a one brand pedalboard, it would be EQD

i did pull the trigger on the deal...i'll report back when i get it.

Bellycaster

samzadgan said:

hmmm...yeah...the deal i can get it at almost half the price...and i do love everything EQD do...if i was ever going to put together a one brand pedalboard, it would be EQD

i did pull the trigger on the deal...i'll report back when i get it.

That's the spirit, nice one.

samzadgan

the pedal arrived!

but have to wait a few hours to play it...the waiting game begins!

tone1

That Andy from PGS makes everything sound ace!

Lew

:-D

samzadgan

So I got around to playing around with the Palisades last night...and My Oh My!!!

Firstly, the Bandwidth and Voice have the most power over the tone that comes out of this pedal, and then the Tone and the switches are to fine tune the sound you're getting out of it.

The one drawback is that the Gain B and the Boost are not independent...in fact, if you don't Activate the pedal the other two are bypassed...which also means the Buffer switch is bypassed. 

But enough of the "issues" as I completely overcame them when I worked out how i will be using this pedal...It's always on!

The Gain A channel can go from relatively clean to pretty dirty depending on the bandwidth you use but with you can easily roll off the volume on the guitar to get very clean tones.

Gain B channel adds a lot more gain, but Gain A has to be activated for this to work, but the Gain A doesn't impact the amount of distortion. So it doesn't sound to me that it stacks, they work independently as two different channels. 

The Boost is really interesting...it can boost volume if you set it that way, but you can also set it to unity, in that it doesn't add any volume, but it adds fatness to the sound...it just beefs up the bottom end and makes it more fuzzy.

The EQ section of this pedal is amazing, there are so many different variations with the rotary switches and the tone that impacts everything on the pedal. It takes a little time to get to terms with it all, but when you do its really great.

So for my experience and my settings...I play on relatively thick strings (12-60) and tuned to B or C...so for me the extremes of having Bandwidth on full and Voice on full was way too much bottom end and it just sounded muffled and dead. However, putting the Voice on about 2 or 3 and the Bandwidth on 4 I get the perfect sound with the tone at 3 o'clock, the buffer "ON" and Brightness "OFF".

This pedal is an always "ON" pedal for me I think...the Gain A is on about 9 o'clock and when I play clean, which is almost always on the neck pickup, I have the volume dropped down to a nice clean. I can switch to the bridge for slight OD sound, and activate the Boost for a really nice Rock OD sound. Gain B makes this a very Fuzzy Distortion, almost more fuzz than distortion, and really gritty...finally hitting the Boost takes it into my perfect Rhythm tone...thick, heavily distorted and fuzzy, not tight at all...yet still maintaining clarity.  

samzadgan

So its been over a week now with the pedal.

The settings I had it on, I have now settled on it and don't really change anything. 

The other night i played a few hours at rehearsals, and this pedal keeps impressing me more. I didn't use the boost at all just Gain A on all the time and used a volume on the guitar to clean it up and Gain B to get my heavy tone. I had the gain maxed on Gain B, but at rehearsal's i took it down to about 9 o'clock, and it seemed to actually sound fuller and thicker.

I need to play it high volumes, but so far so good.

Paul_C

I want one of these now too!