I seem to have accidentally acquired one of these…
It sounds great. Really great.
It's the first and only solid-state overdrive pedal I have ever tried that doesn't have that irritating slightly separated dirt-on-top-of-the-clean-sound effect when it's almost clean and going into a clean amp.
It doesn't sound *exactly* like valve amp overdrive - it's just a very natural but powerful overdriven sound, but most importantly it's very responsive and musical-sounding. It has less gain than I was expecting too, or maybe that's part of it… it's so dynamic that you can clean it up to a large extent just by playing quietly, even with the gain maxed.
There's no need for me to post a demo because the four clips on Mesa's site are very accurate and played by much better players than I will ever be!
I now wonder how long it will be before Mesa makes an all-solid-state amp - they've been doing solid-state power-section bass amps for some time, their graphic EQ has always been solid state (and is now available in a pedal too), and if you put two (or all four!) of these new pedal circuits plus the GEQ and a solid-state power amp in a box, you'd have quite an amp…
Forgot to say, I opened it up to see if I could find the capacitor
, but it's hard to work out what's going on because the PCB is trace-side-up. I will investigate further later.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Comments
Any idea if it's based on anything else? I think some of the other new Mesa pedals are (pretty heftily modded, to be fair) TSes.
Someone who agrees!
I was slated on the old place when I asked if od pedals have clean signal mixed in, because I could hear on my tubescreamer, boss sd-1 and route 66 was like a gainy sound on top of clean (it was in reference to bass players wanting a clean blend). I was told my pedals might be broken! It really does sound like that.
I'm glad I'm not just mad. Glad you're stoked with the pedal, too!
The mxr dist iii and Marshall guvnor didn't have that problem quite so much, though they were set for higher gain than the others.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
As ICBM has said a dirty pedal into a clean amp retains some character, and cleanliness of the clean amp with the dirt piled on top of it.
I've heard this with every pedal I've tried, some more than others, which is one of the reasons I mostly used the amp for dirt for a long time....
Ringleader of the Cambridge cartel, pedal champ and king of the dirt boxes (down to 21)
Especially when spanking the strings.
On the distortion box (power grid) it's not there at all - but that has its own issues, such as graininess and weird artefacts (I like the grainiess and as I use it for fun shred solo the gain is high enough there are not audible artefacts).
So maybe a more od pedal thing that dist.
Is the switch moddable on the flux drive? Seems odd for mesa to overlook something like that (I'm replacing my route 66 because the mechanical switches are beginning to fail and they're pcb mounted I think).
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Is what you're saying about dirt boxes' distortion sounding almost "on top" of the clean tone similar to what I say when I say the sustain of them isn't quite natural? It seems to me like they sustain for a while and then the sustain just sort of drops away completely (whereas with tubes it decays more naturally)- maybe we're talking about the same thing in different ways, or maybe that's something separate. ) Either way, I agree with you that dirt boxes (most I've tried, anyway) don't quite "feel" right when compared to tube distortion (even preamp tube distortion, I don't use power tube distortion that much), and I agree that they feel much better (though still not quite as good as tube) when run into a dirty tube amp.
Yeah I think tha'ts the problem- I agree with what you're saying about the problems with TBP, but at the same time I don't think you can blame people for thinking buffers etc. suck when most of the biggest manufacturers of buffered pedals have implemented them in such a way that they, er, do. ) Unless you're able to make the things yourself (and most aren't, myself included, my meager electronics knowledge is all theoretical), how something should work in theory isn't much use, it's how it's implemented in practice by the manufacturers which matters.
That's funny- I'd have said the OD pedals I've tried sound and feel more natural than most distortions I've tried. I dunno whether that's the way I set them, or just my own prejudice (since I'm more a higher gain player my ear is maybe more attuned to that kind of sound so I'm fussier with it).