Vs son of Hyde thoughts

ThePrettyDamned

Owned this for a while now, and I still love it.

When it arrived, @photek had set the internal bass trim pot to minimum (same sound as old pedals) and turned the noise gate off. I left it like this and was very happy at the low and mid gained sounds - jtm to jcm was well covered, very ampy and had a very nice open quality to the sound. No fuzziness, just a clear, brilliantly voiced pedal.

Yesterday, I opened it up and increased the bass trim pot a bit - it still sits below half, but it's gone from none to maybe 1/3 or so. I turned the gate on, and didn't notice much difference at higher gain settings, but lower gain sounds had an odd ending to the notes - they bleed out fine, but when you mute them yourself you could hear the gate. So high gain, good but not really needed, lower gain not needed and bad.

Anyway, the pedal now has a touch more gain on tap, and a fatter sound. It's now got enough gain for pretty modern metal, without being boosted. Still has a wonderful open sound, but with the extra bass it seems to have gained a touch of level (already loads on tap) and gain. Cleans up better, too, though not great (more on that later).

It's such a winner. I almost can't believe a pedal can have this many useful sounds in it! It doesn't clean up brilliantly - it loses volume before gain, and muddies up quite a lot. But if it's one song to another just tweak the gain down with no need to change the mid or treble settings. It really sounds great across the whole range.

I don't need the Bright switch. But it works, if you're into that.

Bypass is brilliant, the buffer is as good as they get as far as I'm concerned - sounds the same as plugging straight into the amp. Apparently the soft switch is pretty near invincible so I'm hoping for insane reliability.

Loves humbuckers and single coils, too.

The only thing it doesn't do well is mega saturation and clean up. It has great picking dynamics at Mid gain settings, but rolling off the volume just makes things muddy. Picking gently or using fingers, though, gives a cleaner sound with good tone. Odd?

monquixote

They are brilliant pedals. 

It's essentially a Shredmaster clone. 

Alot of people use them with bass trimmer on zero, but I think they are better with it up a bit, but certainly less than half or they get really farty (like a real Shred).

The bright switch turns off a filter cap which is the secret to it working with with bright amps so definitelybest to keep it off.

A Fender Twin + Shredmaster is the sound of quite a significant amount of Radiohead. They work really well with other drives stacked into them.

Dave_Mc

Nice review.

I have the joyo shredmaster clone(ish) and it sounds pretty good, but it's one of those pedals where I think, "That sounds good but I dunno what to use it for!" )

ThePrettyDamned

Mate, this is not like that.

Didn't realise it was a shred master clone.

For anyone interested, it's all full size components and caps and shit, not smd, and the pcb's look pretty hefty.

Forgot to check pots and jacks, I'll have a look if anyone is interested. However, based on what I saw I don't think it could be much better built than it is, though I'll double check in the morning. Nice one, visual sound.

mike_l

@ThePrettyDamned If you want to try it against a Shredmaster, I'll loan you mine over a weekend.

monquixote

ThePrettyDamned said:

Didn't realise it was a shred master clone.

I've ABed them to confirm and they sound very similar indeed with the main differences being:

The mid pot works the other way around

The bright switch (which is same as shredmaster in the off position)

The Visual sound fancy buffer

I think the Visual Sound had more level 

The crappy noise gate (which should be switched off!)

The VIsual Sound didn't get quite as muffly as you turned the wick down (the Shredmaster is a bit unusable at less that 11 o'clock on the gain)

The Visual sound was a slightly rawer and in your face while the shredmaster was slightly smoother at the top though this may be because the shredmaster was old and had perhaps changed over time.

ThePrettyDamned

I now concur about the noise gate. It's okay, for heavy rhythm, but it's starting to annoy me by cutting in and out. I think it should be an outside switch, because with the gain right up into mega heavy, it's useful for stop start stuff, but it won't do lead playing!

Dave_Mc

^ Yeah I can't stand internal switches. I can barely be bothered to tweak external switches, let alone the internal ones. Plus it's very hard to get exactly right (if they're variable), you tend to get "close enough" and leave it.

^^ Yeah I think the hyde does have the rep of being a shredmaster clone (at least "ish"). I think that's been confirmed ok.