I've been on a quest for quite a while for a heavyish rock drive that works into a spanky clean amp.
I mostly play clean funky stuff, but often I need to punctuate something with a big rock riff, or switch to a rock solo sound.
I've tried lots and lots of pedals with varying degrees of success, but the one that has really floated my boat has been the vintage 90's Shredmaster. Being the GAS fiend that I am that hasn't stopped me from buying pedals of course so recently I've acquired both a Visual Sound Son of Hyde and a Marshall Jackhammer.
Why you may ask?
The Son of Hyde is rumoured to be a clone of the Shredmaster and the Jackhammer is the pedal that replaced it and often receives rave reviews. Both are smaller, considerably cheaper secondhand and known to be pretty reliable (which the Shredmaster isn't). Maybe one of these young upstarts can impress me enough to replace it on my board.
So first up I suppose I'd better explain what it is I actually like about the Shredmaster. Well despite it's name it's not really a very Shreddy pedal. The gain level is pretty tame by the standards of a modern rock oriented pedal let alone something targeted at metal fiends. It's a very badly named pedal all round as it came out in the middle of grunge and found favour with Radiohead, Supergrass, My Bloody Valentine and Rage Against The Machine.
It's not massively versatile from a gain perspective as below noon it really doesn't sound that great and seems to get quite woofy and muddy, but take it beyond that and you get a nice chunky rock distortion. It's not as overtly a distortion as a DS1 or a RAT, but it's not really an "amp in a can" in my book.
The bass control is pretty powerful and really gives you a lot of chunk on the low strings. I used it for a dep gig where I had to do Basketcase and it was perfect. If you turn it up too high it gets out of control pretty fast and cranked it's probably a good bedroom sound, but made my amp get farty at gig volume.
The treble control is usable, but doesn't have a huge sweep. It's quite a dark pedal so I expect a lot of people will have it pretty high along with the volume which is old school in that to get any decent level of boost it needs to be almost on full.
The contour control works backwards from a regular mid control and is where the magic happens. From memory I think it's voiced pretty similar to the one on the old Valvestates and goes from a 90's scoop to a rock rhythm sound to a nicely mid boosted lead sound that cuts really well.
So there you have it: big, expensive and not especially versatile, but what it does do sounds bloody fantastic.
I've already written loads so I'll do the comparison in my next post.
Comments
Do you have the battery door for the Shredmaster? If you do can you take photo of it and post it on the forum? My battery door is missing on mine (common occurance) and I wouldn't mind fashioning some kind of replacement. A photo of an original would be most useful.
Enjoying your review, it's good stuff. I must say that I rather like the Shredmaster with the gain low at about 3.
"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
I have a couple VS pedals, yes they're ugly but they're solid and reduce the chances of kicking the knobs. Interestingly the newer VS pedals have gone to a more conventional enclosure.
The older ones have a less good battery compartment that's tighter than a gnats fanny. And the bypass switch is quite simply the best. I want all of the visual sound.
Gimme a h2o.