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wrgkmc « American Sound Pedal »
Published on 08/21/17 at 14:58
Value For Money :
Excellent
Audience:
Anyone
This is a preamp/DI pedal, not your typical overdrive pedal. Its designed to be a substitute for the front end of a guitar amp or used as a DI box. It can be used live through a guitar amp or through a PA or for direct recording.
The key to making it work well involves gain staging. If your guitar amp has an effects loop, that's the best place for it with any reverb or echo after.
If your amp doesn't have an effects loop and you need to run it before the amp then running the amp clean and having the pedal last in your effect chain (or before your reverb/echo pedals) is best.
If you use switchable channels and channel gain, this pedal probably wont work well. This pedals takes the place of a clean or gain channel (or adds that gain channel.
For recording direct it can do OK. It has speaker emulation which sounds pretty good but it can sound allot better if you have some time based effects like echo or reverb after and an additional gain before. Again, this pedal acts like the front end of an amp without a power amp. If you place reverb/echo after you can create the sounds of the amp playing in a room and it wont sound so dry. you can dial up a tight sound you'd expect to get playing directly into an amp then use any of your favorite drive/compression pedals before it.
This pedal does a fair job overall. I own many others that do similar jobs including many rack preamps and various gear for recording direct. Recording is about having a variety or sounds/tones. If this was the only box I had - I could do some things well and not so well for others. I can dial up a few good Fender tones which is all I expect to get from it.
If I need other tones I use other boxes for that purpose. What this box does it does well but its not a solution to all needs, (no one unit ever is) It works well with the other AC tone I have. I may eventually complete the suite with the California and British but I already have those sounds well covered, including the actual amps. In fact I do own a couple of vintage fender tube amps so my main purpose wasn't to clone those sounds, just make it easier to capture those tones recording or make it easier to get a Fender sound from a Marshall, Sunn, Ampeg etc.
The key to making it work well involves gain staging. If your guitar amp has an effects loop, that's the best place for it with any reverb or echo after.
If your amp doesn't have an effects loop and you need to run it before the amp then running the amp clean and having the pedal last in your effect chain (or before your reverb/echo pedals) is best.
If you use switchable channels and channel gain, this pedal probably wont work well. This pedals takes the place of a clean or gain channel (or adds that gain channel.
For recording direct it can do OK. It has speaker emulation which sounds pretty good but it can sound allot better if you have some time based effects like echo or reverb after and an additional gain before. Again, this pedal acts like the front end of an amp without a power amp. If you place reverb/echo after you can create the sounds of the amp playing in a room and it wont sound so dry. you can dial up a tight sound you'd expect to get playing directly into an amp then use any of your favorite drive/compression pedals before it.
This pedal does a fair job overall. I own many others that do similar jobs including many rack preamps and various gear for recording direct. Recording is about having a variety or sounds/tones. If this was the only box I had - I could do some things well and not so well for others. I can dial up a few good Fender tones which is all I expect to get from it.
If I need other tones I use other boxes for that purpose. What this box does it does well but its not a solution to all needs, (no one unit ever is) It works well with the other AC tone I have. I may eventually complete the suite with the California and British but I already have those sounds well covered, including the actual amps. In fact I do own a couple of vintage fender tube amps so my main purpose wasn't to clone those sounds, just make it easier to capture those tones recording or make it easier to get a Fender sound from a Marshall, Sunn, Ampeg etc.