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tjon901 « A cheap over the top metal pedal »
Published on 05/25/11 at 17:18Back in the 80s Arion was the brand of pedal you got if you could not afford a boss pedal. The quality is not very good but if this is all you could afford the rest of your gear probably was not as good as well so a low quality pedal would not really stand out. This is Arions budget metal pedal. The SMM-1 has 4 knobs on the face of it for tone shaping. From left to right it has a level knob then two frequency or EQ knobs then a knob for distortion. The pedal is an all plastic construction with a large plastic pedal portion taking up about half of the face of the pedal.
UTILIZATION
With the all plastic construction I would not count on this pedal holding up to serious abuse. The tops will get dirty over time and make noise. The level knob does what you would expect it increases the output of the pedal. The distortion knob like wise increases the saturation of the gain. There are two EQ knobs one that effects the high end the other one effects the low end. On the top there is a switch for direct and soft. This further changes the tone you can get from the pedal because in the direct mode it makes one of the outputs an effects bypass. So with the dual outputs you can run one amp dirty and the other amp clean at the same time.
SOUND QUALITY
If you max out the high end it will make your guitar sound like it is coming from a transistor radio. The high end knob seems to control the mids too so at certain settings you will get a really boxy middy tone. If you max out the low end your sound will become really muddy. The pedal already produces a muddy sound when the gain is up so turning up the low end just makes that worse.
OVERALL OPINION
If you just started playing and have an amp with bad gain this is something you could get to add more variety to your sound. The stereo out is something many cheap pedals dont have but I wonder if this is the best pedal you can afford do you really have two amps you can use the stereo out with. Back when this was the only pedal I had I only had one amp to use it with so the stereo feature went unused.
UTILIZATION
With the all plastic construction I would not count on this pedal holding up to serious abuse. The tops will get dirty over time and make noise. The level knob does what you would expect it increases the output of the pedal. The distortion knob like wise increases the saturation of the gain. There are two EQ knobs one that effects the high end the other one effects the low end. On the top there is a switch for direct and soft. This further changes the tone you can get from the pedal because in the direct mode it makes one of the outputs an effects bypass. So with the dual outputs you can run one amp dirty and the other amp clean at the same time.
SOUND QUALITY
If you max out the high end it will make your guitar sound like it is coming from a transistor radio. The high end knob seems to control the mids too so at certain settings you will get a really boxy middy tone. If you max out the low end your sound will become really muddy. The pedal already produces a muddy sound when the gain is up so turning up the low end just makes that worse.
OVERALL OPINION
If you just started playing and have an amp with bad gain this is something you could get to add more variety to your sound. The stereo out is something many cheap pedals dont have but I wonder if this is the best pedal you can afford do you really have two amps you can use the stereo out with. Back when this was the only pedal I had I only had one amp to use it with so the stereo feature went unused.