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LordRiffenstein « Didn't work well with my amp. »
Published on 05/03/11 at 04:59The Cmat-Mods Brownie is an all analog pedal based on a BSIAB circuit. It’s build to mimic a Marshall amp at full tilt so it has a lot of gain and sustain. You get the typical Level, Gain and Tone controls. Pedal can be run from a 9v battery or with a power supply. Oh and there’s a VERY bright blue LED. I got mine in a trade and it came with 2 extra JFETS to tailor the tone.
UTILIZATION
Dialing in the pedal wasn’t really hard, there’s plenty of gain and level. This is a high gain pedal so it is not really suited as a boost but you can pull it off, there’s enough output to get a good boost even if the gain is low. The tone control does not have a huge range and that’s on culprit I discovered with this pedal. The 2 additional JFETS I got with mine were lower gain and I played around with them. The difference wasn’t huge but it could be useful for some people.
SOUND QUALITY
I tried this pedal as I was looking for a good fat rock tone. I was using an Analogman modded SD9 but wanted something different, with more bite. I was running this into a 1973 50w JMP Bass that I run clean. Although I could get some good tones out of the pedal, there were a number of reasons why I traded it on. I found there was a HUGE difference in how the pedal worked depending on the volume of your amp and the pedal. I found the pedal either being to harsh or to compressed sounding. I could dial out the harshness but then it got lost in the mix, turning up the pedal made it compress more and that ruined the feel for me.
OVERALL OPINION
I ended up trading the pedal for a Wampler Pinnacle and that got me what I wanted. The Brownie seems to be picky about the amp you run it into and your guitar. I found it suited better for single coils than humbuckers which is a surprise. Still, you can get some good tones from it.
UTILIZATION
Dialing in the pedal wasn’t really hard, there’s plenty of gain and level. This is a high gain pedal so it is not really suited as a boost but you can pull it off, there’s enough output to get a good boost even if the gain is low. The tone control does not have a huge range and that’s on culprit I discovered with this pedal. The 2 additional JFETS I got with mine were lower gain and I played around with them. The difference wasn’t huge but it could be useful for some people.
SOUND QUALITY
I tried this pedal as I was looking for a good fat rock tone. I was using an Analogman modded SD9 but wanted something different, with more bite. I was running this into a 1973 50w JMP Bass that I run clean. Although I could get some good tones out of the pedal, there were a number of reasons why I traded it on. I found there was a HUGE difference in how the pedal worked depending on the volume of your amp and the pedal. I found the pedal either being to harsh or to compressed sounding. I could dial out the harshness but then it got lost in the mix, turning up the pedal made it compress more and that ruined the feel for me.
OVERALL OPINION
I ended up trading the pedal for a Wampler Pinnacle and that got me what I wanted. The Brownie seems to be picky about the amp you run it into and your guitar. I found it suited better for single coils than humbuckers which is a surprise. Still, you can get some good tones from it.