Korg 104ds Hyper Distortion

I bought this on eBay for $50 after reading about it online.

The distortion on it combined with the cab simulator feature makes this the best distortion pedal I've ever heard. So much distortion, so much control over the EQ. You can also switch between amp and line out and hi or low input(oddly, switching to low input gives more level, so I gather the choice is between high output pickups and low output). Having two setting available is also great. and the internal noise gate.

Downside is that the bypassed sound is louder than the unit itself maxed out. There is a gap in the sound when going from effect to bypass. It will also sometimes freak out and change settings, which I've determined is because 8 functions share 4 knobs, meaning there is a switch that selects which 4 functions you are tweaking. Something dodgy abut the switch. I've opened it up, it's NOT modder friendly at all. there's a ton of stuff crammed in this little box.

It's a brushed aluminum case, decent switches.

Bottom line, THE home practice/recording pedal. Direct into the mixer or recorder, sounds great. I would be wary of using it live.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

I bought it at a sale for 600 sek (swedish), roughly 60$ i think. I belive it's oop (out of production) now though, it had costed more than twice that earlier and this was probably the last pedals left in stock.

It sounds great, as the name "hyper distortion" states, this is not the pedal for warm, tubelike overdrive sounds, it's more of a hard edged distortion, but still it sounds quite clean and not as dirty as some other fuzzboxes.
It is programmable, which means it can store two settings in memory, you use one footswitch to select program 1 or 2 and the other to bypass the box. Its almost as having two pedals in one, and without the complex editing of multifx's.
And the tone controls are the best I have seen on a pedal like this yet. It has low/high combined with a parametric midband, so a wide variety of sounds can be made.
Further, it's not very noisy, something which probably has to do with the internal gate. The gate threshold also seems to be linked to the gain control, so turning up the gain means the threshold is set higher. It also has a high/low gain switch for humbuckers/singlecoil guitars.
It also has a "cabinet resonator" which is supposed to simulate different speaker cabinets, sounds ok but I rarely use it. However you can make it sound as your marshall stack is a 2-inch multimedia speaker is you set size to a minimum. And you get cool results if you sweep the size knob in realtime.
There is also an amp/line switch that makes that makes the sounds sharper and the cabinet resonator more pronounced, somewhat like a crude speakersimulation.

The only real flaw is that the switches aren't that reliable, I've only had problems with the bypass switch, sometimes the volume drops quite alot when you enable the effect and you have to hit the footswitch hard to keep this from happening and sometimes it does anyway.
I've heard this is a common problem with these units, worth to check if you are buying a used one. I think the only ways around this would be to either change the switch itself or build a separate bypassbox preferrably one with an electronic bypass. people with some electronics knowhow look here http://www.ee.washington.edu/circuit_archive/circuits/guitar.html

Other than the switches it's ok, built like a tank really, steel and aluminium casing.

It's too bad that such a great sounding peice of gear should be let down by just a mechanical fault. If its only for studio or home use i would definitely recommend it. As for taking it on the road it's a bit risky, I'm doing it cause I don't have any alternatives and cause it sounds so good and it hasn't failed on me on stage yet. but there are more reliable pedals but they don't sound as good, and the ability to store settins is really cool

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

Overdrive, and TurboDrive HyperD
9 volt
metal satin or black with logo eagle or spider
jack
Non Rack

UTILIZATION

Use even for the first fool
Chinese manual (you can do without in 30s we control the beast)

SOUND QUALITY

If you like hard rock this pedal is for you
it provides guitar solos inflamed
you can play with the AC / DC
mediumise overdrive is for me the best of five fact proposed
all sounds are of good quality

OVERALL OPINION

It's been a year since I love her look. I had before but that was a zoom pedal sounds too robotic. since I was really more the korg c clean. exellent value for price
I often concerts and always come with me.