View other reviews for this product:
Hatsubai « Stacked Mod »
Published on 01/14/12 at 13:17The SD1 has been one of the most utilized pedals in the guitar world. It's been the standard for that asymmetrical clipping type of sound. However, it's known to have a few problems with it. For one, it tends to leak when bypassed. You can still hear it, even when it's off. For two, it tends to be a bit thin sounding at times. Keeley helps try to fix these options, as well as adding some new things to help make this pedal a lot more versatile than before.
UTILIZATION
The peda is housed in your typical Boss enclosure. These things are tough as nails and can withstand all kinds of punishment. The manual no longer is applicable thanks to this being modded, but it's still very easy to figure out. The switch is the biggest feature that this thing has. It allows you to select between two different diodes, but it's really only useful if you're using some gain on the pedal. Everything else is pretty much the same as your typical Boss pedal.
SOUND QUALITY
The pedal sounds great. First off, I'm really glad he did a special buffer in this thing to help prevent some leakage that normally occurs with these pedals. Otherwise, it's almost unusable on the clean channel with the gain up high. I tend to use these as boosters rather than gain adders. That means I tend to turn the gain off and crank the level. This is like a strong clean boost rather than a gritty boost which is how most people use it as. The switch on this selects between two different diodes to give you various flavors of this boost. On top of that, it's a lot thicker sounding than the stock version, which is a definite welcome.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're looking for a solid boost pedal with asymmetrical clipping, I would recommend this pedal. It does a great job, and you can get some aggressive boosting going on without it sounding too thin like certain other pedals do. This version is a bit more versatile and more modern sounding than the Analogman one, but the Monte Allums one has the most features, so feel free to choose which one you personally think is best.
UTILIZATION
The peda is housed in your typical Boss enclosure. These things are tough as nails and can withstand all kinds of punishment. The manual no longer is applicable thanks to this being modded, but it's still very easy to figure out. The switch is the biggest feature that this thing has. It allows you to select between two different diodes, but it's really only useful if you're using some gain on the pedal. Everything else is pretty much the same as your typical Boss pedal.
SOUND QUALITY
The pedal sounds great. First off, I'm really glad he did a special buffer in this thing to help prevent some leakage that normally occurs with these pedals. Otherwise, it's almost unusable on the clean channel with the gain up high. I tend to use these as boosters rather than gain adders. That means I tend to turn the gain off and crank the level. This is like a strong clean boost rather than a gritty boost which is how most people use it as. The switch on this selects between two different diodes to give you various flavors of this boost. On top of that, it's a lot thicker sounding than the stock version, which is a definite welcome.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're looking for a solid boost pedal with asymmetrical clipping, I would recommend this pedal. It does a great job, and you can get some aggressive boosting going on without it sounding too thin like certain other pedals do. This version is a bit more versatile and more modern sounding than the Analogman one, but the Monte Allums one has the most features, so feel free to choose which one you personally think is best.