DigiTech Screaming Blues

Metal Case, Cool color, nice looking pedal.Im a hobbyist musician and play mostly old country and rock. I have been playing of and on for about 20 years. I also play bass.

I was looking for a decent entry level OD pedal and heard a sound bite of this one that sounded pretty good and it was only $49 so I ordered it through musicians friend. I should have bought the Bad monkey instead. A friend of mine has it and it is a much more versatile overdrive.

Not much other than it looks cool. If you want attractive pedals instead of useful pedals then this one is for you.

This OD pedal is pretty much useless. I have never been able to get a decent sound out it that I even came close to likeing.The Digitech Bad monkey and the Ibanez TS7 tonelock are much better overdrives in this price range.

Construction is decent but the on/off switch is kind of cheap and will wear out eventually. Its heavy duty enough to use as a paper weight.

Would not recommend this pedal. If it were stolen I would track down the offender to pay him for taking it off my hands. Please dont waste your money!

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

I Have played bass for 6 years and Guitar for 4, Have been in a few bands. bad punk, Coffee house blues, and most recently Light rock. I prefer a lot of clapton, Mae, bayside, and Beatles soud. But I do play around with epic metal like becoming the archetype, Lamb of god, in flames.

I got this particular pedal At ted borwn music in Yakima, Washington. about 3 hours east of seattle. on my luch break at work. Payed 49.99

Was considering the digitech hot rod but i liked the overdrive distortion compared to straight distortion, it can leave the signal a little cleaner. has a good clean sound and a mixer output which I really love.

It's not quite as punchy, and the sustain isn't as much as I am used to. but when you run it with a mild phase effect before it. it is a really solid tone.

It is a damn fine and solid unit. also sleek and yet standard for a digitech. I actually had to look in the instruction booklet to figure out how to install the battery. 2 spring loaded buttons to revove the platform of the pedal. it is a very standard stopbox. Said all i could say.

Great pedal for adding a little bit of dirt or a whole lot of Love to your signal. solid strong a beautiful pedal. Fantastic pedal great for live. fantasatic for recording. and doesen't put too much of a dent in your wallet.

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

The Screamin’ Blues overdrive/distortion is a dirt pedal from Digitech. It has the basic features of most overdrive pedals, Volume to adjust the overall volume, gain to adjust the amount of overdrive/distortion and low and high tone knobs to adjust the EQ of the pedal. Along with the regular output on the pedal, Digitech also throws in a Mixer Output with cab emulation.


UTILIZATION

This pedal has a solid metal casing and sturdy knobs, so it appears to be pretty sturdy. The pedal works great out front of an amp, and definitely do use an amp. After trying the cab emulated mixer output, I would never use it. This is barely better than plugging straight into the board, and probably just a marketing strategy to make the pedal look more appealing. No problem, just disregard this output and use the pedal how it was meant to be used, into an amplifier.

SOUND QUALITY

The sound out of this thing is actually pretty decent for the price. I was hoping this pedal would be a hot rodded version of the Bad Monkey from the same line, but it’s a little bit different animal. It works great as a boost into an already overdriven amp. It can achieve a light gain all the way up to a bluesy/rock drive on it’s own. The pedal is less responsive to dynamics than some pedals I’ve used, but it’s not what I’d call stale or inorganic sounding. I feel the Bad Monkey is a nicer sounding pedal, but this pedal does the medium and higher gain settings. The two band EQ really allows you to tailor the sound, and I don’t understand why more overdrive pedals don’t offer multi band equalization.

OVERALL OPINION

Overall this is a pretty good dirt pedal for the money. You aren’t going to get boutique sounds out of this thing, but when compared to many Boss overdrives this pedal comes out ahead. Honestly I don’t think there is a lot of difference between many distortion pedals in this range, but adding a two band EQ makes this pedal a lot more versatile than most so that’s a win in my book. I would pick this pedal up over a Boss DS-1 any day of the week, but I think the real gem in this line of pedals from Digitech is the Bad Monkey which feels slightly more dynamic to me.

The DigiTech Screaming Blues is a basic overdrive and distortion pedal that claims to be good for blues music, but is fine for any type if you indeed like what it has to offer.  I wouldn’t say that it is necessarily best for blues… The pedal has a ¼ inch input and two ¼ inch outputs and can be powered by either a 9 volt power supply or battery.  It isn’t a rack mountable piece of gear as it is a stomp box.

UTILIZATION

The configuration of the DigiTech Screaming Blues is really easy to understand as the pedal has the basic set up of four parameters.  The pedal has knobs for level, low, high, and gain, which is pretty much the exact parameters that you would expect for an overdrive pedal.  I can’t imagine that anyone would have problems understanding everything about this pedal because it is just that easy to use.  Even if you don’t have experience with other distortion and overdrive pedals, this pedal is so straight forward that you shouldn’t have a hard time with it and don’t need a manual.

SOUND QUALITY

The sound quality of the DigiTech Screaming Blues is sub par at best in my opinion.  While I haven’t used this pedal all that often, I tried it out a few times and was never impressed with it.  While it sounds fine for messing around in your basement if you are looking for a cheap overdrive and distortion pedal, as far as recording goes I would stay away from this pedal and wouldn’t even recommend it for live shows.  To me it sounds tinny and lacks a certain full sound that I look for in a distortion pedal.  I tried the DigiTech Screaming Blues with a Fender Strat and a ’65 Fender Deluxe Reverb amp, so the sounds that I heard were pretty accurate.

OVERALL OPINION

While I haven’t used the DigiTech Screaming Blues all that much, I have used it enough to know that I don’t want to have any part of it.  Like I said, it will work fine if you are just looking to play around and add a little distortion to your sound for your own kicks because it is cheap enough for that, but if you are serious about getting good tones for recoding or live shows, this isn’t the place to get it.