darrenclewes's Reviews

Great small gigging and home amp

A superbly made amp. Drives a 4x12 equally as well as a 1 x 12 and the emulated recording output makes it a great recording amp too.

the 1 watt setting makes it fun and usable at home or in recording.

Huge amounts of gain

A pedal with a frightening amount of gain and really usable controls. I used to use a metal zone but the USABLE tonal range wasn;t as great as with the Fullbore.

Still a bit of a one trick pony, but that's kind of the point I guess.

1994 and still going strong

Great guitar, again replaced the stock pickups with vintage output warman pickups. Always been my dropped d standard guitar and has a slightly darker sound than the red strat (which is always in drop c standard) I prefer the block saddles to the new edition bend steel saddles.

The standard

Standard 2x12, celestion loaded cab. The slightly bigger cabinet gives a little more depth to the sound and, as always, completely bomb and bandproof.

Workhorse Guitar

My USA red strat is my go-to guitar. Mine is customised with Warman Pickups and looks a touch different. It;s seen over 200 shows and keeps going. Well made, always in tune.

Does what it needs to....not much more

I;ve been through a few of these and my findings are the same....the Boss TU2/TU3 is simply better. The Korg is ok and tunes accurately enough but doesn;t track or pick up the signal quite as quick.

Accurate tracking

A fairly essential part of my sound that takes wiry strat tones and makes them lovely and thick. Tracks reliably, even after a ton of distortion and a ramp up from the Boss OC2

Does what it needs to

Bomb proof and keeps some of my noisiest and most feedback prone pedals in check. Clamps down well on extraneous noise.

All the big muff dreams come true

From the website: The ‘Pumpkin Pi’ is a twin channel muff pedal that brings together 2 classic muffs into one distinctive pedal. The first channel is the classic ‘Green Russian muff’ loved by so many players such as Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys & Jack White. We’ve added a 3 way tonal switch which allows you to switch between a10db’s & 4db’s boost to a classic scooped Muff tones. The second channel is the ‘IC78’ muff. This muff uses an Integrated Circuit or IC chip rather than the usual Transistors to give you a more modern sounding muff. This type of muff was apparently used by the Smashing Pumpkins when recording their Siamese dream album. We’ve added a tone bypass switch to the ‘IC78’ for a more direct signal path with added grit. Both these channels work independently of each other but we’ve built the ‘Pi’ in such a way that it allows you to cascade the ‘Russian’ into the ‘IC78’ giving you a super high gain fuzzilicious muff that still retains all the classic sounds of a muff but with the advantage of taking your sound to new tonal grounds. The Pumpkin Pi is constructed in ‘true bypass’ removing the possibility of any tone suck from your original signal when the pedal isn’t engaged.

reliable and keeps things tidy

Totally reliable. No messing about and really helps to keep the board need with the power distributors.

Best modular power by a way

Totally reliable. No messing about and really helps to keep the board need with the power distributors.

Just better than the standard

The standard DS1 is a bit lacking in grunt and dimension but this version fills out so much better. It's been pretty much the staple drive on my board since I got it. I honestly dread the time it stops working as any other ds1 i've used just doesn;t do the same thing somehow.

So much headroom

I've owned a few marshalls (JTM and JCM800) and without doubt this is the best one. Mine is slightly customised in that it's permanently jumpered.

My drives come from pedals so I need an amp that takes these well and provides spanky clean headroom when required. This has it spades.

The only downside is that the headroom comes at a volume cost...it's difficult to get this amp performing well at low volume levels.