edvinlaura's Reviews

Unique but fundamentally flawed

I have 2 of these pedals and all cards released. Some effects are unique: I've never seen a pedal, which can do some of the sounds it can produce. There are some effects, that you can find on some of chase bliss pedals, but it's usually 1 effect per 1 pedal and here you can have 8 per card and multiple cards.

The controls are made so you achieve wide range of effects turning the knobs. From normal effects similar to what other pedals give you, to obscure, bizarre effects, all just by staying at one effect and turning the knobs. You can spend hours, days and weeks playing with the pedal and finding new and new sounds (if you have all cards). This is what I like in this pedal. It's deep.

Now what I don't like.

The idea to switch cards is rare, but it has more cons than you can expect.

1. You can't have all cards active on your pedalboard, unless you buy a dedicated copy of the pedal for each of your cards. For this I've bought an additional arcades pedal, to have at least 2 of the cards active at the same time.

2. There is no hot switch of the cards. If you switch your cards while the pedal is powered on, it will recognize the card and the effects, but will produce no sound. So, in order to make it work, you have to restart the pedal. The restart is not instant and takes some time. The pedal doesn't have a power button and removing power cord and putting it back every time you need to switch a card is not convenient. To make it more convenient, I've purchased a power cable adapter with a power switch button. Still I can't imagine someone switching the cards in the middle of a song and even with the power button switching the cards in between the songs playing live is too much work for a live show. So, this pedal is rather for home use. Or for a single card use (then what's the point of having the switchable cards?).

3. The cards are expensive. The pedal with no cards costs around $250-400 used + delivery on reverb. And each card costs around $100. So, to have 1 pedal (USED) with all its sounds you need to spend over $1200.

4. The pedal sucks tone. Not so much as some $15 Chinese pedals, but still it does.

5. The freedom of the settings I mentioned before comes with the cost. Because of the craziness of the pedal and wide range of sounds you can produce it often goes to clipping, so, you have to know the pedal, to keep it at low level and/or to use a compressor after it to save your gear and ears.

Overall I like this pedal and can recommend everyone to try it and have some fun. But I hardly can recommend it for any sane pedal board. (mine is insane and has two of those :)

Great price/value head, amazing "speaker defeat" feature

For the quality it's rather cheap (~$900 new, I've bought mine for $430 on a sale), but sounds not bad at all and relatively close to classic Peavey heads.

Has "Speaker defeat" feature, which allows to play without a speaker, great for home, where you have neighbors and you don't want to turn them into your enemies. With a cab sim it allows you to have real valve sound through headphones.

The visual design is not so good, it definitely looks cheaper/worse (to my taste at least) than more expensive Peavey models. But sound is more important, right?

If you don't have a few thousands $ for a professional head, but want real valve head sound, this is a great choice.

Rare case when cheap doens't mean bad

Bought this pedal for around $40 new. And was very surprised. There is absolutely nothing bad I can say about this pedal. All sounds are great.

The pedal, unlike most pedals from aliexpress, doesn't suck tone and adds no noise. The controls are intuitive and smooth, the knobs don't feel cheap.

The sounds are classic modulation sounds: Flanger, Chorus, Phaser and Tremolo. Nothing new or extraordinary, but if that's what you're looking for, you'll have great quality at a very low price in one pedal.

Highly recommend this pedal.

One of a few pedals I've ever sold

I have few dozens of pedals and this one is a rare case, when I sold a pedal. I couldn't find a use of it. The delays are generic, the looper is too short. The size is huge, the power forces you to bring with you a dedicated power cable. There are more interesting delays than this, and they don't occupy half of your pedal board. On my board it was replaced by Avalanche run and Walrus audio Lore. *and still some space left :) No regrets.

The worst sound I've ever heard

This was my first pedal. The sound was so bad, I still hear it in my nightmares. I sold it as soon as I got extra $50 to buy a better pedal.

Hidden gem developed by an indie developer

This is an amazing pedal that sounds great and has amazing set of effects. But it feels like an indie game. It's great, it has flaws, but you still love it, despite the flaws.

Which flaws the pedal has:

1. It's huge. It occupies the same amount of space on my pedal board as 2 of my cooper fx arcades (which aren't tiny as well)

2. The LED are not bright enough. During daylight you can't really see what is there.

3. There is a weird approach for numbers, a pentary system, to be precise. You have 10 LEDs split into 2 columns and the rows marked as 1 2 3 4 5. To know you're on preset number 8 you have to see if LED number 3 in column 2 is glowing. Fine for a programmer, probably not so convenient for other people.

4. It has design flaw related to stereo implementation. The pedal can't be used as first stereo pedal in your chain. If you give it a mono input and expect to get a stereo output, it won't behave like all other pedals (take mono signal and give you stereo signal). It will behave so when it's engaged only, but when you bypass it, it passes only 1 channel of the sound to the next pedal. In my case I solved it by rerouting my pedal board and placing boss Rv-5 in front of it. This way it always works as a stereo pedal.

Despite of the inconveniences I love the sound and love the pedal and if you're ok with the flaws I mentioned, there is no issue with the sounds, you'll love it too.

Nice toy to play for some time if you buy it cheap, but it sucks tone

I've bought one for $20 and for this price it's a nice toy, works fine, doesn't add any noise, but it sucks tone and makes your guitar sound cheap. Therefore it can't stay on my pedalboard.

Good choice for the price tag

The kick feels like real! Hi-hat is not so good, but I think no electronic drum kits could ever replace a real hi-hat. So, you could live with it. The embedded sounds are quite good, playing along with a music you practice you may feel like you're playing real drums. In Metal mode the hi-hat pedal turns into a double-kick and hi-hat is always open. This mode sounds very good and is IMO very good for practicing double-kick.

It has quiet nice software which can tutor you a little, understanding how well you played few drum 'songs' and giving you score. It will teach you step by step different drum tricks required to play full songs and then you'll have to pass final test for each genre playing full song.

Attaching to a PC via USB opens new horizons: 1. You can use, for example, EZDrummer to make the drums sound like hundreds of other real drums 2. You can record the drums (use it both as MIDI or Audio input device) 3. You can turn on any song on youtube and play along with the video (on youtube you can slow down the video, so you can practice at lower speeds before you could play with real speed). And you can setup PC so it can either get your drums MIDI signal and return back sounds from EZDrummer + the youtube song OR it can use embedded sounds of the drums coming directly from the drums mixed with music coming from the PC. 4. You can use the drums as midi controller and play such games like Phase shift (which allow to play different songs along with color-notes or how to call them. whatever)

So, despite more expensive models can offer a little bit more, overall for the money I think it's a great choice.

Amazing guitar!

Amazing clean sound, powerful distortion sound, very light. Considering its price (i've bought new one for 550 euro) it's one of the best price/value guitars you can find.