florian_tennstedt's Reviews

Nice drive pedal!

It is often referred to as a Boss BD-clone. It has the advantage of a Treble and Bass control which makes it more versatile. It can be compared with the recently hyped Bad Monkey, but I think it's even more versatile because it has a bigger range for Level and Gain. I had to get used to it, first I didn't like it that much because of the crackling tail when you let a chord ring out to the end. But that is only if you have it stand-alone with very low gain in front of a clean amp. When it's used as a boost in front of an amp on the edge of break up it really shines. Also makes a good high-gain drive for bluesrock-soloing. Overall a very versatile and good sounding pedal of which I am glad I didn't sell after the first tryout.

Good cables for a reasonable price

My pedalboard is full of these. Never had an issue with them. Some people might dislike the bulky connectors, but since I only have Boss and Marshall pedals that doesn't bother me at all. I also use some of the longer cables (30cm/60cm) and they are fine as well. I paid 12€ for a new 3-pack on ebay which is not much for these quality cables. I will buy them again whenever I will need more.

Great Amp modeler for the price

I got this for dirt-cheap on ebay, 12€. I wanted something to give my FM100 H a bit more of a fenderish clean tube amp sound, which this pedal does very well. The possibility to change the mic position is not a thing I use to change very often, but it does change the sound in a similar way you would expect. There is a slight loss in volume when going from clean to Hi-Gain or Hot setting. Also it's not clean when using british (Marshall) or california (Mesa Boogie) mode, even with drive all the way down, unless you dial back the volume on your guitar very much. It reacts very well to the volume pot of your guitar and playing dynamics btw. It tends to get very noisy in the Hi-Gain and Hot settings, if you tweak it a bit you can get some nice oldschool metal sounds a la maiden out of it. Since I only use it in tweed (Fender) mode in clean setting with only a litte bit of drive, it suits my needs perfectly. Even new (30€) the price is ridicoulus for what you get and I can really recommend it for people who want to give their solid state amp a bit of tube warmth with it as an always on pedal in the FX loop.

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Versatile Sound, but I had problems with Volume

I got his for half the price because it was used for demo in our local music store. There are a lot of different sounds in this pedal, but what I dont like about it is the remarkable loss of volume, especially in the modes with less stages. My experience is, that this gets better the closer you place the pedal to the front of the signal path, but I usually want my modulation after the dirt pedals and even at first position there is a significant loss of volume. I dont know if this only a problem with my setup, but I read that others have experienced similar problems. For this reason I stick with my Marshall RG-1, which isnt that versatile when it comes to phaser-sounds (it only has a normal and a step phaser), but instead of lowering the volume it pushes it a little bit, which is great for leads imho. It also has chorus, flanger and a uni-vibe mode, so overall it is much more versatile than the PH-3, too. Again, i like the sounds of the PH-3, but the volume problems make it unusable for me.

Small Powerplant even smaller pricetag

It does it's job. There's no humming or any other problems. Comes with a ton of cables (very useful is the yellow Y-cable). It costs like 35$ new (35€ in Germany) but you can get them for about 15$/€ used. I have one on each of my two boards.

The best Bullet Strat you can find

The COB Bullet Strats were only made for a short period of time in China and are praised to be the best Bullets you can find (for example see https://www.squier-talk.com/threads/2008-cob-bullet-strat.192370/). I can totally agree on that. The maple Neck feels and looks great (slightly flamed) for the price I paid, for the guitar (roughly 50$ for a used one), a fret job can be useful but is not required as much as with other Bullets. I had to do a little setup (adjusting the trussrod and bridge for action and intonation), but after that it plays great. It has staggered pole piece Single Coils and they do sound very much like what you expect from a real Strat. Some people argue that the Tuners are shitty, but if you don't Kerry King the shit out of the Trem-bar it stays in tune very well. It also has a rosewood fretboard instead of Indian Laurel which is usually found in contemporary Bullets, I don't know if it makes that much of a difference, because I never tried IL but it feels nice. I really wanted a Strat but could't afford an American or Mexican made, so I bought this as a compromise. I do not regret. If you find one try it, but they won't be as cheap as a later manufactured Bullet when the seller knows what he or she got there.

Great Bass Amp in a small box

The only thing it can't do, inspite of it looks, is Toast. Otherwise one of the best Bass Amps I've heard so far.

Nice idea but..

..not very useful. It aint easy to calibrate and then you have to hold it with your foot when you want a certain sound. There are better options

Underrated solid state head

You can hear a lot of people talking bad about this amp on the internet, but I think it is underrated and here comes why: many people hate the drive channels of this amp and I agree, they do not sound very good. I never use them. What makes this amp underrated imho is that its clean channel is as close as you can get to the fender-ish sound with solid state technology. It is not as brilliant as a real tube amp by Fender, but it is a great clean amp with a lot of power for that pricetag (I bought mine for less than 100€ on the used market). I play it with the FM412 cab and with the right settings it sounds pretty good. Here I need to focus on another thing often mentioned by people who dislike the amp: it sounds very bright in a harsh way. That is if you don't turn back the treble, but then you can get a decent sound. It has an effects loop, but i prefer to put my pedals in front of the amp (drive pedals sound better there, I haven't tried putting modulation or time based effects in the loop yet, will try soon). The on board reverb needs some fine adjustment to find the sweet spot, but then it's very usable. The drive channels (drive and more drive) can be tweaked with a contour knob for the mids, so you can set the EQ to a heavy metal bathtub setting, but honestly it doesn't do that very well either. Behind the grill is plenty of space to store stuff like cables.

If you are looking for an affordable pedal platform so you won't hesitate to bring it to the most rancid venue, this amp might be worth a try. 100W@4Ohm is enough power for most applications. The drive channels are not very good, especially not for metal, but you don't buy a Fender if you want to do the chug anyway. Its clean channel can compete with an Orange Pedalbaby 100 (we compared them at our rehearsal room) and is more versatile and much more affordable than that. I do recommend this amp for players who gig occasionally and need something reliable that doesn't weigh a ton.

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Simply a good distortion

They say they put one prototype in each of the voyager probes. You also find one being hatched by a penguin at the South Pole and are not surprised. It's everywhere for a reason: it is a very affordable and very good distortion pedal. You want to dial the tone down a little as it can wear out your tooth fillings. You can get a decent sound in front of a clean amp, but these were actually built to blow on large amps that have already reached saturation. You can also put it before a low gain OD and get some amazing results.

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Nice looper with tap tempo

At first I struggled a bit to find out how to deal with this, but after a bit of trial and error it works good for me. Some more drumsamples would be nice, but at least it has got more options than just a metronome click.

A better RV-3 clone

This is a decent delay, espacially for ambient music. It is better than the RV-3, because it has 2000ms of delay in the reverb-delay modes, which the RV-3 does not have. Also it has a tap tempo for the delay, which the RV-3 also does not have. The sounds are decent.

Great pick for Rhythm and Lead

I play both Lead and Rhythm so I need a pick which is flexible enough for chord-strumming and stiff enough for fast single notes and so on. I usually played the 1.0mm, but they tend to get a bit to wobbly after some time due to the warmth of my hand. These don't so i switched over to them.

There are better Distortion Pedals

I got one for free and gave it a try. It is not my style of sound tbh, you can get some useable tones out of it, so you might give it a try because they are not very expensive on the used market. I took the enclosure and put a tube screamer circuit in it.

Good looper for the price

It takes some time to get used to the control and is very difficult to time a loop to a drum computer. So it is better used without additional drums. The sound quality is ok, you can add a lot of layers and very long layers, too. I use it to jam with myself. I would not use it in a live setting

Decent cabinet

It's hard to find a better cab for the money, they are very affordable on the used market.

Best bang for the buck when it comes to fuzz

It's a cheaper FZ-2. I really dig the 1.5 mode, great sound. The enclosure is plastic, but if you don't jump on it with boots of concrete it will last a while.

Decent Pedalboard

Good quality. There is enough space to put a power supply underneath. You can adjust the spaceing. There is a lot of velcro.

You don't need any other tuner

It does the job perfectly, there are several options how to tell it how to do it and it has a 9V output to power other pedals. You can get one for 50€ on the used market.

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Nice transparent Overdrive

The OD-mode is really nice, from only a tiny bit of drive to full roaring beast mode you can dial in anything. The distortion mode can get you some good sound , too, but there is no chance to set controls that you can switch from OD to Distortion an both sound reasonable. Usually the distortion has much more low end and it's muffled when you found a good setting in the OD mode. Just use the OD mode and you have a nice pedal for not much money.