Smooth, suprisingly very Marshall sounding

This pedal can go from AAL style modern distortion to cranked up Marshall. I'm probably the only one who uses this for Marshall sounds. There's a switch that gives you a choice between "Smooth" and "Edge." I'm usually on the smooth voicing. I compare the Smooth Voicing to a tubescreamer in front of a Marshall. Much like a tubescreamer (or your choice of overdrive) in front of gained up amp, it'll make your sound liquid.

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Glorious lead and chug

The Pathos is my first "high gain" type of pedal so I really don't have any other comparison. It really feels like a cranked Mesa tube amp, with that tube like compression, lots of body and presence, not overly tight, great sweet spot between tight and rich (you can make it tighter with the incredibly powerfull EQ section). I prefer the smooth side of the pedal where you can go from soft compressed crunch to full on distortion (there is a LOT of gain on tap). The edge side makes it a tad more focused on the low end and adds a good amount of presence (high end), very modern sounding, you can really feel Tosin's signature here. Playing the Ibanez TAM 10 - Pathos - Fender Deluxe Reverb I could easily get very similar tones to AAL's stuff. I also enjoyed some Meshuggah riffs through it, also some Govan tones with some chorus added. It's not a "transparent" overdrive where you retain the original dynamic range with dirt added, instead it compresses and sharpens your signal and makes it more mid range focused, but not tube screamer territory at all (at least to my ears). The description "several dirt boxes in one" is reflected in the gain range of the pedal, which is insane, and the EQ really lets you tailor from massive scooped Pantera tones to a rich mid rangy OD that is great for fusion, all the way to an impressive Djent tone. It really shines for lead solos with some delay. Massive low end chug, lot's of singing sustain, very rich sounding indeed. I would say note separation is very good, all the different string frequencies have the same distorted texture, I guess it's the nature of a high gain pedal. I don't believe it's really designed for stacking it with drives other than a boost before it. Tried different dirt pedals before and after it, I really only enjoyed the boosts into Pathos, but that's really personal and subjective. Since it's not very transparent don't think of it as an EQ/boost for other OD since it will compress your signal even with the gain knob all the way down. Again, this is not a negative point, it's just the way it's designed. Tried it between 9 and 18 Volts and really could't hear any significant difference. Overall I am very impressed and highly recommend it to anyone who has valve amp that doesn't have a gain knob or is not primarily designed for high gain, but wants a real cranked metal head tone and feel out of it.

Edit: Later I learned about the Dracarys pedal from Wampler (wampler also makes the Pathos for Abasi Guitars), and couldn't help to find me really similar in layout. Anyone knows if this is a retweaked and rehoused Dracarys? Certainly it was the starting point for Brian Wampler when developing Pathos.

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