les_white's Reviews

A Nice Shadow

This thing is very analog. It sounds great as a slapback, but also as a low volume tail that is only visible when you stop playing due to the dark nature of the repeats.

The depth/speed controls can produce a very organic warble when set low.

The tone control lets you make the echos even darker to sit in the background.

This doesn't like to do the endless feedback space invaders stuff, but you can get it to self modulate with short delay time and cranking everything else up.

Clean Comp

I bought this mostly as a studio tool for my bass tracks and it works great with that.

It's very clean comp, not much color and not much noise.

It works great as a boost - turn on a little compression and jack up the output and you get a thick clean sound out of a tube amp.

I also tried running it last in the line as a limiter (before delay) to keep my input into the amp consistent. It does a great job at that if you need something like this.

Awesome Guitar Terrible Craftmanship

Bought this new at full retail price online and I love it. It's the best playing guitar I've ever held or owned in 35 or so years of playing.

The satin nitro finish is the best finish Gibson offer as far as feel of neck. The fret job is 100% perfect. You can't get a better fret lay. Robots are good!

This guitar is the T model. No stupid robot tuners or other stuff no one wants.

Now the problems :

2 of the gibson deluxe tuners are dead on arrival. They turn and sort of work, but it feels like the screw that mounts the shaft to the gear is lose. The shaft slants from left to right as you turn the peg. Not wobble, but actually lean left for half the rotation, then lean right. They bind and catch as you tune. They sometimes need 1/4 turn to catch up with the gears. They are complete crap and it makes me sad that I have to repair a brand new guitar.

The pickups are mini buckers in the firebird style. They have a bar magnet in the center of each coil and no string height screws. For some insane reason gibson decided the bridge pickup should be 25k output... yeah, that's right. It sounds OK if all you want is hot hot hot sound from your guitar. I might get them rewound down to about 10k, replace the ceramic with alnico and make them usable, or just swap them for p90s. Again... sad face.

But wait! There's more!

The fret marker blocks are not centered. They are over 1/8 inch too high on the board and 1/16 inch too close to the nut. WTF gibson.. you suck.

But wait! We'll also include an off center holly/pineapple on your SG! That's right... the freaking holly is 1/8 inch off center on the head stock.. so very sad. After 100 years of making a guitar they can't even come up with a jig to center basic things like the FREAKING LOGO.

Now how much would you pay?

But wait! There's even more!

The input jack pushes against the back service plate when you have a standard cord plugged into the guitar. This causes the guitar to snap and crack and the plug gets moved around as your body contacts the plate. Isn't that a nice design feature? A 60 year old design and they can't even sort out the ()#$)(@ input jack. I ripped out the PCB board that had the 4 pots and input and put in dedicated hardware.. you suck gibson.

And finally... one of the 4 screws that hold the service plate is half the length of the other 3 and does not catch threads... serious... a 1200$ guitar.

Ah, what can I say. This is my third gibson. I made the mistake of buying this one blind. I will continue to buy gibson, but never again blind and I will no longer defend their reputation. Gibson deserve all the mud that people can sling.

Great Fuzz

This fuzz is not a hacksaw of doom or scooped thunder mush of death. It's pretty mild compared to most modern fuzz pedals, though it sounds awesome.

This thing is almost like an instrument itself if you know how to deal with it. It's got a full range of distortion and cleans up with your guitar volume like nothing you've ever heard - except from Hendrix.

As you turn down the volume on your guitar it does not reduce the output very much, but instead reduces the fuzz leaving your guitar loud, clean and sparkling/spanky in a really nice way. You can go down to clean funk with your volume knob or up to classic OD all the way to all along the watch tower leads. You could do a whole classic rock show with this alone and never have to step on it. It worked for Hendrix.

It's important to put this before any buffer and before anything that is going to compress or amplify the sound if you really want to use it fully. Put it first for best results.

Use the input knob to get it to work full range. If your guitar is naturally loud then turn down input on the pedal until your volume knob controls the drive/fuzz.

Used with a Vox Ac15 being assaulted by p90 Les Paul.

Most Overrated Wah

I've owned this since it came out years ago. I just own that first model and not the recent revisions.

I never loved this pedal. I tried it again because everyone says it's great due to someone big using it. It's still not great.

The fuzz option (the marketing that made me buy it as a kid) is 100% useless noise and I can't imagine anyone ever turning that on.

It's hard to say what my issue is other than I don't like the results of using it. It sounds robotic, processed and not organic to my ears. Your own results may vary.

Straight Outta China - Loop Core v1

I bought this due to the low price point. I use it for fooling around and nothing more and it does that wonderfully. The interface is pretty straight forward for basic use. Click to start recording, click again to go into overdubs, click again to stop. Double click to undo.

It holds hours of samples inside of 99 save banks. After a while you end up with a large library of your own chops to jam with.

It has independent volume for input and sample playback as well as a primitive drum machine that tries to match your tempo. I don't use the drum parts because they sound like lo-bit trash (which is odd since the machine is a sampler and has huge memory - why you no put decent drums?).

I can't fault the sound quality. No issues with playback and pass through.

All in all this is a fun tool for laying down a pattern and working on your leads without a huge cost.

This review was for the v1. There is a v2 out now, but I'm not aware of the improvements.

It Does It All

...but with varying degrees of success.

It's a great toy for someone who wants access to a box full of effects (170 or so at last count), but there is no emulator in there that will sound as good as the thing it's trying to copy. Usually it's not even close.

Every time I play with it I forget how to use the mixed up interface of death and end up using it in the most simple way with one single pedal (if can stack 6 pedal emulations if you use it enough to remember how to work the dynamic interface buttons).

Not for serious work, but great as a toy to discover what you can do and where you need to go.

I'll try anything once.

I bought this because it was cheap as dirt and very orange.

It's got a lot of volume on tap. Unity is at 9 o'clock.

I tried using it a few times, but it just doesn't ring my bell. It doesn't have any magic or inspiration for me. It has a lot of noise though!

The only reason to buy this is because it's cheap (and orange!) and you are curious. I can't imagine anyone with a budget or ears would aim for this intentionally.

A nice toy on a budget, but nothing you would choose if you had options.

Best guitar ever made.

I own a 97 model. It is the ONE guitar for me.

It comes with p100 pickups which are stacked humbuckers in a p90 case. These pickups are of course super quiet, but they don't sound anything at all like old school p90s. The p100 is kind of bell like in its volume and tone response. The sound tapers off really quick. I think the p100 might be one of the best funky clean pickups ever made - but when you want to get singing leads it's a useless pickup.

The solution for m0st of us p100 era owners is to swap out the bridge for a p90 to get somewhere to go when it's lead time. I would never swap out the p100 neck pickup - it's awesome. With the two versions of pickups the guitar still sounds complete and it has a great range.

I would probably die if I lost mine.

Hard to Beat

This amp is pure awesome if you know how to use it.

It can go anywhere with just one or two pedals to help it along. Set your sound to just breaking up and then plug in a 'transparent overdrive' and away you go.

Thick overdrives will sound bassy and muddy if you push them into this amp when it's already breaking up - it wont get louder it will just get darker and darker.

Guys like brain may approach this by using a treble booster which has the effect of taming the wall of bass the overdriven tubes produce.

Personally, I stick a tumnus (klon clone) in the path and it's pure heaven. It goes from clean to scream just by turning the guitar volume.

Mid Scooped

The nano pi makes a huge sound, but I find that I can't actually use it for anything. It's a wall of bass and treble with no mids.

It sounds great solo jamming, but whenever I try to use it in a song it just sounds horrible. It wants to eat the whole sonic landscape - except for the mids - which is where a guitar is supposed to live.

A fun toy, but not an actually useful fuzz for my needs.

Best Pedal Ever

It's a gold klon in a tiny box.

There is nothing better to boost a hot tube amp. Set the amp to just breaking up. Set the tumnus drive to 9 oclock (25%) and volume a little above unity. Now leave it on forever and use your guitar volume to bring it back down to the clean sound and back up to heaven as required. It's like what you already had but in 3D.

If you do a clean amp and get all your sounds from pedals then this is not the best OD. The actual drive sound is thin and mid/high humped. It works super awesome pushing a hot tube amp and kind of lame shaping a clean amp to sound dirty. You pretty much never want to put the drive above 30% or so - there is no profit there.

The pedal ramps up to 18 volts internally and it's extremely dynamic to input. It makes cleans sound better and makes drive sound better. It adds a magic sparkle to the neck pickup.

It has a buffer that can not be turned off (like the klon is clones), but it's an awesome buffer.

I put this as early in my chain as possible, before any other dirt, and just leave it turned on 24/7.

I really can't say enough about this pedal + tube amps. It is the one pedal to rule them all.

One of the Best

The OCD has that magically something. It's generic enough to work with any genre, but special enough to turn heads while doing it.

I use it with the drive almost full off as an overdrive into a Vox AC15. It brings you over the top without a disconnect between your clean and dirty sounds. It highlights the sounds already there. It goes to full mental when you turn the drive up.

If I could have only one pedal it would be a Tumnus, but I would be wishing I picked the OCD much of the time.

Not Terrible

This is not my favorite overdrive. It doesn't like tube amps. It just turns your sound into a bass filled mud hole. IMO it works better to push a very clean amp to sound a little like a tube amp breaking up.

If you plug this into something like a vox you will get a dark, muddy, bassy fart tone unless you turn down the amp gain to super clean - and why would you turn off your tubes to turn on a cheap pedal? Exactly. Not for tube amps.