steviemgallacher's Reviews

The single most reliable piece of equipment I've ever owned

I've has one of these since late 1996 and it has never let me down, even on the two occasions where technical faults have arisen this amp has powered through to the end of the gig.

I'll start by saying I'm probably not using this amp to it's full potential; live I usually run a pedal board in to the low gain input and use it as a loud, clean platform for whatever effects are on my board that day - and it handles everything beautifully - with other UK made amps (Marshall, I'm looking at you) I've noticed a lack of low end when used this way and that results in some drive pedals sounding harsh or brittle - not this one - it's natural clean tone is an excellent platform for whatever you feel like plugging in with plenty of clarity and none of the harshness.

In the studio I've run the front end harder and got some great overdrive tones from it too - if that's how you like to work the onboard effects loop (series or parallel) is a great extra, allowing time based effects to sit post tone.

I can't speak highly enough about this amp - in the years I've had mine it's had 2 major meltdowns - usually due to old valves (tubes) wearing out giving up - this says more about my maintenance schedule than it does about the build quality - even the repair tech I use is impressed at how well it's put together.

Clear display and some cool extra features.

It might be excessive now to dedicate a a full rack space to a tuner, but in the days before clip on tuners this was the way to do it (if you had a rack). As well as the oversize tuner display with 3 tuning modes (Hz, cent and strobe) this unit allows you to switch between two inputs and has a convenient cable tester built in to help diagnose problems on the fly.

The only issue I've had over the years is that if you run it first in the signal path then engage a gain effect it gets a bit noisey, hopefully this is something Korg have sorted in the years since I got mine, so these days I run it in a rack between the gain effects and time based stuff where it appears to have zero effect on tone but does make the switchable inputs a little redundant. so 4 stars for this one.

Everything you could ask for in a dicrete tuner that doesn't take up space on your board.

Worked perfectly straight out of the box, I haven't even looked at the instructions, and the plug-in version came with it free, so I can a polytune on the screen at all times when I'm recording too.

nice pedal with several applications

The soul Food is anice overdrive on it's own, but also also great for adding a little hair to you existing drive sounds. I run mine before a BYOC orange Distortion (DS-1 clone) and a Fulltone OCD. With a little gain and slight voume boost to push the dirt pedal harder

Great guitar with very poor pickups

I first saw Ritchie playing the prototype for this guitar on the DVD of Lost Highway: The Concert, and had no idea what it was, but kinda liked the look of it. A little internet research uncovered that it was a guitar Richie had designed with his tech, and that ESP were doing a version of it to sell as a signature model. Several years went by, but I was never able to find one in the UK so I bit the bullet in the summer of 2013 and ordered one from a place in California. It arrived a few weeks later, and despite it's transatlantic journey it still looked brand new (it had been well packed), but it was in need of a set up. With new strings and some gentle tweaking of the truss rod the guitar was playable, and despite it's odd proportions, pretty comfortable to wear, although stomach and forearm routes would improve this further. Initially tuning stability was a bit shaky, but this quickly calmed down when the new strings settled. The tone was pretty unremarkable with clean tones, but I prefer single coils for that kind of stuff so quickly kicked in some gain, this is a rock guitar after all. With high gain sounds the guitar seemed to be both toppy and lack definition, but I decided to persevere and took it to a gig, and it was pretty painful to my ears and the audience at some points; the tone at stage volume was really harsh. While I appreciate this is not the most expensive signature guitar in the world, I'd like to think ESP and Sambora would have insisted on electronics capable of doing the job. This also leads me to think Sambora's own guitars must have been fitted with better pickups, he is a fan of the DiMarzio PAF from his Fender signature days so perhaps a pair of those lie under the covers on his guitars. It also appears he has some models with humbucker size P90s as well as various custom finishes and colour combinations. For me I knew a change was called for, I like the feel of the guitar, and love the fact that it doesn't scream Fender/Gibson clone. I decided that the pickups would need changed, possibly the pots too, but less urgently. I decided to fit a set of DiMarzio evolutions to the guitar, I love the tone of them, and I prefer the look of uncovered coils. While the job was a bit of a pain due to to the somewhat unusual routing; the bridge unit is mounted on the body but everything else is on the pickguard. However the new pickups really brought the guitar to life which tells me the construction is decent, the wood is good, the trem works well despite being the baby of the Floyd Rose family.

Since getting the guitar into a gig worthy condition I have added a push/pull pot for for coil splitting and have used the guitar for every type of gig I play and some recording too, It does pretty much everything I need it too, and while it might not be my main weapon, it does a fantastic job when I do decide to use it.

In conclusion ESP have built a really nice guitar that looks great (this is subjective, some people will hate it) and works well, unfortunately they missed a trick by skimping on the electronics, and perhaps a set of humbuckers like those Richie would use, or an eastern reproduction thereof, would have avoided the tonal shortfalls, but would possibly have had a significant effect on the final price. who knows?

OCD style overdrivexat a great price.

Fairy transparent overdrive based on the Fulltone OCD.

Classic Wah tones that almost everybody loves

I have two of these pedals that have been modified for true bypass switching and the stock inductor replaced with a red Fazel inductor for a more pronounced wah tone. In its stock state the bypass tone has an effect on the clean tone that I don't like, it's hard to define what it is, but something is audibly different, so this is remedied by TBP switching.

Clean boost that does not colour tone.

I use this after my overdrive for a solo volume boost and it works great, it can also be used to push an amp or pedal into additional levels of saturation if that's what works for you. very simple to use and versatile.

Does what is says on the tin at a very affordable price

Based allegedly on the MXR Dynacomp, this is a great pedal, it sounds fairly transparent but can add a little 'squash' to your tone as required and enhance sustain too.

Fantastic valve tone with any amp.

A great bit of kit for high and moderate gain tones, you can run it (as I do) in like with other pedals into the front for your amp or use it as you main preamp connected to a power amp of straight to a mixer or head phones. The V-Twin has three channels as well as a bypass option, these are Clean, Blues and Solo. The clean option allowing you to add valve warmth to your clean tone, the Blues and Solo setting deal with the dirty stuff. for the most part the Blues channel could probably cover most situations as it produces a fair amount of gain on it's own, click into Solo mode and the gain level goes up quite a few notches, combined with the very powerful EQ can add classic mesa tone to any amp.

The main disadvantage is that all three sound rely on the same EQ controls meaning if you want to utilise all the tones, some compromise is called for, however I believe the rack version allows more flexibility. I use it in line with other pedals as my main overdrive using either the blues of solo setting as the situation requires. The sound of this pedal is huge and puts many other pedals to shame.