themaddalton

Hours of fun. From simple analogy delay to faithful reproductions of effects that are now veritable antiques & impossible to obtain -it can be a complex pedal but great to have this array of options in one stomp box thought it does take up a lot of real estate. Have owned mine since 2000, no issues but I believe some people are not faring so well w/ older version of theirs.

These are now discontinued & other than a similarly styled Hughes & Kettner tube pedal was I believe the only tube-based pedal that I was at least aware of for awhile. It sure cost a lot a the time & it weighs a ton. It's a got green, red & blue LED's for clean, solo & blues settings respectively. I'm not a metal guy, so I wasn't after a MESA tone, but I do value it as a pre-amp to warm & help sculpt my clean tone as it has some cool knobs for dialling in bass, middle & treble. Obviously it offers some pretty scorching high-gain sound if that's what I'm after too. I'm not sure that i'm getting as much out of this pedal as other's might & I have strongly considered selling it several times but have held off from doing so for some reason. It's unique & I figured i regret it so while may not be a permanent fixture in my chain at the moment it could easily work it's way back in in the not too distant future. After all it has been called one of the most indispensable pedals of all time so... ;)

Monte Allums put it best himself when he said that this pedal is a "fizz factory". So there it was sitting in it's box & I heard about a mod for the pedal. I had nothing to lose, it wasn't being used & I wanted a functional overdrive so why not. I opted for the Monte Allums Tri-Gain mod & man am I ever glad I did! No only is it now a useable pedal but it transformed from what it was & SMOOTH w/ a range of tonal options. Not a fan of the "top"setting of the new toggle but the middle & bottom are pretty special & in the zone of grit, punch & gutsy roar that I'm after & the bass/mid/treble pots now seem more effective than they ever were. Highly recommended!

This BOSS CS-3 was one of the first pedals I ever bought & I still have it...! I'm not sure I had any idea what it would do for what was then an untested sound, but it has served me well & is an indispensable part of of tone. People seem to have love/hate relationships w/ compression & I bought a lot of my current gear in Canada & attitudes do differ from one side of the pond to the other. I keep my CS3 as the first pedal in my chain & follow it up w/ any number of pedals. I keep the settings generally about the same depending on the environment, where I may adjust level. I took a bit chance last year when I decided to experiment w/ some other units & went through my first foray into optical compression (transparent). The CS3 pedal may be accused as a "tone sucker" by some as it is anything but transparent but i happen to like the warmth & "squash" it can impart to my sound, particularly when I have some overdrive in the chain. The optical compressors didn't work for me but I did get a Monte Allums mod done to the pedal & it has seems to have really improved what was already a great pedal by reducing noise.