for those interested.
my buddy chris and i got together tonight to have a little "tone party". the real reason was to A/B the keeley ts9 and the analog man. his buddy john who has the analog man never called back to loan it, so we went ahead and put some of our other pedals on the block. we auditioned the fulltone fulldrive 2, a keeley modded ts9 (their 808 version), and a new zvex vexter series box of rock.
for amps were played a st. george squier amp, a custom built marshall 18 watt, and my modified 73 bassman. the st. george sounds like a cross between an ac15 and a deluxe, a little bit o brit chime, with a solid fender clean type tone. a very nice amp. the 18 watter is pretty stock but with mercury magnetic trannies. fun marshall amp that gets that type of tone but at non ear shattering levels. and the bassman is a weird beasts: it runs 6v6's at about 22 watts and has had the tone bank changed to a quasi brownface... think of it like a deluxe but with the balls of a bassman. fender sound of course, but a little tweaked to my ears.
cabs, an avatar 2x12 marshall type loaded with celestion greenbacks. and the other was an early 80's marshall 4x10. both closed back.
chris brought his strat i gave him, it is an mim 50's body with an all parts maple baseball bat neck. pups are torres design ripoff fralins. he also brought his burney les paul with (if i remember right) a 57 classic, and a 57 classic plus. his has also been modded with wooden rings.
i brought the new strat i've been fiddling with, and my dearmond that sports reed james 5/2 p90s.
all the amps were tuned and tweaked to sound their best through whichever cab we were using at the time with them. there was no attempt to make them sound like eachother, we wanted their tonally thumb print to shine.
here's what we heard:
the box of rock - sounded great through the st george and the marshall, a little fizzy through the bassman. very amp like, not much compression, and plenty of thump. we really liked it for rhythm parts, and for parts that needed to sound "tough". you know, THAT sounded. with the SHO side kicked it, it sounded great on leads. it made the amps break up nicely, and did i mention it thumped? not in an overbearing woofy way, but in a nice palm muting way. we both agreed that the distortion side for leads wasn't our favorite, but would maybe work for other people.
fulltone fulldrive 2 - a standard for sure, and i think everyone knows why. chris had grown tired of it and hasn't played it for awhile. we ran it at both 9 volts and 18 volts, always in vintage mode. we also did a lot of back to back with the ts9 since supposedly the fulltone is somewhat based on it. what we found was what we sort of expected. the fulltone sounded good, it just didn't seem to really have any kick to it. it distorts the signal, but sounds sort of tame. it played well with all the amps though, and that is the big plus. in 9 volt mode it seemed a little murky, i cranked the tone on it and even though it did get brighter, it just didn't have the "cut" of the ts9. in 18 volt mode it became a little harsh sounding. running it either way there didn't seem to be much loss of bass like with the ts9. good sounding pedal, but like i said before, a little tame.
just before we finished up i came up with something... why not run the fulltone somewhere between 9 and 18 volts? since we were using a voodoo labs pedal power 2 we were able to do it. we plugged the cable into 7 and 8 ports on the front and switched the 8 port to sag mode. i then started out with it set full up (18 volts) and then proceeded to sag that down until i was told to stop, looking at the knob i would have to guess we were somewhere between 15 and 16 volts going into the pedal. we'll have to do this experiment again and then check the cable with a meter. but it was a fun experiment and worth checking out.
keeley 808 modded ts9 - the one i own, the one i've grown tired of. chris however has been playing the hell out of it. it's a great pedal, very popular. this pedal played nice with all the amps also. when you kick it in does thin out the bass a little, but it adds that hump that makes it sing out. it seemed a little smoother than the other 2 pedals, well mannered but aggressive sounding all at the same time. it's the difference between being slapped in the face and getting your bell rung. the ts9 compressed the sound but still seemed to scream. chris has been using this as his lead compressed tone pedal, which to my ears sounds better than when i used it as my rhythm box. horses for courses i guess.
so what did we come out thinking?
personally, i like the box of rock through a marshall into 12's. it does what it's designed to do, mimic a raging marshall, i think it does this very well. the fulltone i actually took home after varying the voltage because i started to really dig the tone. it was a nice cross between hendrix and ccr, if you can imagine that. the tubescreamer, still a little tired of it. so i'll just let that one sit for awhile, i'll come back to it one day.
chris? loves the box of rock, loves the ts9, bored with the fulltone.
what did we learn? tone is all in the ears and playing style of a person. news? nope, just confirmed. we had a lot of fun shooting them out, and being able to play out and not restrained. of course, when it comes time to play in a band the settings will have to change of course. but it was nice to hear these great pedals on their own and through several different amps with different guitars. i fell back in love with my bassman. i don't get to play it much, but i'm going to make it a point to. nice and chunky, but still fendery.
that was a lot to read but i hope someone finds this helpful.
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