mhuxtable Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 So I got my Blackstone overdrive pedal today!! I go the guitar store, bring my guitar (blonde Sheraton) and my amp (65 Twin Reverb reissue) and my Holy Stain just to put something after it to see how it does with FX. I plug in, crank up, and all I can say is HOLY COW. This is BY FAR, the BEST drive pedal I have EVER heard. It sounds so natural and beautiful...I cannot put it into words. So I play around mostly with the brown channel (lower gain) since my music doesn't ever really have blistering gained out parts. But that red channel, man oh man does it sing! It cuts through brilliantly! And the tone is just incredible. Anyway, I'm looking in the small manual it comes with and looking at the tweaking that can be done (2 trim pots inside that can adjust the treble and gain on the red channel) and I notice him mentioning a couple capacitors. One plays with the presence a bit, but the other deals with the red chanel. He gives some options, but also mentions, if you remove that particular capacitor, the red channel becomes a brown channel!! So basically, I think I can tweak this thing so it has a slightly dirty clean sounding channel, then also have a truley dirty driven channel!! I am freaking STOKED. Anyone who has an amazing sounding clean amp, go get a Blackstone. You will have all the versatility you need in one tiny pedal. Jim Blackstone, my hats off to you. You are a distortion genius. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sauce Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 Very cool man. Heard lots of good things about those guys. Enjoy it. Then you'll never hear surf music again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caevan O’Shite Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 Cool. Ask yourself- What Would Ren and Stimpy Do? ~ Caevan James-Michael Miller-O'Shite ~ _ ___ _ Leprechaun, Esquire _ ___ _ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tone Taster Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 Yeah, I miss my Blackstone, but I needed the money By FAR, one of the most amp-like OD's. It really makes any clean amp sound like it is cranked with real power amp over drive, and you do not even get the notion you are plugged into a pedal However, you need another pedal for rock leads. THis pedal lacks the sustain and compression necessary for overdriven leads in the rock idiom. The key is to find a pedal that stacks well with it for sustainy solos One negative I have is that it had some high end that you couldn't dial out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhuxtable Posted March 19, 2009 Author Share Posted March 19, 2009 The key is to find a pedal that stacks well with it for sustainy solos One negative I have is that it had some high end that you couldn't dial out yeah i never do sustained hi gain solo or lead work, so not an issue for me. as far as the high end, i dont really hear that. in fact, the blackstone seems to really match my guitar pickups well: bright on the bridge, less so in the middle, mellow on the neck. the way you would fix too much presence is the other plug capacitor...it handles the presence...change to a different value and you can lose some of that hi end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tone Taster Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 well, at the time I had a PRS with those lame dragon pickups, which accounted for the harshness. Now that I use real pickups with low output, that high end would probably not be there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miroslav Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 Yeah, I miss my Blackstone, but I needed the money By FAR, one of the most amp-like OD's. It really makes any clean amp sound like it is cranked with real power amp over drive, and you do not even get the notion you are plugged into a pedal However, you need another pedal for rock leads. THis pedal lacks the sustain and compression necessary for overdriven leads in the rock idiom. The key is to find a pedal that stacks well with it for sustainy solos One negative I have is that it had some high end that you couldn't dial out I looked at the Blackstone...its a very interesting OD pedal! I almost bought one not too long ago. I think it would be a nice addition to an existing roster of OD pedalsbut yeah, it doesnt quite cover everythingthough it covers a lot and better than many other OD pedals. Plus...it looks realy cool. And yeah... I too have problem with most OD pedals because they have that damn high-end fizz/noise/buzz...etc....that you can't seem get rid of when you really crank up the pedal for more seriously driven tones, and if you try it dial it outyou often end up with that muddy crunch tone. I go a Lovekraft Mojo Drive not too long ago that I thought was pretty decent sounding. It can be dialed up a few different ways, and has three different OD flavors via toggle. Even cranked, it's not too homogenized sounding...but at that point you have to back of the treble side of the Tone controland then it can be a thin line between nice sustain/crunch with no high-end fizzbut avoiding the low end mud. But the Dirty Boy Ball Buster that I just got has none of those problems, and it does Rock tones really well. When you get it past 3:00 it has that sustain and compression, with NO loss of articulation, and none of the high end fizzand you can then shape the low end separately, dialing in exactly what you want. A very cool pedal. You might want to check it out yZe....here some more info and a video demo: DB BB pedal miroslav - miroslavmusic.com "Just because it happened to you, it doesn't mean it's important." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caevan O’Shite Posted March 19, 2009 Share Posted March 19, 2009 This thread gives me an idea for an article-suggestion or two for GP... ...follow me over here to the GP Ed's Office Forum and back me up... Ask yourself- What Would Ren and Stimpy Do? ~ Caevan James-Michael Miller-O'Shite ~ _ ___ _ Leprechaun, Esquire _ ___ _ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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