My JCM 900 finally arrived!!

[zeegler]

I spent lunch today trying some out through an old JCM800. Sounded pretty good. I don't know if the Japanese ones actually do sound better or if I'm just imagining some additional mojo there, but there did seem to be a difference. The MIT one seemed thinner. Tried out a Blues Driver too. It sounded a thicker & fuller, but the SD-1s were growing on me the more I played them. Just wish I could've tried them all at gigworthy levels. In the end I left to think about it some more - I have trouble justifying paying so much for either of the two old Japanese SD-1s there when a brand new Taiwanese one is cheaper. And I'm a tightass.

I tried out a few other stomps too. The ZVex Box of Rock was very cool & a lot of fun, but I don't need a boost/distortion. The Retro-sonic Eight O Eight Overdrive was very nice too. The Crowther Hot Cake was probably my favourite. All were very cool, sounded great, leagues ahead of the Boss pedals but at 2-3 times the cost of the SD-1 too.

That's exactly what I heard about the MIT SD-1s, that they sound thinner. A friend of mine brought me his MIT to mod to MIJ specs, and stupidly, I forgot to try it out before I did the mod. I tried it out afterwards, and it sounded identical to my MIJ, so I guess the mod works. It's a pretty easy one to do. You just swap out a couple of resistors, and the op-amp. How much more expensive were the MIJ ones they had versus the MIT ones? It might be worth getting the MIT, and modding it.

The market is completely flooded with OD/boost/distortion pedals. I was just looking on Ebay, and it's mind boggling how many different ones there are. I would love to be able to buy a different one every couple of weeks to try out, but that could get expensive. Some of these "boutique" pedals cost $200-300.

[zeegler]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Landgraff-Dynamic-Guitar-Overdrive-Pedal_W0QQitemZ250317939627QQihZ015QQcategoryZ41416QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This one's at $430 and 7 hours left. You'd have to be nuts to pay $430 for an OD pedal.

[Partial @ Marshall]

Keeley! Keeley! (the crowd chants) Serious improvement over stock for any pedal, used ones on the 'bay are a good deal. New ones are worth it but spendy

[Spivonious]

I had a JCM900 MkIII a while back, and I just cranked all of the knobs. I also put some Tung Sol tubes in the preamp...that gave me a bit more gain and tamed the bite a bit. Still not enough gain to get real metal tones though. More like early Megadeth.

[zeegler]

Keeley! Keeley! (the crowd chants) Serious improvement over stock for any pedal, used ones on the 'bay are a good deal. New ones are worth it but spendy

I see the prices for the Keeley modded pedals, and I'd rather do the mods myself for a fraction of the cost.

[toejam]

Keeley! Keeley! (the crowd chants) Serious improvement over stock for any pedal, used ones on the 'bay are a good deal. New ones are worth it but spendy

I've got a Keeley-modded Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive. It's awesome! I don't know what it sounded like stock, as I got it already modded. I got it in a trade with someone here, but I can't recall who at the moment.
The Digitech Bad Monkey is also a very nice pedal (I've actually got the original DOD version of it called the Juice Box).

[FlyingSkull]

l (I've actually got the original DOD version of it called the Juice Box).

I thought I was the only person who owned a Juice box. Wow.

[toejam]

I had two of them at one point. I traded the other to Hippie Tim here. It's a killer pedal!

[Partial @ Marshall]

I see the prices for the Keeley modded pedals, and I'd rather do the mods myself for a fraction of the cost.

I can't blame you there. I just seem to have more projects than time lately. Less time building and more time playing would be the thing to do...oh yeah and less time screwing off on this site. But, I love this site.

[chrisolson]

I've been using an SD-1 in front of my Mesa F-100 with the gain on the pedal at about 9:00, and same on the Mesa. It gives it a little more of a Marshall flavor. What I'd really like to try out is a clean boost to hit the front end, but then I might lose the Marshall-y character...

[Robert Burns]

I didnt have any luck with the BBE in my loop. It made it fizzy. It did add bottom end, but it lacked the Marshall Body of Sound with the Stomp in the loop.

I noticed the tone get about 30% better with the DSL -50 1/2 stack,
by going into the front end with the BBE sonic stomp.
For some reason..it does nothing into my VHT...