Gear Help

[DCZX]

Hi,

I'm playing in a band that's kind of prog/metal. I also like to get heavy death metal tones (Amorphis or Becoming the Archetype are my favorite bands).

I have an old Fender Bassman tube amp and a Gibson SG, also a Jackson Kelly. I've been using a Line 6 Uber Metal but wanted to get something with more character, so I purchased a Seymour Duncan Mayhem pedal.

So far, I've been disappointed with it. The gain is not that great and my pinch harmonics don't sound as good. So, I want to return it and get something else but I'm not sure what to get...

1. Should I keep the Seymour Duncan and get an EQ pedal? Would this help?

2. Should I get a Damage Control Demonizer? This looks like a great pedal, but I hear that it lacks some bottom end and doesn't have the greatest amount of gain.

3. Should I get a Damage Control Solid Metal? This looks like an awesome pedal that nails the high gain tone with tubes. Lacks some of the recording features of the Demonizer though.

Any help or advice you can give would be appreciated. Thx.

[AlexL]

I'd play with the EQ a bit.

I bought a Mayhem pedal, and put it up against a $2000.00 boutique Marshall clone. It held up very, very well. The head sounded better (power tube distortion always sounds better than preamp tube distortion), but only by a little.

The amp we were using with the pedal was a Heritage Colonial, which is a single channel amp primarily designed for cleans. It can reproduce Fender Bassman and Marshall Plexi clean tones. We were running it as a Bassman.


- E.

[Inazone]

The biggest impact that a single device made on my tone was when I added a parametric EQ to my rig. First I tried a rackmount ART Tube EQ, and I used that until it died. Now I have an Electro-Harmonix Tube EQ pedal, which is more guitar-specific and allows for almost limitless changes in tone. I already use an ART Xtreme distortion pedal that has a very good EQ of its own, but I found my live tone to be either thin or muddy depending on the venue we were playing and the PA mix. That where a parametric EQ first came to mind. But now, I wouldn't want to play without it, because it has given me a smoother, more balanced tone than the Xtreme EQ could ever provide on its own.