Pedal Shootout Is Coming…..

On Saturday, I stopped by Rainbow Music in State College where I confiscated ever single overdrive and distortion pedal in the store.  The only things I left there were pedals that were obviously designed for metal or grunge.  Everything else was fair game.

I then set up 3 different backing tracks to play along with.  I then created 3 categories, “Clean Boost”, “Partial Gain”, and “Full Gain”.  I put two backing tracks into each group for a total of 6 minutes of backing music.

For the next 4 hours that night, and for 5 hours the next day, I went through 17 pedals, recording each one at 3 different settings matching the groups above.  Each pedal was played over the exact same backing tracks with the exact same recording setup.

By the time I was done, my fingers hurt so bad I that it hurt to type.  My ears were complely worn out and I think I’ll never want to hear those tracks again.

So to sum up,  my weekend was spent like this: 17 commonly available distortion/overdrive pedals recorded the exact same way, over 6 minutes of the exact same backing tracks for a total of 1.7 hours of audio for your evaluation.  I think I’ll name this pedal shootout “Play through the pain” :)

I’ll be posting the recordings here sometime in the next week or two after I get them mixed down.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 12:07 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

5 Responses to “Pedal Shootout Is Coming…..”

  1. Peter Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Anxiously awaiting to hear your finds and opinions on the pedals you tested !
    I just have a Maxon OD-9 and my mate has a Ibaniz TS-808 but they sure could use some help :D

    [Reply]
  2. Kevin McNamara Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    Oh, the waiting! Could you at least tease us with a list of the pedals in the meantime? Years of reading guitar magazines and I’ve never seen a no-kidding comparison test of anything. They refuse to say anything untoward about their advertisers’ products. If only the music mags were more like auto mags in that respect.

    I can’t wait to see your new vid having seen how cool the BJ one was.

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  3. Jimmy R. Says:
    November 6th, 2008 at 11:00 pm

    I’ve seen a couple modded TS808’s on Ebay.

    Are you planning on reviewing popular modded pedals as well?

    Anyway, I’ve greatly enjoyed your videos and lessons ever since I originally found them on Youtube. Keep up the good work!

    [Reply]
  4. Fuzzbox Says:
    November 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Hhhhmmm how come my commets didn’t get publised then :) ?????

    [Reply]
  5. Fuzzbox Says:
    November 17th, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    The BOSS GT-10 has a fantastic blues setting. You can just dial-in what you want. You can even use a Fender amp model to round it all off. Very easy to use. Having said that though, Anthony has done a fantastic job getting it all recorded and mixed.

    [Reply]

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