Another pedal question

Choose an overdrive pedal

  • Wampler Tumnus

    Votes: 6 75.0%
  • MXT GT-OD

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • SUHR Shiba Drive Reloaded

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Mad Professor Little Green Wonder

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Earthquaker Devices Dunes

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • J. Rockett Archer IKON

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • Wampler Clarksdale

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    8
Funny how we do that, isn't it. We can take 3-4-5 very different pedals, and dial them to sound similar in a demo.

You bet. It’s why demos are really of limited usefulness; you might hear a demo and not like the piece, only because it wasn’t dialed in to your taste. Until you try it yourself, you never quite know what it can do in your hands.

I figure demos are useful to stimulate interest, or rule things out, but only in a general way. Diving in and getting experience are still the best ways.

Being able to get your hands on products is the best way to make a buying decision. Sadly the physical retail store world is teetering on the brink these days.
 
Yes, not to be a critic, but the most useful demos are the ones where the knobs are turned to show the range of tone, gain, and character of the pedal, or amp or whatever is being demo’d. Even then, you have to factor in that guys amp (and amp settings) guitar, other pedals that may be in the chain, how it was mic’d or recorded, etc.

One of the big pedal demo guys (won’t say his name here) did a demo of 4 different versions of OCD all set exactly the same, and then concluded that V1.4 was “by far the weakest of the bunch.” Anyone who knows the OCD versions knows that there was a different clipping stage in that version which made it much quieter. OCD’s can be crazy loud with the level even at 10:00 but that version needs to be up at noon to be as loud as the others. IF you turn it up to noon, it’s as loud as the others and you may find you prefer the gain character of the pedal. If you leave it literally nowhere close to the same volume output as the others, then yeah, it’s easy to conclude that it’s not as good. Completely invalidated the comparison of the pedals, IMO.
 
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