This pedal can go from super compressed, tight, smooth distortion, to a snarling buzz-saw monster that brings out every pick-to-string strike you throw at it. Surprisingly though, one trait it does not possess is the extreme scoop to the mids many associate with “Heavy Metal.” One of the secrets to it’s tone is the somewhat strange configuration of it’s “color mix” section.
There is the “low” knob which functions as one would expect, and a high knob to help shape the tone. But the “high” knob is kind of an odd-ball in how it effects things. The high-mids are tied together so that the high knob is more of a upper-mids to treble control which can make getting great sounds out of it a bit tricky… but this is also the charm of it. It’s not a pedal all will turn on and immediately fall in love with. It’s a pedal that will make you search for the sweet spot between the pedal’s own crunch and the amp it’s being fed into.
There is a vintage/modern switch that lets you to reconfigure the clipping diodes allowing you bounce between “stock” at one setting, and a less compressed more overdrive-meets-distortion sound as well as a boost to the output level.