14 posts
Spent sum time at GC today trying out pretty much every pedal they had. My main interest was, of course, the Satchurator. I was plugged into a Fender Twin Reverb.
I liked the Satchurator a lot. Had a lot of gain. The 'more' button added a cool gain bonus....sort of like adding a boost pedal in front of it. But from a tonal viewpoint, I thought it was kind of sterile (sorry Charger). I just don't like pedals with one individual 'tone' knob. The creamy mids weren't happening.
Long story short....I eventually hooked up a Jekyll & Hyde. With the separate mid and high eq knobs available, I was able to find the 'sweet spot' I was looking for. Plus the distortion on this pedal is VERY smooth. The harmonics were WAY too easy to grab.
So I'm going back to the J&H. Plus I found this mod for it:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320120565272&_trksid=p3907.m32&_trkparms=tab%3DWatching
You pedal guys should seriously look at this pup :)
That's interesting. I was actually pretty surprised myself that I liked the Satchurator as much as I do. It has way more usable gain than any other pedal I've ever had. As for the mid thing, I only have a mid knob on one pedal, the Gov'nor, and I only have more than one tone knob on two distortion pedals out of eight, so I really don't miss it. From my perspective, the tone knob on the Satchurator has the most ridiculous range I've ever heard... from total mud to treble so strident it breaks up like a 60's fuzz.
Anyway, I'm sorry you didn't love it... I am intrigued to hear so much good stuff about the Jekyll and Hyde. I have to see if I can find one to try out... although after my jams this weekend, I'm pretty much set on the Satchurator as my new main pedal...
I've been through both types of pedals. The problem with pedals that have only a tone control (which is usually just a treble cut) is that it has one voice, and either it works with your gear or doesn't. What's really frustrating is finding a pedal that sounds really good, but would be great with just a bit more mids, or maybe even just having their mids shifted up a few hz, or maybe it sounds great but lacks a little bottom, or is too bright. Or maybe even your amp or speaker has a lot of mids so you don't want to add more, but mine doesn't so I want a mid hump. All that stuff comes into play.
The pedals that have a wide range of tonal control allow the ability to tune to almost any rig AND to be used more ways. I've have several great pedals, that I ended up selling, because they sounded great with one or two guitars but not as good with the other two. And having only a tone control, they couldn't be dialed in to work with all the guitars.
That said, some of the best pedals made only have one tone control. If you have one main guitar and amp, it's much easier to quickly find pedals that do and don't work with your rig. But if you have several guitars and amps the added tuning ability is a BIG plus. A lot of my pedal flipping has resulted in not being able to have 3-4 different $150-$200 ODs around that KILL with one guitar but don't sound that great with the others. If I had the coin to do so, I'd have kept about 10 pedals I've flipped, because they worked great with one or two guitars and one amp at one thing. Most of the ones I've kept, either have some flexibility or just sound great with everything even though they just have one tone control (OCD for example).
p.s. I'm really digging my BSIAB II right now. But I have a mod to do to it as soon as I find the right value cap, that could take it over the top. It's a full blown Distortion though, no mild OD available in it's current state. My next one I'm building with lower gain FETs and it's supposed to be a killer mid gain pedal that way.
But with regards to the above posts, I also think I'm going to change a cap on the R/C network right on the input, to give it a bit more bottom end. This design only has a tone control, so if you want more bass, or mids or whatever, you have to do it in the circuit during build.
I'm so sold on this design overall (cascaded FET gain stages which are very much like the way tube amps work) that I'm going to use their board for experimenting and build some offboard full tone stacks to try with it. That pedal should evolve into one with full B/M/T controls in the future. It's not just as simple as sticking a tone stack between gain stages though (a full tone stack typically sucks 20 or more dB of gain, so you have to make that back up...) or I'd have it done already.
My twin tube has two tone controls Treb and bass. It works very well The Nady TD1 has a myriad of tonal options and it also works very well. But neither are high gain items they are basically overdrive pedals, they sound like an all tube single channel amp turned all the way up more or less, I guess because they both have tubes in them.
Charger, when are you going to put up a demo of the Satchurator being put through it's paces?
I'm sure it sounds great, doubt he'd lend his name/input to Vox if he wasn't Satchisfied, errr, satisfied. And even though it didn't take much thought, that name is at least every bit as hip as any other of the gazillion pedals out there, some clever marketing anyway - Joe is an oportunist, I can imagine seeing a "Satch-r-ator" addition on a JSX amp in the future, or maybe even renaming the "fat" switch. ;-)
Once my Laney's repaired, I'm going to be doing a you-tube clip with the Satchurator. ;)
DreamTheaterRules — Jan 06, 2009Charger, when are you going to put up a demo of the Satchurator being put through it's paces?
Probably alongside your clip of the Rebel 20... :D
;D Hey, I have 8 mics, I'll trade you for your top 8 guitars. Whether recorded or not, my guitars DO get played. ;)
My top two guitars are worth over $10k combined - they aren't going anywhere. The "bottom" 12 guitars were all sold to try and stay financially afloat (it wasn't enough unfortunately).
So, I may be going down, but I'm taking my custom guitars with me! ::)
I've put the Satchurator through my Laney VC30, Marshall Valvestate 8080, Valvetronix AD120VTX, and the new VT30 - & I was amazed at how well it worked with every amp.
There's no question that it kicks out a lot of gain (although this is not a 'metal' pedal) - I much prefer the 'more' button on because of the mid-range EQ boost you get, and the pedal is incredibly sensitive to guitar volume roll-off which is where it really scores big-time.
Although I'm not a fan of massive amounts of gain, and distortion is massively subjective & down to personal taste, I felt the distortion somewhat 2-dimensional, and perhaps a little lacking in rich harmonic overtones. I find it sounds best not through a clean amp, but clean with some 'grit' in it. The tone control is very responsive & wide ranging, but to my ears it sounds best without too much treble - overdo it, and it sounds too sterile.
For my tastes I much prefer the warm Marshall crunch and raunch tones of the 'Box of rock', and the excellent MI Audio Crunch Box. I think the Satchurator is a good pedal, though somewhat overhyped - I don't think it's a great pedal, at least not for me. :-/
Rich ;)
