hey guys,
i did an a/b/c test pitting the shredhead against a boutique stompbox and a boutique modded boss pedal. namely
a DNA Gain Fxxer ($239):
http://www.pedalspluseffectswarehouse.com/DNA_Analogic_Gain_FXXker_II_p/dna-gnfxxer.htman analogman modded MT-2 ($155):
http://www.analogman.com/boss.htm#mt2amp used was a peavey studio pro 112.
ive been toying with the shredhead the past few days. so far i found it to be a great pedal. but how does it fare against real boutique pedals made by people reputed to have an ear for tone? i went over to incx's pad to check out his dna gain fxxer and his beloved analogman mt2. so, we plugged them in.
i used two guitars. the first is a washburn vindicator with bareknuckles pickups. the other, a bc rich nj series virgo/virgin (forgot which one) with high output bc rich pickups.
the first pedal i tested was the dna gain fxxer. the moment i stepped on the pedal i was greeted with this godawful microphonic feedback so i switched guitars right away. this was with all knobs on 12 o clock. after a few tweaks i concluded that the pedal is just way too annoying to sound good. in a live setting, the last thing you want is unreliable gear. whether its the pedal the cable or amp or anything in the signal chain that would annoy the hell out of you. so i put down the gain fxxer and tried the analogman
i plugged it in, same noise problem. i concluded that its either the cable, or amp. Nevertheless, with this conclusion, I temporarily went back to the gain fxxer and began tweaking the thing. I got a good crunchy sound with it but it sounded muddy at times especially during fast triplet muting. It had great low end though. But in my opinion, really thumping low end is just for those guitarists who are convinced that theyre the ones responsible for that frequency range . I don’t necessarily agree with this. I believe that midrange is where a guitarist should live and die. Even in metal. Yes sometimes you scoop mids to make it sound a certain way but not ALL mids. i find it annoying each time I see a smile on someones boss eq pedal or if the mid knob on an amp is turned all the way down making the treble and mid knobs look like pinball flippers. So I dismiss the dna gain fxxer. The best sound I could get from it was really compressed and sounded unreal with paper-like midrange and highs but with massive low end. Like a woman with all arse and no boobs. (don’t get me wrong. Im an ass person actually.)
next up was the analogman modded mt2. All but some guitar noobs and guitar ELITE (yes! Two opposite ends of the spectrum) find the mt2 useful. Why? Guitar noobs don’t know what they want to sound like and expect a pedal with that many knobs to get ANY sound they want. The problem is, they often don’t know what a GOOD sound is. Elite players know how to TAME the nasally quality of the mt2. Ive heard awesome tones coming from a stock mt2 to my surprise. But in between them, those who really just want to spend less time on stage looking like a guitar technician than a guitarist need fewer knobs to friggen fiddle with. People hate it when you just chug away on your drops d tunings and do At The Gates Swedish ripoff riffs that just don’t sound THAT cool anyway . lets go out and smoke even if I don’t. Its better than listening to this band rehearse on stage. But I digress!
The analogman mt2 promises to do away with those awful, awful nasally mids while responding more naturally. Okay. I plug it in, tweak it and got a halfway decent rhythm tone. Actually it was a good tone when I got used to it. I was happily playing converge, killswitch engage, pantera, and some random Swedish riffs (oh shoot. I do them too!) and It sounded great. Nice thumpy lows. And moderately biting highs. The mids weren’t nasal when I was playing rhythm but when I did a little number on the higher frets, they were still there. Albeit toned down, I fell from my heavy metal cloud and awoke with a boss mt2 on the floor. So I wasn’t playing a big amp huh. Solos still sounded like Rudolf the red nosed reindeer.
And now, the moment everyone’s been waiting for! While not as popular as some boxer that could effectively lower the nation’s crime rate by beating the crap out of Mexicans, the mv electronics shredhead is still proudly made in the ph of a. I mean the lovely archipelago of the Philippines! And it might lower crime rate! (by getting less people too drunk after listening to horrible tone)
The funny thing about the word “tone” is that people often think it only applies to solos. EEEENK wrong. There are just some pedals that work great on tight chunky metal and hardcore rhythm and some just go better with the rest of us who just want to play variations of sweet child of mine. A good pedal should be able to handle BOTH well enough. While not necessarily excelling in either, a compromise between a singing lead tone and a brutal face ripping, cat raping rhythm tone is always to be desired.
So how does it sound? The shredhead sounds amazingly clear while playing riffs like A Life Once Lost songs. I took it to the next level and tweaked the tone knob to the treble side along with the presence knob to get this nice aggressive tone reminiscent of Jane Doe era Converge. (the guitarist used a marshall jmp 50 boosted by either an mt2 or an hm2.). speaking of marshalls and hm2’s Entombed used that combination to make their trademark “Chainsaw guitar tone” which has been used and abused by bands like converge, killswitch engage, at the gates (and all their clones) and basically it evolved to the modern metal sound we hear today (the middy chuggy metal tone that we all aspire to have). The shredhead performs well in this category.
“I hate metal! What about us bluesmen/alternative/pogi rock low gain people?”
A ha! Well the shredhead also tops the other two pedals in this category. The other two pedals are advertised as high gain metal pedals primarily. The shredhead, while not having the knobs of the mt2 or the active low eq of the gain fxxer, trumps them both in versatility. One thing I don’t like about marshall voiced pedals like the crunchbox or the bsiab is that they aren’t that good in the low gain territory. they just dont have that spongy reponse that most of us who have used a tube amp experience. The shredhead, by my surprise, comes really really close! Obviously it wont be fender clean when you turn the gain up and lower the guitar volume, but it doesn’t sound like a blanket is thrown over your amp should you decide to go mellow after a half hour of headbanging. The gain fxxer doesn’t do low gain. The mt2 is just too nasal and it feels weird at low gain. The shredhead is so responsive that youll find yourself going back and forth between looking like youre taking the biggest crap ever or having the orgasm of your life.
Another thing that I am really obsessed with in finding in every pedal I find is this thing called sustaining to feedback. When I hit a note and let it sustain, I don’t want it to decay into entropy! I want it to sing and reverberate. I want to hear the amp and the strings interacting. I want to hear frequencies coinciding into musical feedback. I want my damn harmonics! Prior to this, I have only experienced this in one pedal which is the BSIAB. I was quite surprised when I left my note to sustain, it ended up being this beautiful harmonic feedback. I bend a note, do vibrato after a moment then sweet singing feedback appears.
And with that, truly fell in love.
Incx was listening the whole time behind me and the shredhead seems to have his blessing along with my liptone Diablo which I would use in tandem with the shredhead to complete my “wall of sound” setup of upper mids and lower mids care of the shredhead and the Diablo respectively.
Oh yeah I almost forgot. Remember that thing I mentioned earlier about that annoying microphonic feedback from the analogman and dna gain fxxer? Guess which pedal didn’t make a sound
And that ends my little in depth a/b/c review/comparison between a boutique stompbox that costs as much as your daughter’s guitar, a boutique modded boss pedal that costs twice as much as a stock one which would sound good anyway with a little tweaking and the wonderful, wonderful shredhead.
Kick your girlfriend out. This is the best head you can get.
