ok im going to post 2 reviews. one is me about plugging the hiblood (HB) to a b52 100w amp. and one is with me listening to it while a friend used it at a gig.
ok here it goes:
sound: 9/10: when i first plugged it in, the first thing i tried was the ts808 side. i had the amp on clean and set the eq to taste. to be honest i wasnt that much impressed. then i remembered reading something sa forum that the ts808 isnt that good as a stand alone od. so i tried it using the b-52's drive channel and using it as a booster. KAPOW! ayun! the super sterile hi gain sounds ng b-52 were injected with added warmth and mids! it was a tad more dynamic as well. switching to the neck pickup gave me slash-esque tones (i had no tone control so i compensated with the amp and pedal). i switched back to clean and started playing around with my coil tap. on the bridge position with the gain on full and the volume around 3 o clock i get nice dirt on open chords. before i knew it i was playing along to Joy Division's Shadow Play and it sounds quite close. but here is what surprised me the most. my neck pickup is a Dimarzio Humbucker from hell and if you guys know what that is, it is a "glassy" humbucker. so i coil tapped it and clicked on the ts808. a made some runs on the lower strings and i heard a very familiar tone: SRV's tone in texas flood! i know his pickup was in the bridge position at that time, but the humbucker from hell's high treble response and the ts808 gave me that super "BALLSY" sound from the neck! haha i dunno how to play texas flood (i have time to learn before i record the demo so i might just include it. intro lang... hehe), but i sure know what it sounds like. and it sounds close. so far thats all i can say about the ts808 as a standalone od/booster for the amp. next is the bsiab side...
at first i wanted to try lo gain sounds so i set the gain on 0. stupid me. this thing reacts like a real amp! zero gain = zero sound! its like a volume and master volume. basically what you see is what you get: hi gain marshall. it has that throaty marshall voicing that i love so much. open d in dropped d tuning sounds amazing. there is not much variation in gain as it is a "cranked" marshall sound but it reacts quite well with the volume knob. i experienced some muddiness at the lowest volume of my guitar though, but i think thats with my pots. taps and pinch harmonics are quite easy to pull off and it will sustain for a very long time. i paired it with a bbe sonic maximizer and it really shined. its hard to describe with words so you guys just have to wait for the video demo.
when i cascaded the two i was rewarded with TONS of sustain. and its sweet because it sustains to feedback! i love doing that!
ok so far that was the pedal alone at a "livingroom in the third floor of a building" level (ok it was quite loud.) next is the pedal in a band setting
my friend borrowed my guitar and the HB para sa YFC thingy nila. i came along and played roadie (poor me.) the amps there were a marshall valvestate 50, and a b52 (again) 50 watt. he used the marshall i think (i would...
). when they played i noticed that i couldnt hear him very well. but i did hear the marshall "Crunch" behind all the instruments (rhythm guitars siya e). they played in a huge gym and i was i think 50 meters away at first. i guess the 50w amps werent enough for such a big venue. when i went closer to the stage, i could hear it and darn, that marshall sounds like a marshall... i mean, its a sound you thought you wouldnt hear from a VALVESTATE. maybe its with the levels that doesnt make it cut that much but from a band standpoint, his prescence is heard and its not like "hey, listen to me, im the loudest member of the band" sort of way. even with his levels set so poorly, i could still hear him and thats a good thing. it wasnt annoying like those kids who used a poorly mixed zoom (those things could sound good with proper timpla
) and a poorly tweaked metalzone (that too.)
so that ends my semi-in-depth review of the Highblood pedal. para may pa-epek, ill leave you guys with a quotable quote:
good tones happen to those who tweak.
