MESA BOOGIE TRANSATLANTIC TA 30

Hello everyone, today I want to talk about Mesa Boogie Transatlantic TA-30. A little background, Mesa Boogie is very known for its very high quality high end guitar and bass amplifiers and cabinets. Some of its successful amplifiers are now being used by high profile artists such as John Petrucci, Mark Tremonti, Andy Timmons and many others. 

The history of Mesa Boogie starts way back from around early '70s when Randall Smith started his job as a repairing technician for guitar amplifiers. He modified amps that was available during that time by "hot-roding" the amp with an extra tube on the preamp section of the amp to achieve a high gain sound that was not easily available during that time. Since then, he started building his very own guitar and bass amps that come in different tones, output power and size.

Transatlantic TA-30

Mesa Boogie is very well known for its reputation on making high gain amp, but those people working there want to show the world that they can also make amps that can do some great stuffs on lower gain settings; this is the main purpose of TA-30. This amp does so many great clean and break up tones, but you can always crank it up to get that mid gain tone out of this amp. This amp is also on the portable side of amplifiers, means that the head version of this amp is pretty small and light enough for you to easily carry it on any gig.

Technical Detail

I have the head version, it features 4xEL84 tubes, 6x12AX7 tubes, a special output transformer, Effects Loop, Reverb circuits for both channels, independent EQ for different channels, independent Reverb and FX Loop setting on different channels, independent output power level on different channels and some push-pull knobs. The EQ settings are consisted of Bass and Treble without any option to adjust the Mid.

You have two channels:

Channel Green, you can choose between "Normal" clean tone and a British sort of like Vox AC "Top Boost". When cranked up, the Clean tone will deliver an almost break up tone but still on the clean side while the Top Boost tone will start to get saturated. This channel EQ includes a Cut knob to remove some high end sizzle; the knob can be pulled and it starts to act as a Master Volume with pre-fixed amount of "cut".

Channel Red, you can choose between "Tweed" for American Fender clean tone, "Hi 1" for British mid gain tone, and "Hi 2" for Mesa's signature mid gain tone. When cranked up, Tweed will give you an almost break up tone with just a hint of dirt. Hi 1 will deliver Marshall-like mid gain tone when cranked up with enough sustain but not very saturated. Hi 2 will sizzle when cranked up and it will sound pretty good when you do lead stuffs.

All the channels have individual tone control as well as power selection of 15, 30 and 40 Watt. The 15 and 30 Watt power level will give you class A tube tone at different volume and headroom level. The 40 Watt power level will deliver class AB "Dyna-watt" tube tone with extra juice that can enhance your playability and tone.

My opinion

It's a super great amp!!! I personally like the clean channel on Normal mode with some added treble. With the help of its built-in Reverb, you can get so many great classic clean tone that can cover many ground of music styles. I also like the Hi 2 mode on the Red Channel and I usually roll down the treble to get that fat warm tone; I add my BB Preamp in front of the already cranked amp to push it harder and make it sound like a mid/high gain amp that doesn't fuzz too much and still retain the integrity of the original tone. 

You can add any pedal in front of it or on the Effects Loop if you need to use the FX Loop. It works well with all of my overdrive pedal and it projects the delays from my delay pedal nicely. I use a Mesa Mini Recto Cab as my cabinet and it works well especially on Hi 1 mode. 

Is it worth the price?

Nothing bad to say except its sky-rocket-high price. But I say it's worth it, the overall quality of the amp is very good and it's very well built. My personal experience with this amp has been very great, it delivers what it says on the brochure and on the internet.

From 0 to 10

10. Maybe even higher than 10, this is really one of the best amp I've ever tried.

Here's some sound clips. I used my PGM30 with DiMarzio AT-1 and Cruiser Bridge. I record the sound from the amp using Radial JDX Amp DI.

DIRTY

CLEAN

I hope you enjoy this post. Cheers and God Bless :)

Stay tuned for more reviews :)

DIMARZIO VIRTUAL VINTAGE HEAVY BLUES 2, AIR ZONE AND TEXMEX

Hello everyone, I am going to share some sound clips of my newly installed pickups on my Strat. I hope you will enjoy these clips and make good use of them. Some notes first: the Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 does scream in high gain pretty well but I didn't have time to capture it. I'll try to get the recording next time.

On the other hand, Air Zone definitely sounds fantastic! It doesn't sound similar to any other DiMarzio humbuckers I've tried, this is very unique. It's not a total screamer, it doesn't make your sound muddy, it has definition and good pick attack. I really like it, it's very versatile.

The combination of the VVHB2 and the standard TexMex is very amazing! I can get a very funky clean tone out of the combination and it really works very well!

Here are the clips:
VVHB2: Clean wet, Jazz comping, Dirty
VVHB2+TexMex: Funk
TexMex+AirZone: Funk
AirZone: Clean, Dirty

Hope you enjoy!
Cheers and God Bless :)

RC BOOSTER

Yes, it's finally here in the blog! The ultimate clean boost machine is now available for reviewing. After spending some time with this pedal, I'm finally able to share some cool stuffs that this pedal has to offer.

Xotic Tremendous Trio

First, let me explain the concept of Tremendous Trio by Xotic. The Tremendous Trio are actually three booster/overdrive pedals that Xotic has to offer: BB Preamp, AC Booster and RC Booster. You may wonder, what's the difference between the tree? They are all almost identical, they have similar control knobs and they're all booster pedals.

Well, they are in fact very different...

... in terms of gain level, sound characteristic and function. A cranked up RC booster will sound like a near-breakup vintage tube amp on a clean channel while an AC booster will deliver Tube Screamer like quality with more warmness; as we already know, BB preamp has the highest gain and can really drive an amp into a high saturation level. In terms of sound characteristic: RC booster is clean and smooth, AC booster is somewhat more mid-scooped compared to a TS and BB preamp have the most amount of warmness compared to the others.

RC Booster in more detail

I said above that RC Booster is clean and smooth: it's not just clean, it's TRANSPARENT. That means, you can use it as a clean boost to increase your volume level without adding gain or altering your tone. You can add some bass or treble depending on what you want but you can really keep your original tone as it is. This is very useful for a clean lead tone where you need extra volume boost.

Personally, I use the RC Booster only on the clean channel. When I tried to use it on an already overdriven amp, I can't really get a volume boost and I don't really need to get extra gain out of it. I once tried to use this as a tone modifier to make my single coil sounds warmer and it did a great job on doing that. Well, there's actually many ways that you can use this pedal to suit your needs. Leave it on all the time with minimum amount of gain and added level increase, it will help to bring out your long-cable-degraded tone back to life while boosting your tone.

Please remember

This won't give you a massive amount of distortion as I mentioned before, so don't really expect this pedal to work on a high-gain situation although it will still surely provide something useful in that case. This also doesn't work as a compressor although it can boost your output and add some sustain. Don't get disappointed when it doesn't provide you with enough gain and massive amount of compression, it's not really what it's designed for. Remember that there are AC Booster and BB Preamp that provide more compression and more gain compared to this baby.

Is it worth?

Current retail price of around $170.00, it's an expensive pedal for sure. But for its true bypass capability, boutique quality, tone enhancement features and unique functions, I would say that this thing worth every penny. Clean boost and tone enhancer is not really something that you may want, but give this pedal a try and you'll surely know why Xotic made this pedal.

From 0 to 10?

9.5. Cheaper price can bring it to 10 for sure. Xotic is a very expensive boutique pedal maker, but for a price this high you'll get something with a very high quality.

Sound clip: CLICK HERE, first original signal then RC booster with minimum gain maximum volume, and then RC booster maximum gain and volume, I backed off the treble a little bit by the way.

Cheers and God bless :)

GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.III

Finally, the last part of "Guitar Artists with Great Tone" post! Hopefully you already made some guesses on the artist that I will mention on this post.

I won't mention his name, but I'll mention some interesting facts about him.

He uses mainly Stratocasters.

He's from Austin, Texas.

He's 56 years old.

He had his own Signature Strat.

He uses Fender and Marshall amps mostly.

Any guesses? I'll give you some more hints:

He played an old ES-335 and Les Paul as well.

He suffered from a tone OCD.

He sometimes sings.

Is it clear now?

Anyway, our latest guitar artist with the greatest tone(in my opinion, of course) is

....(drum roll)....

Eric Johnson (applause)

In my opinion, he's the man with the tone and feel. He adapt his playing closely to his tone. He's surely not a shredder but his melody lines are pretty good and difficult to play.

He uses mainly his signature Fender Stratocaster which is based on early Stratocaster during the '50s and '60s. The newer signature Eric Johnson has rosewood fingerboard with modified pickups. His amps are Marshall Plexi 50/100W and Fender Twin Reverb. He's a very big fan of '70s Echoplex tape echo. He uses Tube Screamer and Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face as well as Deluxe Memory Man.

He has three main sounds: clean rhythm, a bit dirty rhythm and a full lead tone. His clean sound is sometimes boosted with a Dyna Comp. It's the cleanest clean sound ever with a very rich harmonics with little bit of delay and chorus; it's based on Fender amp. His rhythm tone is a classic Stevie Ray Vaughan type of sound with the help of Fender amp combined with additional gain box such as TS, very glassy and bluesy and very good for chord works. His lead tone is based on Eric Clapton's Cream-era lead tone that comes mainly from an overdriven Marshall Plexi amp and sometimes together with the Fuzz Face.

This guy really shapes his playing to suit his tone. He has a very good chording technique with some hybrid picking involved. Also he is very good with arpeggiated lead notes. Most of the time he involves some jazz licks together with blues based scale. Very non-traditional playing with influences ranging from Hendrix to SRV.

He's famous for his "tone OCD". He tweaks his gears frequently just to get the right tone. His perception of tone is very high above the standard and that results in amazing smooth fat warm tone that is really the best in my opinion compared to any other guitar artists.

Definitely check out his classic "Ah Via Musicom" album and his newest recording "Up Close" and listen to some of his songs to experience the best guitar tone ever recorded. Not just the tone, the fingers are also great on those albums, some songs are hard to nail!!

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I do and I hope that you can gain some knowledge from these series of discussion post. I will come up with more discussion post along with more review of some cool vintage-y guitar gears :)

Cheers and God bless :)

DIMARZIO VIRTUAL VINTAGE HEAVY BLUES 2 VERSUS CRUISER BRIDGE

Tonight I want to share a little bit about my experience with DiMarzio products! Hopefully this will help you to decide whether you want to change your pickups to DiMarzio or not. I'm going to review the Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 and compare it with the Cruiser Bridge. Read on! :)

Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues

Let me start with the basic specification of the pickup

Output : 170mV(according to DiMarzio)

DC Resistance : 8.5 k ohm

Magnet : Alnico 2

4-conductor-based wiring

Tone : Treble 7.5, Mid 6.5, Bass 6.0(DiMarzio's website)

This single coil is very ideal to re-create that vintage hot-rodded Strat style tone. I prefer to use this one on the neck position and use a low to medium output humbucker to get a balanced volume level. It packs some mid punch; unlike a strat, this one is a bit hot and works well with distortion.

The high notes doesn't get too harsh, the low has some definition, and the mid kicks your notes nicely. I personally like this pickup for it's thickness(I'm using .008-.038 by the way, very THIN). You can easily nail hot-Strat tone from various artists using this pickup combined with slightly overdriven amp or clean amp with a little bit boost.

I don't find any flaw with this pickup except its strange wiring methods; the cable colors aren't the usual ones. It's not using a very strong magnet so it doesn't pull your string too much, you get more sustain for sure. I don't know what's your preference but trust me, weaker magnet is sometimes better :). BTW, you might think that more mid may increase muddiness: that's not happening here, this pickup is balanced properly EQ-wise.

Price starts from $70.00, you can get it from any famous music store(in U.S. of course). I got mine from a music store in Indonesia, though.

Cruiser Bridge Model

Output : 143mV(according to DiMarzio)

DC Resistance : 5.75 k ohm

Magnet : Ceramic

4-conductor-based wiring

Tone : Treble 8.0, Mid 4.5, Bass 5.5(DiMarzio's website)

Andy Timmons uses this pickup on his guitars and he uses it pretty often on the neck position. I put this one on my PGM and I can easily nail Timmons' tone using this pickup. The sound that I'm getting out of this pickup is a natural Strat sound that doesn't get too harsh with the treble but still retains its glassy tone. It doesn't emphasize your picking too much(is that good or bad?) but I personally like it because it doesn't get too bright on the scratch notes unlike traditional Strat pickups.

Works well with distortion, good for combination with other single coils or a full sized low-medium output humbucker. I combined mine with AT-1 humbucker which basically has similar qualities with Seymour Duncan JB. I set my humbucker high and the Cruiser very low and I can get volume reduction when switching to the Cruiser on the neck. Very versatile!

Nothing I dislike about this pickup. It does have a low output(although higher than strat) but it doesn't get thin. It doesn't boost your midrange; this one is a more of a traditional single coil that everyone will surely love.

Price: starts from around $70.00, you can get it anywhere in U.S. for sure.

Which one is better?

Cruiser is definitely more traditional with some enhancement on the chord definition and power. It pushes your amp harder compared to regular single coil pickup of a Strat. VVHB2 has more midrange and for sure it will give you fatter tone compared to Cruiser; it's easier to drive your amp with the VVHB2 too! People who prefer something with standard features will enjoy Cruiser; someone who wants to get more thickness and overdrive-friendly pup will like the VVHB2.

I personally prefer the Cruiser for its versatility and basic tone but I find that the VVHB2 allows me to cover more hot-Strat-based tone; the VVHB2 is also more aggressive and shred-friendly. So really, the choice is yours! Do you like something basic or do you want a little bit of an extra punch? Anyway, thank you to DiMarzio for making such great pickups, they really earned my respect :D

Cheers and God bless :)

p.s. 4 more days until I'm able to post audio clips :D...the final part of the "Guitar Artists with Great Tones" will be available shortly, I hope that you enjoy the previous parts of the post. Feel free to share any part of this blog with the rest of the world :D

GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.I

No review today, but something different.
Today I want to share a little bit of my opinions about guitarists with great tone and great skills. They're all highly respected musicians and most of them are enjoying their careers either solo or with their bands. Most of them most people will already know because of their popularity but some of them are not really famous in the public but possess great tone and exceptional guitar skills. Some of them are my biggest influences but some of them I don't really check them out yet.

John Petrucci from Dream Theater

John Petrucci is famous for his work with Dream Theater, a progressive rock metal band that's currently growing rapidly in terms of popularity and exposure in the public.

His tone is coming mainly from his Ernie Ball Music Man John Petrucci signature guitar combined with Mesa Boogie Mark series amp. His EBMM JP guitar is usually loaded with DiMarzio LiquiFire and Crunch Lab humbuckers.

What sets him apart from the other guys in terms of tone is his ability to get a well defined fat warm super-driven notes during high speed picking with not too much muddiness when using highly saturated amp. The settings on his amp is not really surprising in the world of metal heads: scooped mids. Although he used scooped mids, his humbuckers are designed to work well on mid frequencies so he's kind of trying to balance between the amp and the pickups to get a well defined tone.

He definitely uses many FX pedals especially during live performances to create layering effects. He uses chorus, phaser, flanger, delay pedals and also overdrive pedals ranging from stock market models to hard-to-find vintage modded ones. However, his tone does not mainly come from his gear but it's mostly from his fingers.

Recommended album with great tone: Black Clouds and Silver Linings, Scenes From a Memory, Octavarium.

Stevie Ray Vaughan(R.I.P)

Almost every blues guitar fans know him and try to get his tone. He's a very famous Stratocaster user that really knows how to get a good tone out of it. The secret of his tone is nothing more than his Strat on a 6L6 based amp with mild drive and some boost with the Tube Screamer. In fact, if you have a Strat, a Fender Twin Reverb Amp and a Tube Screamer, you'll nail some of his famous tones instantly.

He used various gears and guitars but his main ones are the Fender Stratocaster '62 "Number One", a TS808 Tube Screamer and Fender Twin Reverb/Tweed Bassman Amps. Secret ingredient to his tone is super heavy gauge strings, probably around .013 and tuned it down half step to lesser the tension of the strings.

A lot of modern guitar players mentioned SRV as their tone inspiration because of his massive bluesy tone. Even gear manufacturers are trying to capture the sound generated from his gear and make it into a box or something. Thus, SRV is undeniably a very important figure in the world of guitar tone development.

Paul Gilbert from Racer X/Mr. Big/Solo

Every shredder must have heard Paul Gilbert's name at least once in their life. He's the shredder of the nineties, very famous with his work with Mr. Big and some people even know him while he's still in Racer X.

Starting from his solo album era around Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, his tone is suddenly transformed and becomes very enjoyable.

His tone is not really the fat-warm type of tone, but it's very rich with articulation and definition. It's good for fast stuffs, chords and blues licks.

The secret of his tone during the nineties is definitely an Ibanez PGM with no tone knob loaded with PAF style pickups, particularly DiMarzios ranging from PAF Pro to the Tone Zone to even the Super Distortion high output pickups. The Ibanez is then plugged into a Marshall high gain amp. He get a very decent tone coming out from this combination.

Another secret to his tone is the picks that he used: he prefers a .60mm Dunlop Tortex to the standard small pointy Jazz picks that almost everyone uses. He angled his thin pick to get more treble and attack from the strings and it really is the biggest secret to almost nail his tone.

FYI, he didn't really care about tone until he started touring on G3 with Joe Satriani and John Petrucci. He now uses Marshall Vintage Modern, Ibanez Fireman loaded with DiMarzio Area series pickups, Majikbox Fuzz Universe overdrive pedal and some flanger, phaser delay and other boxes. He also used some Xotic pedals and he constantly changes his pedals depending on what he wants. Now he sounds much better than he was!

Definitely check out Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, Fuzz Universe and his works with Mr. Big and Racer X. All of them contain Paul's mighty shred-ready tone.

Andy Timmons

He's relatively new to most guitar players but he's actually been around for quite some time in the guitar world. He played with metal band called Danger Danger around nineties. He's now currently a solo artist and has his own band called Andy Timmons band.

The secret of his tone comes mainly from his signature Ibanez AT series loaded with DiMarzio Cruisers and AT Humbuckers/Seymour Duncan JB plugged into Mesa Boogie Lonestar/Stiletto Deuce/Transatlantic 30. Other important part of his tone is the delay FX units that he uses and also his gain box. He loves the Echoplex tape echo very much, but he prefers to use a box to replicate the effects during live performance by using an EXH Memory Man or sometimes using rack type delay units. For his gain box, he relies mostly on his signature Xotic BB Preamp. He used Ibanez Tube Screamer sometime in early 2000 to get that bluesy tone much like SRV's with more gain. He's also known as a Telecaster guy and he also played an SG although we haven't see him playing live with his SG.

He's been respected very much as a guitarist and also as a tone chaser. He tried various pieces of gear and experimented with all of them to achieve a good sound. Unlike any other Ibanez endorser artists, Andy prefers the sound of a guitar with lower output pickups and cool vintage-style hardware and look.

Definitely check out his new album Resolution and his compilation That Was Then, This Was Now. Don't expect anything too shreddy from his songs but he has couple of tricks under his sleeves just in case someone needs shreddy stuff!

Stay tuned for PART II !!

Cheers and God bless :)

MY MODDED PGM30

I own a 2004 Japanese PGM30WH with Edge Pro tremolo and Prestige neck that was given to me from my Dad sometime in 2006. It's been my main guitar for 5 years now and it's sort of becoming one with me, I can't imagine living with another guitar but this.

For those who doesn't know PGM: it's Paul Gilbert's signature Ibanez series. Paul Gilbert has been using Ibanez PGMs for a long time although recently he uses Ibanez Fireman more frequently. All PGMs have painted fake f-holes on the body and most of them are basswood body with maple or maple+rosewood neck. The body shape is very similar to Ibanez RG and most of them don't have tone knobs.

Originally, my PGM comes with Infinity INF pickups that have pretty high output, I don't know exactly but the bridge one I guess is in the range of 450mV judging from the sound. That is okay for quite some time when I'm still into heavy stuffs but once I started to play something with more dynamic, the pups don't do any good anymore.

I replaced the pickups with DiMarzio Cruiser Bridge on the neck and middle, I put DiMarzio AT-1 humbucker on the bridge and I accidentally removed the Ibanez logo on the headstock. I put humbucker pickup cover on the neck single coil just so that I don't miss having humbucker on the neck haha !

The DiMarzios are working very great, I got the exact Andy Timmons'(YES, him again) pups set and that helps me to get closer to his tone. I set the neck pup to be slightly lower from the strings and I raised the bridge humbucker a little bit so I get unbalanced volume level. This is kind of weird and people tend to set all pups to be at the same volume level, but I like it since I can get lower volume just by switching to the neck pup without having to press on any pedal or roll the volume knob.

By the way, I put a 300k ohms resistor in parallel with the cap on my volume pots and it helps the tone a little bit. One thing that I love mostly about this modded guitar is the fact that it doesn't have a tone knob which makes the guitar sounds much better (Paul Gilbert is a genius !). I compared this with a fellow RG with the same Wizard II neck and equipped with the same INF pups before I modded mine with DiMarzios and this thing sounds much better, more fat, more clear tops, more dynamics, more volume as well.

The bridge is actually an original Edge Pro tremolo by Ibanez(I can't find a picture of a pgm with that trem on the internet, sorry) and that bridge totally rocks ! Well, I actually hate the fact that it's a locking trem since I can't do crazy tunings, but it stays in tune forever and the little metal where the string hits on the trem is actually very good for the sustain. I used extra light gauge (.008 extra slinky) for this guitar and it still sounds great.

The neck is a little bit thicker than your usual RG necks. Anyway, if you're a tone chaser, you'll already know that thicker neck means thicker tone. It's still very playable although you don't really have a good comfort when playing chord since the thickness of the neck isn't balanced with a rounder neck shape.

This thing has been abused many times; I broke my trem arm once, I almost lost the neck pickup, I carried it on my car trunk without hard case, I bring it out to a gig during rainy day without gig bag or anything; yet this guitar's doesn't get any issue besides few minor very-hard-to-see scratches from my jazz III pick during strumming sessions. Oh, I replaced the switch once BTW, it broke due to too much pickup switching that I did haha !

I won't sell this guitar for sure, this thing is already my part of the body. This guitar also hinders me from buying new guitar since this one sets the standard of tone and playability pretty high. This is not a relic Strat '68 with special neck joint plate, this is not a '57 Les Paul with gold top finish and original PAF pickups and this doesn't worth as much as them. If this guitar is available in the market, it would cost probably less than $1000.00 for a new one with the exact same specs.

I didn't find any flaw on this guitar except that the white paint slowly turns to yellow-ish white. I don't really care though, it still looks neat and it still sounds great, those are what matter the most. If this guitar died, I would probably get an RG with Edge Pro trem and put the same mods that I've done to that RG. I would even probably throw away the tone knob for better tone.

I'll post some sound clip of this guitar soon :)

Hope you enjoy, cheers and God bless !

ANALOGMAN OD-9/808 WITH SILVER MOD

I bought this pedal from Analogman's website and it's one of the best version of Tube Screamer in the market I must say. Maxon is the original company that designed TS for Ibanez. They now produce their own TS9 that is quite different from the original TS from '70s Ibanez era.

Are you serious? Another Tube Screamer?

YES. In fact, this is one of the best version of Tube Screamer available. This OD9 is using JRC4558 chip that IS EXACTLY THE SAME as the original TS808/TS9 that many players put on their pedal board: Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons(YES, him again), Stevie Ray Vaughan....

So yes, this is another Tube Screamer.....BUT

The one that I purchased from Analogman features Silver Mod. That was basically capacitors and components upgrades to increase clarity and warmth a little bit. It also add more sustain to the overall sound. And this Maxon version is already True Bypass. Sound-wise, it does not have high amount of gain to be honest, even when I tried to crank this thing up all the way, it does not saturate too much. This is great as a clean boost and that amount of gain can be used to replicate the tone of a vintage tube amp that is pushed right after it starts to saturate.

This might means it's not for heavy stuffs, but it add pleasant touches to your tone. I got earlier Andy Timmons' famous Electric Gypsy tone by using this pedal on a clean channel.

I'm sorry though, I haven't got a chance to review this with any other Tube Screamers on the market. I tried an Ibanez TS9, but that thing cuts the bass a little bit, so I prefer this box rather than the original Ibanez version.

Wow that sounds great, but was it worth?

I forgot how much I spent but I think it was around $200.00 since I opted for the Silver Mod. This is so much more expensive compared to any other Tube Screamer on the market. I would love to compare this as a modded pedal with other modded TS from Keeley or everyone else. I know that Keeley TS has been used by many people including John Petrucci and that must says something. Unfortunately, Petrucci does use it in an already saturated amp so I don't know how it originally sounds.

It sounds good though, so I think it is still worth every penny.

Other thoughts?

I plugged mine before an AMT SS-11 Preamp that I use as a tube amp replication box since I am not allowed to play with tube amp in my apartment *sad*. It sounds very bluesy overall as a gain box. If you have not ever try any Tube Screamer pedal or even know what a TS is, this thing is an instant Stevie Ray Vaughan replicator if you have a strat style guitar with bright single coils. Very effective to add smoothness to your already saturated amp, you can set it to be your "lead switch" and step on it when you begin your solo.

How I set it up personally

Drive around 12 to 2pm, Tone around 4pm(YES, this is what a TS is famous for!), and as usual Level depends on your entire rig, I set mine around 10am.

Sounds almost perfect! Anything missing?

It lacks bass frequencies. I guess that's the nature of any Tube Screamers we all can find in this world. But hey, this thing sounded great already and you can reduce the Tone knob a bit to get a little of that bass back but sacrifice the famous tone everyone loves :D. This might not be true, I mean how can reducing treble adds the bass if we talk about circuitry, but if you add more Level while reducing the Tone, this will help to achieve that effect.

From 0 to 10

I will give this fantastic box an 8.9! Price is the main factor. The lack of bass does not really bother me that much since this is already warmer than most TSes in the market.

So what bothers you?

The switch. It's so hard to step on it even if it's angled. It's not your regular small circular switch, it's almost similar to a Boss style switch but smaller and placed in the middle with not too much height difference compared to the enclosure around it. However, note that the usual TS9 has the same switch, so I can't really complain.

Check it out : www.analogman.com

Audio clip: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12709731/sound%20demo/maxon%20od9.mp3

Cheers and God bless !

p.s stay tuned for audio clips for this post and my previous BB Preamp :) Will be around sometime in August