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Stumbled on a used Clarksdale today while testing several other OD pedals, and it really smoked all the other ones I had in front of me.
The girl helping me out at the store said, "Here try this. You might like it." It really sounds terrific!
I read it's supposed to be some sort of TS-9 type pedal, which I really like, so here we go! Can't wait to try it out in a band situation.
Brian's stuff is usually pretty good.
One skill I've never developed was taking an effect in a sterile environment and predicting how it will sound in the live mix through my chain. For example, my Keely modded TS9 was awesome in the studio but sounded like fricasseed a$$ on stage.
What I notice with a lot of boutique stuff or mods is that they put bigger coupling caps in the signal path to enhance the mids. Problem is, mids are the enemy of cut onstage and then you need to push the volume too high to compensate. Then the sound crew tweaks your EQ to get it to sound good out front again and then when you come off the pedal you're too crispy.
I mean, as long as it's just between us girls the secret a lot of bluesy guys use is to cascade the OD into a fuzz to get that HUGE sound while retaining the cut. In fact, we're starting to see combination OD/FUZZ pedals now. It's also a trick I've been doing on my processors too.
Interestingly, some of the new boutique pedal stuff is component-modeled so they actually build the circuit in the stompbox-sized modeler. Pretty cool. I see JHS is now making component-modeled pedals. I think this will become the norm as it allows the follow-on sales of downloadable patches and the manufacturers can use the same stompbox architecture for different pedals.
Chuck
I hear you on all counts. I think my Analogman TS-9 sounds better than the Keeley one I had.
My saving grace in all of this is that I don't use much gain. Gain is the true enemy of cut in a live mix.
This Clarksdale pedal sounds very similar to my Modded TS-9 but has an extra tone control. It really does sound awesome.