A prominent SOFTie was selling off an interesting pedal, one which he described was different from the market of tubescreamer clones. As a fan of Supro amps (who isn't after listening to Led Zeppelin and Switchfoot?), I thought it would be a good investment to expand my collection of "amp-in-a-box" style of pedals.
JHS goes for the minimalist approach to pedal graphics--so I have to keep a picture of the manual on my phone just in case I need to tweak and I forget which knob does what. Up until this day, I still get the volume and gain knobs mixed up--the gain knob makes a huge difference in volume, hence my confusion!
The first comment I have about this pedal is that it's really loud! It sounds best through a live amplifier, and instantly turns any amp into a harmonically-complex, dirty-yet-clean, speaker-about-to-explode tone machine with all the goodness tube rectifier sag (No kidding! You have to try it to believe it!). I have played this through a Fender Blues Junior and the Superbolt drove the amp front-end so hard that the input began to distort--in a very musically-pleasing way.
These effects are lost when playing through a digital system (speaker emulation, amp emulation, etc.). When plugged into a speaker sim, the pedal becomes very tame, and at most becomes a clean boost. The tone that you hear from the official gear demos comes from the pedal interacting with a tube amp. So in short, if you're hoping to integrate this into your non-amp rig, you may be in a for a rude shock!
Pros:
- Turns any amp into a beast of a tone machine.
- Internal charge pump from 9V to 18V makes this pedal very dynamic and responsive to your picking with lots of headroom.
- Great first stage overdrive.
Cons:
- Not great for digital systems (no tube/speaker interaction, where the magic occurs).
- It's very snarly in the EQ spectrum, so it's tweaked for a certain sound from a certain era. Think '60s rock.
- Not a shredder's pedal. Don't use this if Malmsteen is a staple part of your repertoire.
My Superbolt demos:
Quick Test (recorded at 2am!)
Full demo of the Superbolt with a Cmatmods Signa Drive and through a SansAmp GT2:
For further viewing:
Official Superbolt videos
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