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Jet Age Eric wrote:Please report back

Most definitely will!

After hearing that demo , Clean Channel, I've got ants in my fuzzypants waiting for USPS to do their thang. This is gonna make the Mantra a stacking .

Dandolin wrote:

Jet Age Eric wrote:Please report back

Most definitely will!

After hearing that demo , Clean Channel, I've got ants in my fuzzypants waiting for USPS to do their thang. This is gonna make the Mantra a stacking .

I hear ya, I hate waiting for pedals in the mail!

I just flippin' love that Mantra, and really wanted to make a vid to spread the good word. Glad to hear it's got you even more excited!

I'm tellin' ya, low gain mode stacks so well with everything! You're gonna love it!

It's at home right now, but I won't have a chance to sit down with it until Saturday morning at the earliest. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Definitely want to spend some quality time with this in its new Supra mode!

OK--this thing is so sweet--opens up all kinds of new possibilities. The low gain gets really low gain, so you can switch the pedal in and out when used for lower gain without also re-adjusting your guitar volume; and you can set it up perfectly to stack something into. On my rig I detect a little bit of high frequency attenuation in the lower gain mode, which is very easily adjusted for with the treble tone knob without making the mids sound wonky. It's probably inherent to the tuning of the tone stack for the original higher gain mode--it's gotta be near impossible to make a tone stack flat at all gain ranges across the vast range this pedal now puts out--from essentially clean at the bottom of the gain range in low-gain mode, to super squelchy at the top of the gain range. I find that this pedal covers more than enough gain range for me now without volume knob adjustments, and it is still super-responsive to the volume knob in both modes.

On another note--I ended up going in to check the transistor bias on my unit b/c I was concerned a guitard friend I had lent it to prior to getting the mod done had messed with the trimmers--turns out they were a little bit off, but easily adjusted back to the stock voltage values given by Kyle on this board. Some interesting sounds to be found by mis-biasing, as you might expect--this thing could easily be re-purposed as a fun gronk-fuzzstortion if the trims were externalized and the resulting device were marketed to the sonically experimental, but I totally understand why the trims are internal--for those who want the vibrant, ampy tones this box creates at stock values, it would be extremely discombobulating to try to dial in those trims to the "right" values without a voltage meter.

Great to hear you're loving it! The versatility really is incredible. Between the EQ and the two modes there are so many OD tones that can be dialed in.

Thanks for taking the time to write up such a detailed response; really informative!

Glad it paid off, Dandolin! Kyle, you've got a nice form factor with the new Fix'd; Mantra Deluxe?

On a related note, just learned my local (Action Music in Falls Church, VA) is carrying you guys now. I told Michael (staff) I'd bring in my low-gain Mantra to see if he wants to special order one, but then I wondered if Action could order and stock some low-gain Mantras ... -E

Really tempted to send my manta in for this mod. Any chance that you could re-up that demo Clean Channel?

funsize wrote:Really tempted to send my manta in for this mod. Any chance that you could re-up that demo Clean Channel?

Hey Funsize,

Well, I took it down only because I got self-conscious about the sound quality. It's recorded straight to my digital camera, not mic'd or anything. I always see people complaining about the sound quality of demo vids that aren't properly recorded, made me feel I was cluttering up youtube with it. I also kinda worried that the amateur vid would kinda annoy Kyle and the other folk at Blackout Effectors.

Another reason why I'm reluctant to upload it again is that the original was accompanied by a bunch of text that explained what I was doing. Now that I removed the vid, that's all gone again.

That said, I thought, heck, I'll just upload it private and share the link here. Now I can't find the video on my computer! Maybe it's on my external. If I find it, I'll upload it for ya...