Alright kids, I got this yesterday. I kinda got carried away by curiosity and the ease to flip these buggers, so I sprang on one of the meatheads that were for sale at downstroke music. It is the newest version, as far as I know that's equivalent to a standard from back when there were standard and dark flavours. Inside it says that it was built by Linzi and it has a quote: "So, you've made a vow of silence. How fascinating, tell me about it."
It really sounds meaty, they chose the name wisely. At first I was not very impressed by this thing, but the more I play it (until now it has a little less than half an hour in total) the more I start digging it. It is not the doom machine I was half expecting. It is a pretty saturated fuzz with a little bit of sizzle going on. Chord work is not excellent but pretty good for such a saturated fuzz. It sounds like a brick wall, are you expecting it to be subtle?
The thing that is really interesting about this is the way it reacts to the knobs on your guitar. It's a whole lot like having a remote gain and tone control right on your guitar. That may be excellent for some but it sort of is also my beef with this pedal. At least with my Ampeg guitar I like the sound of it much better if the volume is rolled back a good deal. So there is a huge difference in volume between the effected signal and the bypassed. When the meathead is engaged there is almost no volume drop with rolling back the knob on the guitar until right before you hit rock bottom. There is a pretty impressive array of different tones there, but I feel like I'd be forced to leave it on all the time, so that there is no dropping out.
Here's a sample:
[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/ifmh/meatnoodle/s-Fwe3J[/soundcloud]
Ampeg AMG100 > Meathead > Koch Classic SE 12W tube amp.
I have run it through a compressor, the difference in volume was too much. I have only adjusted volume. The first half is with the tone rolled back, as soon as you hear a click I bypass the tone control for a much brighter sound.
