The pedals are all boxed up here, ready to be shipped to Sylnau. Apparently there are no shipping offices here htat are open on sundays, my bad, who knew? So they will be heading off to Sylnau tomorrow. I don't know that I'm all that great with written reviews, but I'll try to get a few words down.
The first thing I noticed with the solidgoldfx pedals is that they are all beautiful to look at. All have very tasteful finishes, and all but the Stutterbox have a nice subtle sparkle to the finish. Even the packaging goes the extra mile with specially made boxes for the pedals instead of the plain white cardboard boxes most pedals are found in. (not that there's anything wrong with that either) Plugging them in reveals that the tone is every bit as good with as the aesthetics, and the features are very well planned, giving plenty of control over the pedals while being very intuitive and not going so far as to become too much tweaking to get to the tone you want.
The Agent 13 has been on my list of pedals to get for about a year now, though I`ve never got the chance to actually get my hands on one to try out. I was really impressed, and somewhat pleasantly surprised with this pedal. I was in part expecting a big splattery, snotty, over the top gained out fuzz to melt faces with, but what I discovered was more a full, chewy, well textured fuzz with plenty of gain without gong over the top. The bias knob is great for dialing in the amount of texture you want, and dialed right back gives some great buzzy fuzz sounds. With the bias cranked the pedal is very focused with a sharp attack thats great for chords. Gain goes from nice and clean to plenty thick enough. I found the treble setting a bit harsh with my single coils at first, but with proper bias adjustment and a bit of tweaking of the fuzz control it is very useable. I dusted off my SG for a bit of humbucker action and found it to be really full and responive.
The Formula 76 was a very pleasant surprise for me. From the demos I have seen I was thinking it might be a bit too rude for my tastes, but I found it to be very useable. I tend to use octave fuzz on the bridge pickup for more of the overtones and splatty nature and I found the Formula 76 to be very musical in this respect. With the controls you can go from a pretty open, yet blown out type of sound to a very thick and focused, in your face type of octave fuzz. It is rude, as they say, but not so rude as to be unpleasant. It has alot of functionality to it, and now it has made my list as well, possibly ahead of the Agent 13, but it`s really hard to say. The mid boost is a nice feature and adds alot of versatility, but I spent most of my time with the mid boost off. Also, I didn`t get too much into stacking, but I did find the Agent 13 and Formula 76 stacked quite well together and I can only assume they would play well with other pedals as well.
I didn`t get as much time to play with the Stutterbox as I would have liked, but the time I had was well enjoyed. I haven`t found a Tremolo with a tone knob on it before and I was suprised at how much it added to the pedal. The gain knob is definitely needed for tremolos and often overlooked. The speed range is fantastic, going from super slow to ring mod territory, and with the tap tempo speed selector doubling as a range setting for the speed knob it is quite easy to dial in the speed you want, which sometimes is not true with such a wide range control. Also the `lumpy`waveform is a great addition. If I ever get the chance to buy a tap tempo tremolo I am now certain it will be this one.
Out of all the pedals I think my favourite was the Electroman. I have tried several delays and I think this one might be the perfect blend of clarity/murkiness I've been looking for. It doesn't sound like a digital delay trying to be an analog or tape delay, but it also isn't trying for crystal clean digital repeats, the kind that I find a little hard on the ears and tend to fight with your clean signal as you play. The warp switch is perfect, giving you infinite repeats without soraing into oscillation on you as some tend to. The tone range is great, with the dark end not becoming muddy and the bright end not becoming harsh, and the couple hundred extra milliseconds of delay time are exactly what I'm looking for, and the tone doesn't seem to suffer with the extended range. Also, the repeats control is very well set, and it is very easy to dial in the perfect sweet spot of just staring to oscillate, giving you sweet, sweet overtones, which is the setting I want most on my delays and is usually most difficult to dial in. I like modulation on my delays usually, but the effects loop definitely makes up for the lack of modulation. I will be selling at least one delay (that costs about $100 more) in the future and this pedal will be in my collection in the future.
I have recorded a bunch of clips and now I will get to sorting through them to post some demo action, cause really, isn't that what we all want. For now I will leave you with some clips of the pedal I liked the most, the Electroman:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlWD9BcAnpg[/youtube]
tl;dr version- Every one of these pedals is even better in person than the demos show. They look better, sound better, and the controls are perfectly chosen and voiced. Every one of these pedals is now on my list to buy
