I gave the Power Grid a good testing today:- The pedal in general is a very well thought out distortion unit; the wide distortion sweep + active EQ section do wonders to tone tinkering but it's a trade off- you can sit down from dawn to dusk to experiment with incremental differences which translate to an elaborate palette of tones but getting immediate results isn't gonna be easy. Guitar players enjoy doing nothing but tinker with tone so it doesn't matter...
- The manufacturer was careful not to let the upper/ more intense distortion voicing to cross over into metal territorty. What you get in the upper reaches are great saturation & still sounding distortion-like.
- The pedal sounds wonderful with humbucking guitars but if you play single coils, watch the treble control, even at noon position, the tone generated sounds quite piercing.
- It does well pushing a tube amp's overdrive into saturation but it's not as impressive being a driver of another distortion pedal. I feel that it has excessive raunchiness to act as a restrained unit for this intention; you are better off with a Tubescreamer type, smooth overdrive instead. In this light (as depicted above), the Power Grid enjoys being boosted, choose a very mild drive drive unit to enjoy maximum satisfaction (I had my Austin Gold fulfilling this task).
- Battery access is a chore though, it's a complete base plate removal as the manufacturer continues to ommit a battery flip hatch cover.
The Power Grid would definitely give the Land Mine distortion a good run for the money in terms of distortion but this one has a more dynamic voicing range so it's a winner in terms of versatility. In comparison to the BOSS DS-1/ MXR Distortion +, it has more aggression in whole (yes, you can still do a restrained employment in the distortion's lower levels), what the (Visual Sound) Son of Hyde has in store but a little bit more raunchiness at the distortion's maximum end.
4 comments:
I haven't test drive this pedal, but the "excessive raunchiness" is apparent even on Youtube. A little put off by it, actually.
if you try this one in person, you'd know that the treble sweep is also wide: from very piercing to a Santana-esque roundness. :-)
... then it becomes enticing, indeed. Heh. Will suspend my disbelief :D
i believe the pedal is quite dynamic regardless of whatever demos are out there. the EQ controls are zero at noon position, so it's a matter of adding more or cutting less.
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