Smoothie (2)

Was inspired to play early, like 7am early 😅 Cascaded a clean boost into the TS7 & had some of the creamiest tones for legato. The Killing Floor there is a bit of overkill, really. More than 30kb of boost. With high output pickups, it becomes an overdrive. The formula for smooth overdrive is not about adding more low frequencies into one's tone. In fact, without a marked treble response, it would be a muddy affair. The reason the TS7 was dialled up  for more top end & the KF tone mode was set to neutral. It had been a good Sunday morning.

Blackened

When you are all cooped up at home, swapping pedal knob becomes an epic adventure. Black makes it look flushed.

Goodbye, April...

Euro killings

The Killing Floor is indeed my staple pedal for each playing session. I kinda prefer hearing the guitar with more of what it should sound like rather than colouring it with a drive pedal. It's also dead simple, just a one knob affair with 3 voicing options. Grabbed the Euro II by mistake while playing but decided to stay with the pick throughout- mistakes & all. 

Wishing you a good Monday & a good week ahead. 👍

The clean end

Had some playing time in the evening so ended the day with some great cleans. That's right- clean. Coming from someone who doesn't give a hoot about driveless tone, it means a lot. The formula: Single coils + chorus + boost. The chorus you see here is One Control's Little Copper Chorus & I have good things to say about it in the next instalment. 😁

Killing Alice

Very bad picking for the last few days. So went back to what worked well for me when it all started (when I started using thick picks, that is)- a 3mm Stubby-type pick. Seen here is my Alice pick since I don't have any Dunlop with me. Also, the Killing Floor had more gain going this time to help my picking out. That's right, more gain for me means less picking effort & less lethargy, definitely.

Vela & friends

Yesterday's line-up: PRS Vela, Seymour Duncan Killing Floor & that blue pick- DAW's Karma model.

Vela's action was lowered a tad & it makes a huge difference in terms of legato playing; my fingers weren't as lethargic in trying to press the strings down. Pickups height was left undisturbed as sustain wasn't affected. The Killing Floor pedal is now rather mandatory in boosting the amp (Blackstar HT Metal) for saturation, not for drive (despite the fact that more drive was added in the mix). Finally, the pick. A preferred pick goes a long way in terms of focus. You simply need a supplementary tool to manifest your picking style. If you are a light picker, it's unwise to carry on with thin picks; it lacks impact. Ditto bass note peddling; those wound strings will wear your pick down very quickly & a deformed pick will definitely affect your picking & this leads to mistakes. I certainly think my pick made a big difference in terms of effectiveness & focus. My friends, you should put some attention to this as well.

Killing it

This had been my fix last weekend- Seymour Duncan's Killing Floor (KF).

It's a high gain boost pedal, a single knob affair with a 3-way tone switch. I'm the type who doesn't glorify a boost pedal too much because they tend to be 1) A mere volume bumping device 2) Contain sparse drive capacity, appealing more to clean players. So the KF does both- it bumps up your volume as the dial turns clockwise & gives you more gain along the way.

Clean channel

I played it into a clean setting first, as clean as it gets, with single coil pickups. The KF made things louder incrementally & adding dirt from a subtle drive type to a generous distortion voicing when maxed out. We are still in rock territory, nothing too ferocious but at the pedal's extreme end, it can outperform a BOSS DS-1 quite easily. 

Dirty channel

So now the pedal acts as a supplementary drive device very much like stacking two dirt pedals in a simultaneous application. The drive at the amp end was set to its 50% mark while the pedal itself was initially set at 25%, 50%, 75% & finally, in its full glory. You get a TS-like drive effect in the lower register, things get heated up at the half-way point. Also happening at this stage; ease of harmonics trigger. At 75% performance, the angry distortion voicing was heard & upon maxing out, the overall drive push was believably twice the intensity- yes, it's that intense.

Tone switch

The 3 tone voicings were more audible in the clean channel. The cut & boost were nothing drastic but they were there to be heard. However, the EQ changes were not that apparent once the pedal was made to push an already driven signal. From my end of the observations, I needed to make the amp louder for those changes to be heard, unlike the clean channel performance. The tone switch is there to make a difference, forgive its shortcomings if those differences were underwhelming at some applications. This is a boost pedal after all, not an EQ stalwart. 

Conclusion

The KF was beyond my personal expectations. I was at the store ready to grab something else (that something else will be disclosed soon) but that one let me down & I had a friend there who could fully relate to my concerns when it was tested out. Many of us wouldn't fork out too much money for a boost unit because it's largely a one-trick pony but some one trick ponies are specialists upon discovery. Another likeable Seymour Duncan pedal worth every cent of my money- thumbs up.

Rating: 85%

Seymour Duncan: Killing Floor high gain boost

Availability: Davis GMC

List: $199

Killing it

This is a new one by the Seymour Duncan people- the Killing Floor pedal. It is a clean boost as well as an angry boost, treading into the drive territory. Definitely on my to-check list. We have Nick Johnston here with some Killing Floor applications:

That pretty much wraps up the mid-year as well. Happy second half of the year, everyone. Time sure flies.