Tour Box reviews?

[Grog]

Come on guys get typing!!!

Last one I read was in April?


:cool:

Greg

[gururyan]

I've been thinking the same thing.

[aarondavis]

Hey Ryan you're about to be up ta bat man! How about meeting up like Monday?

Have been spending some time with the tour box, taking notes here and there... finally sat down at the keyboard for my first intallment. Over the next few day's I'll write some more reviews and try to record some fun sound samples.

Please note that this group of pedals is a bit overwhelming, seriously. So here goes...

One important issue: This pedal board and tour box is a great example of the drawback of too many true bypass pedals. AFAIK, all the pedals on this board are TB. Therefore, when you plug in "true" tone suck occurs (I think it's funny when people say that Boss pedals "suck tone", it's the opposite due to the buffer) by which your signal seems to be cut in half. To overcome this I put my modded Boss SD-1 in front for the buffer and also a tone comparison.

Empress Chorus
First off, the Empress Chorus. This one I was extremely excited to try cause I’ve recently realized, thanks to my Line 6 Echopark, how cool and “viby” a vibrato can be. First the Vibrato: it’s real soupy and almost lo fi sounding. I guess cause it reminds me of the vibrato on my Lofi Loop Junky, without having to loop your guitar part. Very cool! One main issue though, in vibrato mode there’s a significant “where’s my guitar” volume loss due to the loss in high end (even with the included bright switch engaged). This may be OK in the studio, but live it’d be a bummer to me. What you get is a really cool vibrato that bends your entire pitch, not just splitting the signal and modulating it against the straight signal like a chorus.

As for the Chorus side, this is a nice sound. Maybe a bit different than the normal Boss style boxes I’m used to. A bit more signal enveloping, it actually tweaks your tone a bit, although it’s hard to describe. This is the most tweakable chorus I’ve ever played. Controls: Chorus/Vibrato switch, Bright Switch (which needs to be engaged IMO), Voice Knob, Depth, Velocity and Mix. One thing to note, the mix control works backwards, turn clockwise to reduce effect mix.

The Voice control is where the heart of the Empress is, although some odd shades come out through it’s sweep 11 to 2 oclock are it’s best settings (2 oclock for leslie simulation). The voice is also what you need to focus on in learning how to tweek this pedal. The Depth and Velocity are self explanatory. Another cool feature is the status LED that blinks brightly to the tempo set on the Velocity control. Bottom line, you could spend hours on this pedal alone. It’s a cool sounding pedal, but the volume drop on the vibrato is a downer.

Sea Blue EQ
Simply an Incredibility useful pedal. A major musical tone tweaker, seems to simply add a subtle analog vibey juiciness. Works great for a signal boost, booty enhancer and clarity multiplier.

At first try, this seems like a boring pedal (honestly) but after using it a bit (boosting/eq tweaking the Honey Bee) I realize how much of a Swiss Army Knife it could be. Seems like it could fix almost any backline rental amp from hell! Stellar design.

Dyna Red Distortion
Seeing as though I have one, this review may be a little biased. I feel the DRD is in a league joined by only a handful of contenders. To me, it seems distortion (not overdrive or fuzz) is one of the hardest sounds to get right in a pedal. Specifically, for the purpose of playing into a clean amp (completely clean) as I do. This one does it right man!

First the tone control is voiced perfectly, from dark to crystal clear (fine tuned in between), clear enough to sound great through a non-Master 4 input Marshall set clean (nothing sounds right in front of these when they're low enough to be clean!). Some have described the DRD as “fizzy”, but this is with the tone control set to normally assumed positions (noon to 2). For most amps it needs to be almost completely attenuated, but this is well thought out by Bjorn if you ask me.

Now for Gain; it has an incredibly nice low gain tone (light OD’ish) to pretty dang high gain. Like the tone control, every perceivable gradient in-between is great. Also note, with lower gain settings the tone control must be pumped up. Seems like Bjorn thought this part out too. The pedal naturally gets darker the lower the gain setting so he puts an extreme amount of control in the tone pot/circuit.

Volume/Output; here’s the only odd issue with the stock pedal I’ve encountered. For some crazy reason the stock DRD doesn’t have I high output with my TopHats. It’s crazy! Must be some rare component/impedance matching idiosyncrasy. For this reason, I had Bjorn build mine with CRAZY output (an easy change due to the highly responsive interaction with BJF).

It’s main thang: DYNAMICS! Why it’s called the “Dyna” Red Distortion! This pedal has a brilliantly implemented circuit that actually FEELS like a good tube amp. This effect isn’t exaggerated; say like amps that have “sag” controls. It’s a subtle thing based on the “less is more” approach. This effect is reduced the higher you set the gain, which again is brilliantly worked out cause with high gain settings, I want a bit more compression and immediate gain to note “coverage”.

Bottom line: This is one of the best distortion pedals made.

HBE Mimic Delay Mark1
This is a no frills, short time analog delay. It’s a bit more lo fi sounding than my AD900, cause it’s a bit more distorted and murky. If you want a slightly different analog delay, it’s a different take than most I’ve heard. It still proves to me that 300ms is too short for me. I gotta have at lest about 400-450ms.

More to come....

[gururyan]

Hey Ryan you're about to be up ta bat man! How about meeting up like Monday?

No problem, just say when and where.

I gotta run now though, heading out to see Ben Harper! :cool:

[fyler]

i've only had a brief amount of time to spend with the tourbox, but here are some of my observations:

the Blister Agent OD/Boost side reminds me a heck of a lot of the Barge BP-1 (Harmonic Percolator inspired pedal) & the filter side sounds almost exactly like the Danelectro Grilled Cheese. i thought it had some great sounds in there, but sounds i can get with other (And i gotta say it - cheaper) pedals.

the ProAnalog Power Driver knocked my socks off. when i kicked it on, i had one of those "oh, hell yeah!" moments. it has plenty of gain available & adds a nice squishy fuzz element. i'm buying one of these soon, for sure.

the Pigtronix Disnortion had a lot of decent sounds. the OD was adequate (but not overwhelming), the fuzz sounds where okay. the Octave was pretty uninteresting. honestly, i thought i would dig the pedal more than i did.

the Pigtronix Envelope phaser was very grating to my ears. no matter how i set the controls it seemed to drastically cut the low end & make the highs brittle & downright annoying. the phaser sounds didn't blow me away, either. granted, it's a complicated pedal, so there's a good chance with more time i could get it set up to my liking.

more later...