First of all, a huge thanks to Matt for doing the Tourbox, and letting me be a part of it!
I just finished my week with the Screaming Panda and Mean Green Machine, and I really enjoyed both of them. The pedals looked great & the workmanship on them was excellent. I mainly used a Tele with Pete Biltoft T-90's & an LP with Burstbucker Pros; amps were a BFPR clone with an Emi Big Ben, a DRRI with an Emi CRex, and a Richter 5e3 with a Jensen Tornado Neo.
The Panda is a fuzz/distortion pedal, and it shows it right out of the gate. It's gain comes in very quickly; below 8 o'clock it has the gain of a cranked TS, but from 8-9 o'clock it's gain was about like my Moho Mods Rat with the gain at 2 o'clock, and above 9 o'clock it left the Rat in the dust gain-wise. The Panda has a good amount of high end, but it wasn't piercing; it should cut through the mix easily. It sounded fantastic through my Richter 5e3, and seemed like it was made for it; the extra high end of the Panda & the extra low end of the Richter were a match made in heaven.
The Mean Green Machine is Matt's take on a Tube Screamer; more bass & mids than the Panda (of course), and more volume, too. It loved my BF amps, and had much more gain than a regular TS, it gets some Marshall flavor as the gain gets cranked. Bigger bottom end & more highs, too... the MGM has a clarity that I haven't found in other TS pedals. I tend to lean toward lower gain sounds, so my favorite tones with the MGM came with the gain & tone knobs about 10 o'clock with my LP & DRRI, but it sounded great with my Tele, too.
Even though I'm in the process of scaling down my pedalboards, I'm really trying to figure out how I can squeeze an MGM onto one of them... it was tough to send that one on.
The Panda was very cool, too, but I'm not playing anything these days where I need that much gain. Matt's definitely on the right track with his pedals, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other cool stuff he comes up with next! :AOK