blackba
Platinum Supporting Member
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- 12,069
I got a Barber Dirty Bomb and Hermida Distortion in last night. So I thought I would do a quick review of those and my MI audio Crunchbox which I have owned for well over a year. Please don’t ask for clips. I did most of my testing with a ’60 Fender Brown Super through an opened back 112 with a 4ohm Weber 12F150. I also tried them through my ’69 Fender Bandmaster Reverb through a 212 with 2 Weber 12A125A’s. I wanted to try them through my Vox AC50, but it is on my bench getting a recap. I used my trusty old Fender strat with a hot rails in the bridge
Barber Dirty Bomb:
I started with this pedal to compare to the Crunchbox. I immediately noticed how much more aggressive the Dirty Bomb was. This pedal to me sounds very metal and aggressive. I found the mid switch needs to be for me in the middle (boost) or left (neutral). Scouped is too scouped for my tastes. What disappointed me about this pedal was the range of gain, I had trouble dialing out the aggressiveness and by itself the pedal sounds harsh in the treble (a common trait I hear in Distortion pedals). The gain must be about 9 oclock for the pedal to really work. I coil split my hot rails and I was able to get some less aggressive sounds. I played along to some Judas Priest, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Social Distortion, etc and this pedal worked very well for those and sounded good when mixed with the backing track. The bass response on this pedal is great, on some distortion pedals I have run an EQ pedal behind it and EQ on the dirty bomb was pretty impressive. I do wish there was a mid knob as sometimes I wanted more mids than even the switch could give me. I did not tweak the bass trim pot inside.
MI Audio Crunchbox:
I have changed the op amp in this to a TI (can’t remember part #) and have adjusted the internal trim pot recently, mine is about 11 oclock. The crunchbox excels at sounding like a mean marshall. I really like it for 80’s metal and punk type sounds. Compared to the Dirty Bomb the crunchbox sounds like its in an envelope, like the sound is a bit narrow. It does not have the bass response of the dirty bomb. As far as gain, the crunchbox has less gain than the dirty bomb and does work better in turning down the gain. The gain of the two is pretty close though. I have been hit or miss with the crunchbox, but I was pretty happy with it overall.
Hermida Distortion:
I have a zendrive and mosferatu as well. I have been impressed with those pedals, but this one does not sound like it has the Mosferatu voicing. I initially struggled to dial in the pedal for brutal distortion like I was getting from the Dirty Bomb. I had the gain all the way up and was tweaking the tone control and voice control a lot. This pedal can get aggressive, but just doesn’t have the hair to get to all out metal. Its too clear and present sounding. I then tried it with the gain at 12 oclock. I adjusted the tone and voice to how I like them on my Mosferatu (tone 1-2 oclock, voice 3 oclock) and tweaked from there. This pedal really started to shine, it sounds really amp like and cuts well. It sounds good with or without a backing track. No fizz to speak of. It worked very well for alternative rock. I would say it has the gain of an Ibanez SD-9, but sounds a lot less grainy than the SD-9 I had did. Overall I am really happy with this pedal as a standard distortion.
I need to do more testing, but these are my 1st impressions. I will be selling at least 1 in the future as I don’t need 3 distortion boxes.
Barber Dirty Bomb:
I started with this pedal to compare to the Crunchbox. I immediately noticed how much more aggressive the Dirty Bomb was. This pedal to me sounds very metal and aggressive. I found the mid switch needs to be for me in the middle (boost) or left (neutral). Scouped is too scouped for my tastes. What disappointed me about this pedal was the range of gain, I had trouble dialing out the aggressiveness and by itself the pedal sounds harsh in the treble (a common trait I hear in Distortion pedals). The gain must be about 9 oclock for the pedal to really work. I coil split my hot rails and I was able to get some less aggressive sounds. I played along to some Judas Priest, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Social Distortion, etc and this pedal worked very well for those and sounded good when mixed with the backing track. The bass response on this pedal is great, on some distortion pedals I have run an EQ pedal behind it and EQ on the dirty bomb was pretty impressive. I do wish there was a mid knob as sometimes I wanted more mids than even the switch could give me. I did not tweak the bass trim pot inside.
MI Audio Crunchbox:
I have changed the op amp in this to a TI (can’t remember part #) and have adjusted the internal trim pot recently, mine is about 11 oclock. The crunchbox excels at sounding like a mean marshall. I really like it for 80’s metal and punk type sounds. Compared to the Dirty Bomb the crunchbox sounds like its in an envelope, like the sound is a bit narrow. It does not have the bass response of the dirty bomb. As far as gain, the crunchbox has less gain than the dirty bomb and does work better in turning down the gain. The gain of the two is pretty close though. I have been hit or miss with the crunchbox, but I was pretty happy with it overall.
Hermida Distortion:
I have a zendrive and mosferatu as well. I have been impressed with those pedals, but this one does not sound like it has the Mosferatu voicing. I initially struggled to dial in the pedal for brutal distortion like I was getting from the Dirty Bomb. I had the gain all the way up and was tweaking the tone control and voice control a lot. This pedal can get aggressive, but just doesn’t have the hair to get to all out metal. Its too clear and present sounding. I then tried it with the gain at 12 oclock. I adjusted the tone and voice to how I like them on my Mosferatu (tone 1-2 oclock, voice 3 oclock) and tweaked from there. This pedal really started to shine, it sounds really amp like and cuts well. It sounds good with or without a backing track. No fizz to speak of. It worked very well for alternative rock. I would say it has the gain of an Ibanez SD-9, but sounds a lot less grainy than the SD-9 I had did. Overall I am really happy with this pedal as a standard distortion.
I need to do more testing, but these are my 1st impressions. I will be selling at least 1 in the future as I don’t need 3 distortion boxes.