First thing you notice, when you unbox this pedal is how it is build. The housing is a strong piece of metal. The knobs are not wobbly, no issues with a switch. Generally, reliably built.
With this pedal you can achieve a wide variety of sounds, mainly due to the "character" knob. Set around 9 o'clock you get nice, warm sound, similar to the Ampeg amps, while going further clockwise gives you aggresive, distorted, more treble oriented tone. However, the distorted sound on a low setting of character knob, is not to pleasant for my ears, it seams weird, but it can be just my impression. On the other hand, the higher setting of the character knob enables you to get nice hi-gain sound. Anyway, I think that the pedal really shines on a clean setting, when you can get fantastic, warm sound. To conclude- nice and versatile, no matter if you want to get a vintage sound or a metal hi-gain annihilation, you can achieve it.
So, the overall pluses are:
- Versatile palette of great tones
- Strongly built
- Reasonably priced for a preamp of this quality
Drawbacks?
- Drive on some setting could be a bit better
It's definitely my go-to pedal. Always on. Makes my bass sound better