Cake Fighter
Perfection for a pedal board warrior.
The first thing I did was read the instructions on how to put it on the high gain channel, and make the foot switch turn the amp on and off. Why? Because it's going to be a pedal host like it's buddy, the SL Drive. Another outstanding amp in a box. I need to test it. I should be able to put it on the high gain channel, turn the gain the entire way down, and it play perfectly clean. Again, on the HOT channel. The red one.
IT DOES. Now, guess what happens if you leave it on that hot channel and hit with something like a Sugar Drive or tube screamer? Yeah. it sounds friggin amazing. Like an AC30 does when you drive it with pedals. If you REALLY hammer your strings hard, you'll get the tiniest bit of grit. Perfect. Put this into your cabinet simulator (their cab sucks). I love the Sonicake IR cab (2) setting. It's perfect with this. You can see it in the picture to the right. So you have the most amazing jangly chiming cleans, but just a little bit of dirt with an OD or boost and boom, here comes the distortion like a caged animal. Sounds AMAZING with A Sugar Drive, and the outstanding Tone City clones. I adore the Sweet Cream with it. The best though is tuning 3 or four overdrives just barely breaking up and stacking all of them in front of this pedal. 5 stacked just barely dirty pedals at once sound so good together. You can't make that sound any other way.
And this can do it. Just like I used to do it with my cheap vox valvetronic, then my real vox ac15 later. Put a touch of fuzz on top of all that?
If you want to be extremely lazy, and want to pick one do-it-all pedal to drive this clean, use the Xotic SL Drive. It itself can sound like most low gain marshalls. It pushing this amp sounds absolutely amazing. But the Sugar Drive sounds amazing with it too. And it's own red channel overdrive is amazing. Just turning the grit up. The clean channel is nice but just like you'd expect, it's just the red channel with the gain disabled entirely lol. Test it I'm serious. That's how it should be. You'll still get a little amp dirt on the blue channel with a pedal but it really comes alive on the red channel again, like it would.
This is an outstanding addition to any pedalboard. This is your amp. You can just treat it like your amp if you direct record. It's that good. Just don't use their cab. It's crap. I think it's turned off by default for a reason. It sounds great into quad vintage 30 4x12 cabs and with creambacks and alnico blues. IR and in real life. I prefer alnico blues with it. This amp easily does metal with two stacked OD's. This is your do it all clean amp, that you can have on your pedalboard. I can't believe how cheap it is. I might never buy another expensive amplifier. I might drop 220 bucks on the new vox mv50 head. the clean one. It's amazing looking. You could gig with it easy, with this pedal.
