well. today i had a meeting with the peavey sales rep for my area, and he told me about this neat little company called damage control. I'm thinking schming may like this stuff, but maybe others around here will.

basically they were started by the two ex-lead engineers at line6 before they outsourced from california to asia. they make high grade tube preamps in compact pedal format. with true hard bypass, and from what i've heard (i haven't -tried- one yet but the Liquid blues got me all excited, that should tell you much) they sound AWESOME.

http://damagecontrolusa.com/

the liquid blues is great, it's a nice mild overdrive pedal that you can use as an additional gain stage to your amp, or just to have some awesome responsive compression. listen to the samples, especially the last one. the womanizer and demonizer are meant to be "on the road" recording pedals with speaker simulated D.I. OUT and tube driven class A distortion. the solid metal left me kinda bleh, but that's because i really don't like the "modern" hi gain tone people hear everywhere.

check'em out. I'm probably going to pick a Liquid Blues for the sake of versatility in my rig. and they're not really expensive. i left the retail price listing at work, but i'll update you guys tommorow. Carey said they were around the 200-300 mark. but man, tube preamps of this quality usually go for 600-1000.

and they work on standard AC power too. no more adaptor hassles.

I heard about these a year or so ago. I'm not sure which one i'd go for though. I really want a sort of liquid metal tone, something smooth for lead but also crunchy for rhythm.

honestly, i'd say these are for the guys who already have tone but are looking for little tweaks. like adding a graphic EQ pedal or rackmount or whatever to your preamp but with tubes and added warmth when properly used.

They definitely sound great (except the delay one, that kind of sucks compared to Line6's mintgreen monstrosity that I covet every day).

I like the Womanizer, but I can achieve the same boosts with the setup I'm using now.

I have an Orange 2 channel head, one dedicated clean and one crunchy. I usually just use a BOSS overdrive (ya, they kind of suck but I'm on a budget and it works) instead of the crunchy channel on my amp for regular distortion (I like clean distortion if that makes sense... like The Who) and if I really want it to burn I use both the crunchy channel and the overdrive pedal to boost the tone.

I used to use a distortion pedal, the OD pedal, and the amp channel but that was just too much and it would probably kill someone.

These are badass. I wish I had the time and money to get into using them.

I'm actually very surprised that they're tubes as well for that price. Niiiiiiice.

Listen up kids who probably won't read this:

Digital pedals, amps, pretty much anything suck. Don't waste your money on them.

If I could get my hands on a real tape delay..... mmmmmm. Imagine the power in my hands. ****... if I had the time to make one... imagine the power in my hands.

yeah. that's what i was surprised about too. two 12AX7 too! i've got an old beat up ADA-MP1 preamp that i hot-rodded, but it could definitely use more "cutting power" when it comes to leads. maybe i'll finally find the right setting to make it work, but in the meantime, i'll obsess over other gear. a nice BOSS digital delay (not 'cause of the actual delay effect, but all the warp and loop possibilities ), boss pitch shifter and an expression pedal and i should have all i need. maybe a crybaby for a notched frequency tone, but that's not really a priority.

i've never heard an orange. but i imagine it must sound rather swell for your style, especially with the OD-1 on top of the clean channel. if the head is tube it must really overdrive them smoothly.

I have no money.

It sounds sexy with the overdrive. I've only got a 2x30w head but it cranks up really nicely and it allows me to overdrive it naturally without having it blaring. I have a 4x12 cab right now but I've gotten into destroying my gear lately and so I'm not sure how long the cab will last.

I have had to repair my Gibson SG 3x in the past month and my producer said that his heart hurt when I threw it across the stage and into the drums last show. haha.

What the hell. Why damage your equipment?

Yeah, that's not cool. It does nothing for a show, it just makes a band look dumb.

Agreed on that. I never understood why bands think its awesome destroying their equipment.

Because it makes the live experience exciting for normal audience members.

Duh.