We here at zZounds were fortunate enough to receive a small bounty (no pun intended) of old and new JHS drive pedals for a shootout. Since JHS offers a wealth of drive options for players, I figured a demonstration of the tone of each would be a worthwhile pursuit.
As an added bonus, the JHS Red Remote Footswitch makes a cameo appearance and offers up extra tonal options for those who want a little bit more out of their pedals.
The Cast
First off – let me introduce the pedals featured in the video:
Each had their own unique flavor, sometimes subtle and other times not. Because of this, I wrote a tune that allowed each pedal to have a moment to shine at certain points in the song, playing off each of their inherent strengths.
For instance, the beginning of the song is pure Morning Glory V4 tone: transparent crunch that was clear even with bigger chords, and enough EQ control to tame any harshness in the signal.
From there we move onto the funky section, where we used the Red Remote to toggle the Morning Glory’s higher gain settings. I loved how it responded to dead notes – the extra gain saturation was musical and sizzly and worked perfectly with my more percussive lead guitar parts.
Moving on to what I lovingly dubbed the “Iron Maiden section,” we introduce the JHS Sweet Tea V3 for all rhythms and both dual lead guitar parts. You’ll notice that this pedal has considerably more gain than the Morning Glory, and extra thickness to its EQ curves, a la Marshall amplifiers. The sustain was phenomenal and again, the tone was easy to dial in because of its focus.
In our sexy bridge, again endearingly dubbed the “Steely Dan section,” we get a chance to hear the JHS Twin Twelve V2 pedal which aims to replicate a Silvertone 1484 amplifier. This pedal was clear at lower volumes but had a mushier tone faithful to old Silvertones of that era when pushed harder. The main chords and muted background parts were played with this pedal.
For our last section, the climactic return to the “Iron Maiden” hook, we used the newest offering of this collection, The Kilt V2. This pedal is essentially an identity crisis in a box: warm overdrive on one end, extreme sputtering fuzz at the other. Better heard than explained, check out how great it sounded when I played power chords and both dual leads at the end of the tune.
JHS’ overdrive/fuzz pedal collection has no sign of stopping anytime soon, but I hope this overview and our accompanying video helps give you an idea of what each of these pedals can do. Don’t let me fool you though – play them all for yourself!
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