Paul Reed Smith’s Debut Pedals Reviewed: Overdrive, Compressor, and Flanger

Definitely, there’s a visceral thrill to enjoying a guitar with out results—significantly one as good as the common PRS. However whereas that’s true, stompboxes are, to many musicians, equally clever and thrilling autos of expression. And quite a lot of pedals have carried out their magic with a PRS guitar on the different finish of a cable.

PRS’ three debut pedals—an optical compressor, overdrive, and twin flanger—don’t really feel like willy-nilly concessions to market pressures. In reality, in line with PRS custom and ethos, these pedals appear chosen and designed to supply minimal intrusion on the guitar/amp relationship if the participant chooses that route. However additionally they have the bandwidth to be daring and even positively extroverted. Unsurprisingly, they’re additionally constructed to a really excessive normal of high quality and mirror an intense consideration to element.

PRS’ three debut pedals—an optical compressor, overdrive, and twin flanger—don’t really feel like willy-nilly concessions to market pressures. In reality, in line with PRS custom and ethos, these pedals appear chosen and designed to supply minimal intrusion on the guitar/amp relationship if the participant chooses that route. However additionally they have the bandwidth to be daring and even positively extroverted. Unsurprisingly, they’re additionally constructed to a really excessive normal of high quality and mirror an intense consideration to element.

Horsemeat Clear Overdrive

Horsemeat isn’t a fairly identify, however I’m guessing it alludes to creating brief work—mincemeat, if you’ll—of the Klon Centaur in a head-to-head battle. It’s laborious to know precisely how a lot inspiration PRS derived from the Klon. PRS emphatically insists that Horsemeat is a really authentic design. And its circuit board is flipped, making it unimaginable to find out similarities in topology. It shares at the least one necessary design component with the Klon, within the type of germanium clipping diodes. In a really common sense, germanium diodes are inclined to contribute soft-edged compression and a excessive capability for distortion. However with out understanding how different elements within the circuit modify the efficiency of the diodes, you must depend on your ears. And alongside my favourite Klon clone, Horsemeat seems like a really completely different animal certainly.

Subsequent to the Klon clone—which serves right here as a well-recognized baseline moderately than a direct comparability—the Horsemeat’s headroom and the leeway to work with it by way of selecting dynamics or the versatile and sensible management array is placing.

Although the Horsemeat can get aggressive, shifting by way of the achieve management’s vary yields many nuanced shades. At most achieve ranges (and with comparatively impartial treble, bass, and voice settings), the Horsemeat displays loads of Marshall-plexi-like traits. There’s a definite sense of measurement, a viscerally satisfying growl to the voice, and many top-end response that provides first- and second-string output warmth and room to breathe. In case you preserve the output stage at an affordable setting, the compression within the distortion by no means feels oppressive or muddy. As an alternative, the pedal’s pure compression tends to lend cohesion. And even at superior output stage settings (and there’s a lot of room to run in that respect), the distortion stays articulate.

“Shifting by way of the achieve management’s vary actually yielded shades of achieve moderately than heaps of additional crunch and aggression.”

Lowering achieve reveals a formidable capability for contact sensitivity. I can’t keep in mind the final achieve gadget I used that responded so effectively to variations in fingerpicking depth. Guitar quantity attenuation, too, yields wealthy and really fairly clear tones. And when you’re pissed off by your single-coil pickup’s tendency to bleed excessive finish with quantity discount, you’ll be tickled by how readily the Horsemeat can substitute a few of that sparkle.

The bass and treble controls not solely have loads of vary, however supply very colourful and assorted tones inside these areas. You’ll be able to extract exceptionally vivid tones out of the Horsemeat (the truth is, extra-trebly settings moderately than high-gain sounds struck me because the pedal’s most “excessive” settings). The voice management, which shapes frequency response within the clipping stage, helps you colour the pedal’s tones in much more particular methods. Aggressively clockwise settings sound and really feel sizzling and explosive, whereas the lower-to-middle third of its vary have a sweetness that works with the pedal’s intrinsic dynamism so as to add soulful motion to chord melodies.

The Verdict

It’s laborious to think about an overdrive person that wouldn’t dig working with the Horsemeat. Gamers that choose the squish in overdriven Fender tweed circuits would possibly discover the output a contact too even throughout frequencies. However I believe loads of gamers that love the extra articulate facet of a Marshall’s voice or actually obsess over relative transparency will discover a soulmate on this superb and assorted drive machine.

Mary Cries Optical Compressor

Just like the Horsemeat, the Mary Cries comp hints at a attainable PRS design staff directive: {That a} guitar’s basic voice ought to at all times be capable to be its greatest, most fun self. That’s no shock for a corporation whose devices are usually so wealthy and sonorous. However just like the Common Audio Teletronix LA-2A optical studio compressor that impressed it, the Mary Cries succeeds so effectively that it might in all probability make a busted kazoo shine.

“The Mary Cries might in all probability make a busted kazoo shine.”

In case you ever use an actual LA-2A in a studio, you’ll always remember the best way it fattens, flatters, and warms a sign. You’ll even be struck by how economical the format is. Other than a compression ratio swap, there’s a peak discount knob (usually simply known as the compression management) and a make-up achieve or output achieve management. Even a novice can competently use an LA-2A utilizing ears and instinct.

Constructing a pedal-sized optical compressor circuit doesn’t routinely make it the equal of an LA-2A. That verges on the unimaginable. However the Mary Cries excels on the identical duties: including physique and pleasure to a sign and enabling fast changes with out overthinking the method. The Mary Cries reduces the management scheme of an LA-2A to simply the compression and output achieve controls (that are the controls studio engineers use most). However simply as a studio LA-2A can dramatically recast a sound with these easy interactions, the Mary Cries has the capability to utterly alter the texture and drive of an instrument—past including maintain and mitigating the consequences of nasty peaks.

Even modest compression settings on the Mary Cries even have the impact of thickening and tightening low- and low-mid frequencies, giving the notion of additional mass and resonance with out overpowering the highest finish. Mary Cries additionally colours trebles with bell-like maintain that tends to decay in virtually excellent stability with the fatter low finish. Gamers usually use comps to attain stability between frequency band extremes, however the Mary Cries’ cohesiveness, when you’ll allow a meals analogy, has the texture of a sauce the place each ingredient shines brilliantly.

This means to assemble and spotlight fundamentals and overtones in a balanced entire does wonders for easy and prolonged chords. And these tone composites can purr and growl gorgeously relying on the place you situate your output achieve. By the way, Mary Cries is an impressive clear increase once you kick up the output achieve and scale back the compression to a minimal.

The Verdict

Mary Cries does an excellent job of sounding and feeling transformative with little or no fuss. It’s superbly constructed, which manifests itself within the unit’s exceptionally quiet efficiency. At 219 bucks, it might appear costly to gamers accustomed to different superficially easy comps. However I believe even a cursory side-by-side play with many of those items would reveal a lot about Mary Cries’ nuance, class, and worth.

Wind By way of the Bushes Twin Analog Flanger

In comparison with its comparatively streamlined siblings the Mary Cries and the Horsemeat, the analog, LFO-driven Wind By way of the Bushes flanger seems like a handful to handle. However for all of the knobs that populate the Wind’s enclosure, it’s surprisingly intuitive.

Many modern, digitally attuned gamers will insist {that a} pedal this filled with potentialities ought to include presets. However the Wind By way of the Bushes’ analog interface is fluid and clear sufficient that you may transfer between assorted settings with relative ease. That makes exploring the pedal’s myriad textures a flat-out pleasure—significantly as a result of you possibly can dwelling in on very particular modulation profiles to swimsuit a musical second.

“One of many Wind By way of the Bushes best strengths is its means to generate very mellow and hauntingly subliminal modulations.”

Flange will not be an impact gamers usually affiliate with subtlety. However one of many Wind By way of the Bushes’ best strengths is its means to generate very mellow and hauntingly subliminal modulations. These subtleties are made attainable by the Wind By way of the Bushes very interactive, delicate, and rangy controls. And, in my expertise at the least, the LFO combine, moist/dry output, and the very clearly labeled “added highs” controls are key to those textures.

Utilizing these controls, you possibly can, as an example, style a really understated modulation on LFO 1, mix in only a contact of twitchy, deep, high-rate modulation from LFO 2, add a contact of haze or brightness to style with the added highs management, after which combine the sum into your sign with the very delicate dry/moist knob. These are clearly not revolutionary technique of management, however the best way they work on the Wind By way of the Bushes feels surgical and offers you an actual sense of command the place some flangers really feel monochromatic or purely chaotic.

But when chaos—or at the least the surreal—is what you crave, the Wind By way of the timber can ship. For example, very efficient, weird-but-musical textures could be crafted by dialing intently adjoining however simply offset price and depth settings within the two LFOs, then setting their respective handbook (or waveform delay) controls in opposition and cranking the regen to additional whooshy ranges. Utilizing the identical scheme however mixing gradual and quick price settings within the two LFOs yields even stranger and extra advanced variations that mix hints of rotary speaker and ring modulation. And backgrounding these wild mixtures by subtracting excessive finish and utilizing a dryer combine provides mysterious animation to chords and melody traces.

The Verdict

At about 350 bucks, the Wind By way of the Bushes is the most costly of the brand new PRS pedals. And it’s comprehensible that some would possibly understand that worth as excessive for an impact that’s, ostensibly, specialised. However the Wind By way of the Bushes proves how expansive a flanger could be when carried out proper. There are beautiful chorus-like sounds, loads of intense classic part tones, and the deep however elegant and intuitive management set makes crafting advanced modulations really feel effortlessly artistic.

Gamers accustomed to presets on a pedal with such broad capabilities could also be bummed by their absence. And it’s true that shifting between vastly completely different flange settings within the midst of a efficiency received’t at all times be a bit of cake. However within the context of music creation and within the studio, the place you’ve got the posh of attempting to find the proper modulation colour, Wind By way of The Bushes generally is a potent musical companion.