The Dirty Little Secret is quite a lot to take in.
I don't think I ever tried a slice of Catalinbread before, so this is all new.
It's a bit smaller than your standard 1590 shape and has side jacks. It's fairly light, too.
The complexity comes from the switch on the inside, that lets you choose if you wanna mimic the Marshall Super Lead or the Super Bass.
I will have to admit at this point that guitar amps are, to me, things for guitar players. I have absolutely no clue about the Marshall lineup and which amp does what. I thought they are all named JCM800, but apparently, there are several different models of them. They all look the same to me. I think I'm gonna remain ignorant about that stuff and just soldier on. There's another hidden knob inside the pedal, one I did not spot upon inspection of the PCB, but found upon inspection of the manual. It's named Presence and requires a super small screw driver that I'll have to bring from the office tomorrow. This knob controls the frequency response upwards of 3k and since I bought a second hand unit, I have no clue where mine is set, default is noon.
That said, I set to plugging it in and plonking around.
First impression: Yet again, I picked a pedal that does some amp like, organic sound. Nearly three in a row now, with the Meatsmoke and the Joyo OJ, but the Metal Zone did not allow the hattrick - which was actually only because the shipping used by the DLS seller was super slow. The Metal Zone should have arrived two days after the DLS, had both sellers used the same service.
Organic. A bit darker than the Meatsmoke, and man, can it roar in anger. I did not know how to start properly, so I simply set everything to noon and started twisting knobs. Quickly figuring out how the EQ works ... twisting more knobs, and five minutes later, I'm none the wiser.
I mean, turning treble up makes the signal have more treble content. Is it boost only? Cut only? I really sat in front of this thing for a solid ten minutes and then fired up the Tone Stack Calculator and looked at the Marshall tone stack. There seems to be no such thing as a flat setting and it's all rather confusing, so I simply twisted knobs until I found something I liked. Then I looked inside to see which setting I'm in and it was set to Super Lead. I flipped over to Super Bass and the first thing I noticed was that the gain dropped. In SL mode, the signal has a fair amount of grit even with the gain knob at zero, in SB mode it's nearly clean. The manual says that the Super Lead amp is cutting bass, but the pedal does not seem to follow that closely, because I could not really attest that mode a neutered low end at all.
SL has more of a singing distortion sound, with more momentum to it, while the SB mode has more of a push back, but both act sensitive to the touch.
The smell of that tone is a bit on the brown side of things. You get notes of warm earth after a summer rain, a fallen tree in an autumn wood, and coffee grounds from a Bialetti after you poured the shot. All the metal you can find is so rusty, it crumbles when you hit it with a hammer. While it has some bite, it's like being bitten by a horse: Solid muscle behind the jaws, but all molars and no canines.
Things to investigate further:
-What happens with the presence knob when you have a proper tool to operate it? Will it get less dark and file its teeth to needle sharp points?
-The pedal is actually capable of operating at up to 18V. The manual claims it gets a different response, and of course more headroom. I've not tried anything but 9V yet.
. I’m only half kidding.
