screamingdaisy
Well-known member
Anyone who plays lead on a Recto, I recommend checking out the Mesa Grid Slammer.
I used to be one of those guys that would tell people that Recto's weren't that good for lead. I felt they lacked compression and the mids weren't quite right. I could never really achieve the singing sustain I wanted. I tried a variety of different boosts/overdrives and was never 100% sold on any of them. Usually, it was because pure boosts felt too stiff, and overdrives and a mismatched midrange where pedal and amp had different mid peaks that didn't mesh well.
For years I just accepted the amp for what it was and used overdrives as sparingly as possible.
I took a chance on the Grid Slammer because I figured that Mesa probably voiced their pedals to sound good through a Mesa, and I was right. The mids of the pedal meshes perfectly with the mids of the amp, and the tone knob does a great job of either accentuating or dialling back the pick attack in the correct frequency range. The pedal also does a great job of subtly filling out the midrange without sounding artificial, so my lead tone sounds a little "bigger" and has a bit more midrange presence with it on. From what information I've been able to find it's based a Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive with a Timmy clipping diode arrangement. The LOD was basically a Tubescreamer that was spec'd to have more headroom, and thus more dynamics than a typical Tubescreamer. It's probably why this pedal gets a lot of "feels amplike" in reviews.
In my quest I've also been through the Flux Drive and Tone-Burst. I avoided the Grid Slammer because I assumed it was just another Tubescreamer. I started with the Flux Drive because I read it was the most flexible, but I found it had too much gain for my purposes and was always using it with the gain nearly off, and since I was essentially using it as a clean boost I decided to try the Tone-Burst to see if it could do clean boost better.
The Tone-Burst is an awesome boost. I like it because it retains the low end, so you get a fat lead out of it. It's also not stiff like other clean boosts I've had, so it feels very natural to play through. It's also handy for pushing single coils when switching guitars. The problem for me is that I couldn't get it to sing... too clean and not enough compression.
While the Flux Drive was too much and the Tone-Burst was not enough the Grid Slammer was just right. Enough compression to sing, but not so much gain that it doesn't stack well with an already gained amp. It's (IMO) perfect for adding fluidity to an amp that isn't exactly known for being fluid.
Anyway... I wrote all this because I think the Grid-Slammer is often overlooked as "just another Tubescreamer"; but, if you own a Mesa I think this pedal is really worth checking out.
I used to be one of those guys that would tell people that Recto's weren't that good for lead. I felt they lacked compression and the mids weren't quite right. I could never really achieve the singing sustain I wanted. I tried a variety of different boosts/overdrives and was never 100% sold on any of them. Usually, it was because pure boosts felt too stiff, and overdrives and a mismatched midrange where pedal and amp had different mid peaks that didn't mesh well.
For years I just accepted the amp for what it was and used overdrives as sparingly as possible.
I took a chance on the Grid Slammer because I figured that Mesa probably voiced their pedals to sound good through a Mesa, and I was right. The mids of the pedal meshes perfectly with the mids of the amp, and the tone knob does a great job of either accentuating or dialling back the pick attack in the correct frequency range. The pedal also does a great job of subtly filling out the midrange without sounding artificial, so my lead tone sounds a little "bigger" and has a bit more midrange presence with it on. From what information I've been able to find it's based a Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive with a Timmy clipping diode arrangement. The LOD was basically a Tubescreamer that was spec'd to have more headroom, and thus more dynamics than a typical Tubescreamer. It's probably why this pedal gets a lot of "feels amplike" in reviews.
In my quest I've also been through the Flux Drive and Tone-Burst. I avoided the Grid Slammer because I assumed it was just another Tubescreamer. I started with the Flux Drive because I read it was the most flexible, but I found it had too much gain for my purposes and was always using it with the gain nearly off, and since I was essentially using it as a clean boost I decided to try the Tone-Burst to see if it could do clean boost better.
The Tone-Burst is an awesome boost. I like it because it retains the low end, so you get a fat lead out of it. It's also not stiff like other clean boosts I've had, so it feels very natural to play through. It's also handy for pushing single coils when switching guitars. The problem for me is that I couldn't get it to sing... too clean and not enough compression.
While the Flux Drive was too much and the Tone-Burst was not enough the Grid Slammer was just right. Enough compression to sing, but not so much gain that it doesn't stack well with an already gained amp. It's (IMO) perfect for adding fluidity to an amp that isn't exactly known for being fluid.
Anyway... I wrote all this because I think the Grid-Slammer is often overlooked as "just another Tubescreamer"; but, if you own a Mesa I think this pedal is really worth checking out.
