Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive

[scotspine]

prior to [probably] buying a lonestar, i was browsing the main board [as you do] when i saw somebody mention this pedal. before i knew it, i had browsed to the website, traced down said pedal, filled out the app form and clicked 'BUY'! has anybody else used this pedal? good? bad? indifferent?

 

[scotspine]

well hey ho, the postman cometh and the postman giveth. i'll aswer my own question. the sd is quite a boxful. loads of gain and a very crisp clean boost too. mixing the two, you have to be a tad careful otherwise you can, despite the blurb, muddy the sound, but it is not difficult to avoid that. so far i have only run my '63 strat through it. i'll be trying the 333 and 335 sometime this weekend but expect to be blown out the windows by the amount of gain available. this is all through my peavey classic 30. haven't tried it through either my marshall jmp 50 or the marshall bluesbreaker.

 

[musicbox]

just got one to go with my angel. infront of it with the poweramp clean, its a bit thin and theres not a pile of gain on tap, but once the powerapm gets cranking they blend and mesh better than anything i've ever heard..its abosolutely brilliant. everything from a punched up clean to that srv tone, to a chunkyseary rocktone. brilliant thing, even with the boost dailed out, the thing never gets muddy, i can hear every detail even under high gain. deffinlty recomnded.

a note,

this pedal is extremely sensitive to pickups! the differnt characters between single coils, p90's and humbuckers seem to shine a little moer with this thing driving the frontend.

 

[Keeso]

so far i have only run my '63 strat through it.

Hey, hey, I use a '63 Strat with a Sparkle Drive, too! Spanky, spanky, spanky! I have to say, it was a very nice pedal before, but it's a real great pedal after the Keeley mod. Well worth the $59.00 or so (I've forgotten already, but I think that's it, and it includes return shipping) because the gain taper is improved and it doesn't roll off the lows like before. I really like it as a clean boost, too. As you say, very crisp.

Early sixties Strats just go OINK-OINK-OINK with a nice treble boost, with clean boost mixed just a tad with the overdrive/gain. (Think bendy riffs on the low E string, the first five frets or so).

 

[scotspine]

so far i have only run my '63 strat through it.

Hey, hey, I use a '63 Strat with a Sparkle Drive, too! Spanky, spanky, spanky! I have to say, it was a very nice pedal before, but it's a real great pedal after the Keeley mod. Well worth the $59.00 or so (I've forgotten already, but I think that's it, and it includes return shipping) because the gain taper is improved and it doesn't roll off the lows like before. I really like it as a clean boost, too. As you say, very crisp.

Early sixties Strats just go OINK-OINK-OINK with a nice treble boost, with clean boost mixed just a tad with the overdrive/gain. (Think bendy riffs on the low E string, the first five frets or so).

so true, so true - lots of boinggg! lots of rounded boinggg in the out-of-phase between neck/middle. lots of dringgg in the out-of-phase between middle/bridge. luvvitt!

 

[scotspine]

btw - any pics of the strat?

 

[Keeso]

btw - any pics of the strat?

I have a crappy ISP and gave up (after several tries) trying to upload some pics to my free photo hosting site. Too many disconnections during the process!

Suffice it to say that it's a typical early 60's Strat with a nice L-series neck -- very, very nice birdseye maple with rosewood fretboard. It's a natural finish guitar and has the usual "green guard" pickguard that has the distinctive cracks at certain screws ... Gosh, I've seen quite a few Strats from this era (in person and pics in magazines) and they all seem to have those cracks/splits that go from the screw to the outer edge of the pickguard. Usually on that one upper screw (up near the top as you hold it) and at the tip of the lower horn. Unlike many of 'em, I haven't lost that teensy pickguard tip -- I had to epoxy it to the aluminum shield underneath ... but it hasn't been lost!

The pickups are awesome ... that aged vintage tone, and I think it sounds so much better since I did some additional shielding: copper foil on the back of the old alumimum shield, full copper foil in the cavities ... boy, it makes a difference! I can leave the guitar on "10" (volume) and turn myself right into (and up to) the amp ... amazing! It was a *****, but turned out to be a good job. No change in tone, just no hum. I "star-grounded" all the electronics, used some newer high-grade wire and I'm sure that helped. It has a few mods (including a Kramer string tree, I think), and is not so much a collector's guitar as a player's guitar, so I don't worry about that. It has a 5-way switch and has been that way for years and years.

I bought it with a small switch already installed next to the pickup switch and played for years with it hooked up to nothing. Someone must have wanted to do something, or changed their mind. I ended up using that small micro-switch to enable me to play the bridge PU with just the neck PU ... or, with the PU switch in the middle, with all three PU's together. I'm not all that big on the three together, but the bridge and neck together are very cool! Sounds rather Tele-like with some cool ultra-spank that is very unusual and unique -- I really like it!

The guitar's in good shape for it's age, but the thing that's neat about having a "player's guitar" is that a few mods here and there don't make you freak about collector value and you can just enjoy playing it. And it does sound exceptional (I think). It has that warm, rosewood "Stevie Ray Vaughan" tone, but also gets a very clangy, typically bright Strat sound on the bridge and middle PU. Hey, nothing sounds like a Strat!

 

[scotspine]

cool - here's mine