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It's Mark Lettieri vs the world! Well, kind of... In this video, we're checking out his awesome collaboration with J. Rockett Audio Designs: The Melody EQ and Overdrive. Here, we shoot it out against three absolutely iconic overdrive pedals. How does it compare? Is this the ultimate shape-shifting, workhorse overdrive pedal? You decide! Let's hear it in action... Products FeaturedJ. Rockett Melody: https://amzn.to/3oNAl2N Nobels ODR-Mini: https://amzn.to/3AwSHaJ Ibanez TS Mini: https://amzn.to/40FTDV2 Wampler Tumnus: https://amzn.to/3oL7A6O Keeley Halo Delay: https://amzn.to/3HfBd6o GTRS P800 Guitar: https://amzn.to/3n5PY50 Video TranscriptHowdy friend, you're here in the studio with Luke from GuitarIQ.com. Today, we’re checking out another fantastic, little device from the friendly folks over at J. Rockett Audio Designs. This is the Melody EQ and overdrive pedal. It was designed in collaboration with Mark Lettieri, who is an absolute beast of a guitar player—one of my personal favorite players, for sure. Just looking at the pedal you can see that it is a really interesting circuit design. First up, we have this lovely, neutral kind of low to mid gain overdrive. Coupled with a six-band EQ. The idea being that this pedal can be a super versatile, shape-shifting, workhorse overdrive pedal that can essentially cover whatever job you throw at it.
So in today's video, I thought we would put that claim to the test. I'm going to stack it up against three absolutely iconic overdrive circuits and see just how close we can get the Melody to sound. But before we dive into all that, let’s just hear this thing in action. My signal chain for today is my GTRS P800 super-strat style guitar, going into the clean channel of my Series One 50-watt head. On the back end, we’re running some lovely stereo delay courtesy of this fantastic, little pedal that I've recently got into the studio: The Andy Timmons signature Halo pedal by Keely. And for my cabinet simulation today, we’re running the Nolly Archetype plug-in by Neural DSP. So switching this off, here is my clean sound: [Music] And with the pedal engaged: [Music] So, as you heard there it's just a really nice, neutral starting point for crafting your tone. The question for today's video of course is, how close can we get to these other iconic circuit designs? We have three to choose from. These are popular mini-style pedals that you see popping up on people's pedalboards all the time. So I thought that would make a good option for this shootout. First up, we have the ODR-mini by Nobles. This is, of course, based on their famous ODR-1 circuit known for that classic “Nashville" type sound. Next up, we have the Ibanez TS mini. This is obviously based on the classic Tube Screamer circuit. And finally, we have the Wampler Tumnus. This is a Klon clone. Now, I’m not going to be overly scientific with today's comparison. I haven't set up a loop switcher. I'm not going to go through the entire gain range of each of these pedals. I'm certainly not going to do a null test or anything like that. Instead, today I've set up what hopefully represents a more real-world scenario. Where we have a little pedalboard with a handful of pedals and some nice delay. I've just dialled each of these overdrive pedals to a setting I like. And I'm essentially just interested in two things: First up, how close can we get the Melody to the sound of each of these classic overdrive circuits. And secondly, what can we learn about the sonic character of each of these pedals along the way. Now, it’s worth noting these are of course entirely different pedals with different circuit designs. There’s only so much you can do with EQ. So I’m certainly not expecting the Melody to sound identical to these pedals. But I am interested to see, can we get it in the ballpark? Can I get the Melody to cover the sort of jobs that guitar players usually choose these pedals for? So if that sounds interesting to you, then please click on that ‘Like’ button to let me know and to help nudge along that YouTube algorithm. And with that, I'll go away and spend a bit of time dialling this in and let's check out some sounds: [Music] Okay, a really interesting comparison! As I expected, I certainly wasn't able to get the Melody pedal to sound, you know, 100% identical to these other circuits. But hopefully, I was able to demonstrate, if I was using this as my main workhorse overdrive pedal, I can certainly get it to do the type of jobs that these other pedals are typically known for. Now, along the way, it was interesting to note that the ODR-1 style circuit perhaps wasn't as flat as you might expect. This is very much known as a transparent, neutral, natural sounding overdrive. But the ODR-mini, at least, is quite a dark sounding overdrive pedal. It has a lot of bottom end and there's almost a slightly scooped quality in the midrange of this pedal. Contrast that to a Tube Screamer type of circuit and we have, as you would expect, something which is almost the polar opposite. This really tightens things up on the bottom end and it has an extremely pronounced mid-hump around that 700Hz to 800Hz range. Contrast this with the Klon-style pedal, which again is known as a mid-forward type of overdrive pedal. And it was really interesting to see the differences between how these two petals are voiced. The Tumnus seemed to roll off the high frequencies a little more dramatically than the Tube Screamer did. But it compensates for this by shifting that mid-hump quite a lot higher than what we saw with the Tube Screamer. Compared to the Tube Screamer there was much more emphasis around that 1K range. So, all of this was a pretty interesting tonal experiment. Hopefully, you found it helpful. That was my look at the Melody EQ and overdrive pedal by J Rockett Audio Designs. So I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on this experiment in the comments section below. As always, it's worth noting for the sake of full disclosure that this pedal was sent to me to check out and to feature in a video. But this wasn't a paid promotion or a sponsored advertisement. They had no say whatsoever in the actual video content. If you like this video, and you want to see more content like this, then please consider subscribing to the channel. And finally, if you've stuck around to the end of this video then clearly you're my type of person. So I would like to warmly invite you to head over to GuitarIQ.com to check out some of the great books and other learning resources we have waiting for you over there. Covering everything from fretboard memorization, to chord theory, to warm-ups and workouts for guitar players, and a whole lot more. That is GuitarIQ.com. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video! Comments are closed.
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