Is this the best overdrive you've never heard of? In this video, we shootout two excellent overdrive offerings by the good folks at Carl Martin. Here we pit the popular PlexiTone Circuit (Panama OD) against the lesser-known DC Drive. Both pedals are impressive. Which one will secure a coveted spot on our studio pedalboard? Let's find out! Products FeaturedCarl Martin Panama: https://amzn.to/3inv1wX Carl Martin DC Drive: https://amzn.to/3owJudI Ibanez AZ Guitar: https://amzn.to/3FdwrUr Series One Head: https://amzn.to/2Ya4Y5c Studio Zilla Cabs: https://bit.ly/39Xz2DC Video TranscriptHi, you’re in the studio with Luke from GuitarIQ.com. In today's video, we're checking out a couple of fantastic little overdrive options from the good folks over at Carl Martin. One of them, in particular, impressed me so much that it may have just secured for itself a coveted spot on my studio pedalboard. In fact, it might just be one of the best sleeper overdrive pedals that you may never have heard of! So I'm just going to tease you with that. I’m going to leave that lingering for a minute.
If you do like this video, then click on the ‘Like’ button to let me know about it (and to help appease the all-powerful youtube algorithm). Of course, as we go through the video, if you have any questions and comments please leave them in the comments section below—I’m pretty good at responding to that stuff. And finally, before we get into the video. If you're looking to upscale your playing skills on guitar, then please head over to GuitarIQ.com, at your leisure, to check out some of the great tools and learning resources that we have for you over there. Everything from books on fretboard memorization and chord theory to exercises jam tracks and workouts. And, of course, a lot more. So if that sounds interesting to you then head over to GuitarIQ.com. And with that, let’s jump into the video! Okay, so here we have two little overdrive pedals by the good folks over at Carl Martin. On the left here we have the Panama and on the right we have the DC Drive. So before I get stuck into chatting about these pedals and exploring the gain range and the tonal possibilities. I’ve dialed in some nice lower gain settings here, so let's just jump in and see what they sound like! (Audio example) So, hopefully that gave you a bit of an idea of what these pedals sound like. These are part of Carl Martin's newer lineup that's come out in the last few years of pedals that all share this enclosure. They’re very compact, they feel very well built, they obviously sound great, and I think they look great as well. The DC Drive is a reissue, I guess, of one of their older pedals—just housed in a much more compact, better looking enclosure. And the Panama is really, I guess, to the best of my knowledge, an update to their well-known PlexiTone circuit. Which is kind of that, as it says on the tin, British Hot-Modded OD (I can't really see the writing there). But it's essentially that brown sound, Plexi, MIAB type thing. So let me just switch back to the DC Drive. Let’s start with this pedal and I'm going to play some cowboy chords and twiddle some knobs and let's see what kind of gain range and tonal versatility is available to us. For those interested in such things, I’m using an Ibanez AZ guitar, going into a Blackstar Series One 50-watt tube head, into a Suhr Reactive Load. And for my cab simulation, I'm using the Studio Zilla Cabs by Get Good Drums. So here we go… (Audio example) So as you can hear, there’s quite a usable tone range in this circuit. It doesn't get overly harsh when you wind it up. I kind of like it at about that, I don't know, 10 o'clock setting. Where it just starts to kick in and do something. Now, let's check out the gain or the drive… (Audio example) So you can hear there's quite a lot of gain on tap. It’s not overly noisy when the gain’s all the way wound up. If i switch my guitar off, for example, you can hear that that's pretty silent. But it’s getting a bit woolly on the bottom end. Which is really handy because we have this ‘Fat' to ‘Regular’ switch. The Fat switch is essentially a nice little bass boost on the bottom end. And the Regular switch is the regular mode, as it suggests. And this is what that sounds like… (Audio example) So you can hear that really tightens things up. One of the things I like about this pedal, is when you wind it all the way down, you still get this really nice light overdrive sound. Change pickups… (Audio example) So a fair bit of gain on tap. I kind of prefer this pedal in the low to mid gain areas. But you can certainly wind in a lot more saturation if you so desire. But even when it's cranked really high, this really firmly sits in that overdrive camp. It never kind of crosses over into a real saturated high-gain distortion sound. Which is quite different to the Panama. So let's check that out… (Audio example) So there is a bit of a dynamic gain range there. But as you can tell, it gets very driven, very quickly. This pedal is labeled as an overdrive pedal but I really hear it as more of a distortion circuit, to me personally. Unlike the DC Drive where there is quite a smooth gain range in the lower settings. As I said, this really kicks in quite quickly… And as we hit those higher gain settings, this is where the dampening knob really becomes more and more useful. This is essentially a low resonance, high-pass filter-esque knob. It basically attenuates and dials in the low end. It’s great for tuning in this pedal to the cabinet that you're using, in the room you're in. Just to make sure things don't get too big and boomy. So this is what that sounds like… (Audio example) Now, let’s change up that riff. And let's check out the tone knob here… (Audio example) So there's an awful lot of bite there. It kind of gets pretty harsh (at least in the rig that I'm using) when you dial it up past 12 o’clock… (Audio example) So when I was doing those lower string riffs, I could sort of wind that up a bit more. But certainly when I am hitting the higher strings, to me, it’s sounding a bit piercing. Again, that's in the context of the rig that I'm using. Those high-end frequencies might sound great when they're pushed with the guitar you're using and the amp you're using them with. So, again, it's all about context. So clearly this can become a raging gain-monster style pedal. But the last thing I wanted to try, was to see how much we can clean this up and get a really nice overdrive out of it… (Audio example) So clearly there's some nice lower gain settings in there. But I dare say, if you are buying the Panama, you’re probably not buying it for the low gain edge-of-breakup sounds. You’re probably buying it for a raging lead tone or something like that. Okay, so I've set everything to roughly 12 o’clock. One last thing I wanted to do before we go, was to run these into the dirty channel of my amplifier. To see how they perform as a more kind of boost-style overdrive pedal that’s already pushing an amp which is breaking up. This is what the dirty channel on my amp sounds like… (Audio example) So you can hear right away that there's too much going on there. One thing I like to do, when I'm running an overdrive pedal into an already dirty amp, is just to check the gain range and see where that noise floor really starts to ramp up. So you can hear anywhere above there is just adding a lot more unwanted noise to the signal. So I'm going to keep this pretty tame. Remember, when we're running into a dirty amp, all of the gain and saturation we're getting is from the amp itself. We’re just using the pedal as more of a tonal-shaping tool. And that also means we can be a little bit more dramatic with the tone and volume knobs of a pedal. Because we can drive the amp a bit harder because it's already breaking up. And that compression and saturation that's happening from the amp is going to smooth out a lot of those spiky transients that we might get if we're just running into a clean amp, for example. So this is what it sounds like at a lower gain setting… (Audio example) Just going to the neck pick up on my guitar. I’m going to wind that all the way down, boost this up a bit. Let’s see if that sounds good… (Audio example) So you can hear that it's definitely giving us a lot more thickness and fatness. I really do like that Fat knob on the DC Drive. You need to be a little bit careful with how flubby the low end gets. Which is why it sort of seems to be working better in this context on the neck pickup. So let's move to the Panama drive and see how we go… (Audio example) You can definitely use the Panama in that kind of function. I much prefer how the DC Drive pushes an already dirty amp. Really, the Panama drive is kind of its own thing. It's really more akin to an amp-in-the-box style pedal. I feel like the DC Drive more easily blends in with the sound of your guitar and your amp. Whereas, the Panama imposes its own kind of feel and characteristics onto the sound. Which is great if you're looking for an aggressive MIAB style sound. If you've got a really high headroom fender amp, for example. And you're looking for a distortion tone which sounds somewhat similar to what an amp sounds like (as opposed to just stepping on a distortion pedal). This is a really great option for that. So what do I prefer? What do I recommend? What do i think you should get? Well, of course, it depends, as always, on your setup and the tones you're going for. Interestingly, before I got these pedals, having seen a lot of the other reviews out there, I think there's something really special about the Panama. It definitely, as I said, does that amp-in-a-box style thing really well. And it has some really nice amp-like characteristics about it. Having got them both in the studio and used them in my rig, however, I’m pretty impressed with the DC Drive. I think this is a real ‘sleeper’ overdrive pedal. It's not one that I was familiar with. I'm really impressed at how responsive it feels. I like how easily this blends with your guitar and the other pedals in your rig. Personally, I prefer lower gain overdrive pedals anyway. So that’s probably part of why I'm biased to the DC Drive. But at the end of the day, they’re both great pedals. You can get some really great tones with them. And it's really just about what you like. So that was my look at the Panama and DC Drive by Carl Martin. Oops! One last thing before we go, I realized that I have neglected to do the obvious— which is stack these pedals together. So if you were there, staring at your phone, wondering what these pedals sound like when they're both on, it sounds a bit like this… (Audio example) It's a glorious sound. Sustain for days. I love it! And that concludes (really this time) our look at the Panama and DC Drive by Carl Martin. Well, that's it for this video. A big shoutout to the team over at Carl Martin for sending me these pedals to check out. To clarify, this was not a paid promotion, or a sponsored advertisement, or anything like that. No money has changed hands. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always. But if you did like the video, please click on that like button. Do all the things. Leave your thoughts and feedback in the comments section. Subscribe to the channel, even. That really helps me out and helps me produce more videos like this. And finally, just a quick reminder, if you are looking to take your playing a bit deeper then I encourage you to head over to GuitarIQ.com and check out some of the great learning resources we have waiting for you over there. That's it from me. Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video! 27/10/2022 10:46:37 pm
Four big its option fight. Fish true behind near. Comments are closed.
|
|