Carl Martin Plexitone

It's easy to dial up a good sound. Both channels sound good at any gain level, you can't go wrong. The tone knob works on both channels, so the high gain channels differs from the crunch channel primarily in gain. Still a very flexible pedal. You can have a light crunch and heavy distortion in one pedal, or drive the crunch channel at high gain and use the high gain channel for adding even more cream. On top of things you get a loud, clean boost, geat for soloing and easy to set.

Use it mostly with a '96 strat with Hot Noiseless (JB) pickups and Boogie studio .22+ on the clean channel. This thing is hot. With my amp and pickups, I gives me a classic, full high gain tone, even using a strat. A very different animal than the HDB's. Rich, harmonic and full sound, great response. Makes my amp sound three times bigger. It adds a lot of bass, but the sound remains creamy and mid-focused. Even at very high gain settings it still sounds musical. Not noisy at all. The boost is very loud and very clear, and I wish it would at a little more compression to the signal. This pedal has a very high sound quality. Not every sound is in here, but for rich, full and distorted sounds, check it out.

I have been playing with CM pedals for many years now, and never had a problem so far. Although it's a new design, it's built like a tank. No backup needed.

Never dealt with them about a repair, so I don't know. I once asked them a question, and mr. Jongberg answered the next day.

I actually went for a Carl Martin Hot Drive & Boost MK 3, having played for many years with the HBD 2 and (for a while) the HDB 1. But I couldn't resist the luxury of an extra high gain channel for the same price. I've been playing it for about two months now. The funny thing is, that since all gain settings sound good, it's hard too pick up your own sound at first. I liked the HDB MK 2 a lot, but it was more limited. That's not always bad. When trying to find the right settings on a distortion unit, I often found out that there was only one setting that was right for me. In a way, this limitation always helped me to find a peronal guitar sound. I must say I sometimes miss the more transparant, but warm overdrive of the HDB MK 2. Maybe the sound is in here as well, but I haven't found it yet.
I must say I love Carl Martin pedals. I own several (delayla, chorus and compressor), and they all have an excellent quality to them. I can't understand why there are so little overdive units with a boost option out there.

Easy to use, it's analog. 4 knobs. Boost, Level, Tone, High Gain, Crunch. 3 Footswitches. 1 Boost. 1 To select Overdrive or Not. 1 to select between high gain and crunch.

Setup: Les Paul -> Plexitone -> Boss MT-2 -> Boss Delay -> Peavey Classic 50

A little bit of noise on when turned up loud, but it is a distortion pedal and you really can't get around that without a noisegate. This pedal is not for New Metal. This is the reason that I use an MT-2 if I need to go way over the top. This pedal is awesome for blues, old school rock, and some soundgarden like sounds. The best thing about this pedal is that it keeps your guitar's tone. When I first got it, I wasn't impressed, but after playing it a while, I like it more and more.

You can really hear every note when playing chords and it doesn't mush the bass at high volumes. Like I said, this isn't for playing new metal, but if you are looking for a very versatile pedal that maintains the tone of your guitar and amp, this is it. I bought this to replace two other pedals in my chain (Blues Driver and DS-1) to reduce the number of chords and batteries that I needed.

I give it a 9/10. Nothing is a 10. Unless I can steal Eddie Van Halen's setup on VH1.

Had it only a few weeks, but seems to be well made. Time will tell.

Don't know.

This is a great pedal if you want to hear your guitar. It is very transparant and versatile. However, it is pricey. I would not pay the full retail of around $220 for this pedal. That is a little too expensive, but I bought it used and at the price I paid, I would buy it again. I also think many other boutique pedals are way over priced. Boss, Digitech, MXR, and Ibanez make some great distortion pedals at about 1/3 the cost of a lot of boutique pedals. The mainstream pedals get you 90% there while boutique pedals like Carl Martin get you 99%. If the extra cost is worth the exra 9%, then buy this pedal.