Catalinbread HyperPak Dirty Channel

Disgustingly easy to get a great, not good, sound out of this pedal. Simply turn it on and adjust drive/volume to taste.

2004 Les Paul Standard with BurstBuckers, 1995 Nashville Telecaster Deluxe with an SD Vintage Stack in the bridge and DuckBuckers in the middle/neck positions, 2006 MIM Strat with Lollar Blondes. All played into a Super Reverb Reissue with Jensen Mod 10-50's or a Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue with a Jensen C12K. Great sounding pedal by itself...even better with a little boost. I'm boosting it with a Keeley BD-2 or the Catalinbread Super Chili Picoso. Both send this thing to another level.

Yes, I can depend on it. No, I always have backups. Nothing is perfect.

Exceptional customer service/support. After dealing with Nic, Mike, and Stefanie, I can't understand why some people have said some of the things they have about Catalinbread. They've treated me phenomenally. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do own 5 Catalinbread pedals and know for a fact that I will own more.

This pedal is exceptionally simple to use and get great sounds out of it. For any sort of rock-based music, this is the stuff. At a little over $100, this is, in my opinion, the best bang for the buck for an overdrive pedal. I would replace it immediately should something happen to it.

As has been said......plug and play with 2 knobs

True bypass...good thing....incredible amount of gain if needed. As is advertised it has that kind of Hiwatt sound of the 70's Who recordings. I am playing it through an 18watt Marshall clone with Strat, Les Paul and PRS. It seems to do it's best in my rig with the Strat. It is a kinda dark pedal IMHO and I really prefer the OCD with the humbuckers in my setup.

Too early to tell...but geez what could go wrong with such a tiny piece of metal.

Not use that yet either.

This is a great value for what it does. Far exceeds most gain pedals I have used. It really needs a tone control to play nice in my rig but it will stay on the pedal board for the Strat's sake.

No manual, but it's a 2 knob pedal... come on, do you really need a manual?

Volume and gain, plug in and rock! What else can you do?

This is the 2007 version with 2 knobs and a lot of good ol crunch.

The tone is pretty impressive. I wasn't expecting much because the demo videos, while sounding cool, just wasn't blowing me away. But this box dislocated my jaw with the copious amounts of tone that it spewed out of the Orange Rocker 30, Fender Twin or Vitnage AC30 I tested it with.

I expected it to respond a lot like the Full Drive 2, or a Tubescreamer...but it's not. It's like my Hotcake but smoother! There really is no need to worry about the lack of tone control because the box sounds great as is through all three of my amps. It's thick, it's juicy, and it delivers buttery crunch that is worthy of Jim Marshall. It's very Orange like distortion no matter the amp it's running into, but heavier and darker. When I say it's Orange like i'm refering to the gain characteristic of the breakup.

This box really is TINY! You really can't grasp how small it is until you open the box. I mean the box it comes in is the size of a MXR style box. It's taller than your average MXR box, but it's not unuseable. Surprisingly it's heavier in weight than the Keeley Fuzz Head.

Build quality is top notch, I havn't opened it up yet so I can't tell you what the internals are like, but all the jacks are really tight and grab onto the cables like if they were unplugged the world would end. The pots are smooth and buttery, but not cheap feeling. In fact they move very slowly compared to other boxes.

But it's quiet. Not VERY quiet, but there ain't a lot of headroom. I don't got to dime it to get unity with the drive where I want it, but I gotta have it pretty high. There also isn't a battery so if your not using a powered board, or have access to power for your board your effed.

Overall the Hyperpak rocks more than a Heart 8 track playing in you 'Cuda back in highschool. I'd do it all overagain if I could!

2 knobs. easy. Drive goes from mild, warm overdrive to Wall of HiWatts on "10".
Volume knob is a bit too sensitive in my opinion, and you have to be careful not to nudge the knobs by accident, since it's a tiny pedal. but other than that, it's real easy to get a fat tube-y tone.

Sounds great. Lots of depth and character. This pedal has the BEST responsiveness to picking dynamics and guitar volume. Better subtlety and nuance, compared to other overdrive pedals I've owned (TS9, Keeley DS-1, HomeBrew Power Screamer, Boss SD-1 and on and on).
Sounds great through my vintage 70s yamaha solid state amp, Fender Princeton Reverb, and my friend's Blues Deluxe. I use it with a Fender Strat, and it's nice and chime-y.

Seems real solid.

n/a

One of my favorite pedals. Great character and personality for a 2 knob pedal. This is not a pedal that you will ignore, especially if you're playing Brit-rock, or anything from The Who to Smashing Pumpkins to Wilco type music.

2 knobs. Unlimited tone.

Glory is the first word that comes to mind for a description of this pedal's sound. It is a brutal beast! I feel a bit guilty, yet giddy being the first to review this box! I just got mine in the mail an hour ago, and I KNOW that this is now my main pedal. My Ceria Tone 100 watt Plexi has been turned into a rabid weapon of mass destruction. I just stepped outside and could hear babies crying down the street over my tinnitus.

If you like Townshend, this is the one, no other pedal does it. My SG could get those spanky Live at Leeds cleans, all the way up to a punishing, intelligible distortion all with the flick of my volume knob. Not suprisingly, other guitar tones such as Jethro Tull, and even King Crimson were EASILY coaxed out of this box. I have played on a few Hiwatts, and know what they sound like opened up. This is as close as you can get without having to dish out the money!

If you like a distortion unit that compresses your tone, making things easier to play look elsewhere. What you put into this box is what you get out of it. I'm not saying that it is hard to play with, but it is definitely not a compressed Boss box! If you can work it, notes will leap out at ya real horror show like.

Seems sturdy enough. The pedal is SO small. The finish is beautiful! Very heavy weight aluminum.

I would like to think that the genius who built this pedal would come to my aid via my emails should anything go wrong. I read that when the box initially came out, the maker was selling these units for under $70.00 on Ebay. Seems like a nice enough chap.......

If you like classic, British guitar players ala Pete Townshend buy this little bastard! At $100, it's cheaper than a Fulltone, or Tubescreamer, and also, MUCH more distinct. Plugged straight into my rig, the sound is huge! I tried the pedal out with a few other units including delays and compressors and was even more impressed that it interacted so well. This tone melds with my equipment, it doesn't just sit on the top, or get buried in the chain. BUY THIS BOX!