Ibanez PQ401 3-Band Parametric EQ

Very easy to find a good sound. I was up and rocking in a few minutes with this thing. The only thing that keeps it from a 10 is the midrange sweep knob, which is incredibly sensitive. A few degrees can have a drastic effect on your tone, sweeping from treble boost to bassy pretty quickly. Also, the sliders are a little too short to do very fine adjustments, but that's a limitation of pedal EQ's.

I'm running the EQ into a small Kalamazoo tube practice amp with only a single "Tone" control. This pedal really opens up the tonal possibilities of the amp and my guitar. The guitar is an American Stratocaster. With the bass rolled back the muddiness of the Strat cleans up, leaving a nicely articulate tone. The pedal doesn't color the sound at most settings and is very transparent. The one exception is in a narrow band of the midrange sweep knob, around 400-600, where there seems to be a bit of quack added to the sound, almost like an open wah pedal. Not too big a deal, you can work around it. But with the midrange in the right place this thing is a great clean booster. It can really push the front end of an emp. All in all this pedal is a keeper. It'll help you dial in your tone and stay out of the way almost all the time. I usually put a Dyna Comp and a Tube Screamer on either side of this and they work great together, creating nice ringing clean sound and focused distortion.

As they say, it's built like a rock. Heavy steel enclosure, and it's heavy. It's lasted all these years and still works perfectly.

Other than a slightly finicky midrange knob, it's hard to find any problem with this pedal. Find a sweet spot and leave it on for a while.

Very Easy: 3 slide, Low, Mid and High with value that go from +12 to -12 and a mid range freqq. dial.

Ok this is a very addictive lil' pedal, to be honest I have hunted it down for few months, not easy to find. In my hopinion is the most underrated an probably the most versatile pedal of the 808 series. Is not noisy. It can serve as a great CLEAN BOOSTER actually I use it with my Victoria Low Power Twin 50212, one word...INCREDIBLE.
The problem with the Vic is that in the small clubs is way to powerfull and this lil pedal takes care of this problem. I have few axes and a couple vintage one (1964 335 and a 1967 Tele) and several amps among wich a 1960 Bassman (the real thing), a Vic 50212 an Engl Savage 120 and Soldano HR+ and the PQ401 helps me fine tuning the various combination. That is what an EQ. is for!

Never had a problem

Have not experience with them

This piece of equipment is definetly a keeper unfortunately their are not easy to come on ebay and they are getting sort of expensive too, so... I hope it will last a while. Oh yes I have been playing few years and currently I play blues and its derivation, jump, rock etc.

very easy to use to tweak the tone that u want i just loive this pedal
it brings out the most even with crappy guitars like a peavey

i just got this pedal in the mail today and to tell u the truth i dont know how i survived without one it just adds great tone to my sound it not noisy at all im using it wit a line 6 spider works great wit delay and chorus

older ibanez pedals are the best made pedals in the world alot of these new manufature should take a lesson from the on how to make pedals that will survive or out live us all i can probebly pass threse pedals on to my grandchildren

ibanez need to work on this dept althogh i have been able to order battery compartments from them they need to sell parts direct to the consumer

great pedal i am glad i got it it just adds to my tone i will be using this one alot

Real basic. A 3-band slider EQ, with an additional rotary knob for dialing in a certain frequency range. This may take a bit of futzing around, but it makes the pedal more flexibile, than a straight slider graphic EQ like the GE-601.

Pretty slick. One of those pedals that you didn't know you needed until you used it, and then tried to go without it. It's a great boost pedal, and a nice addition to tweak an overdrive or distortion box in the chain.
I have used it in conjunction with the TS-808 (same pedal series), and they seem to work well together. One great application is with a guitar that has fairly lo-fi or weak pickups (like my Broncos, Musicmasters, etc.). Boost the areas they are weak, or drop where they are too trebly, and away you go. Trouble is, when you get them sounding the way you like them, you will end up being tied to the pedal. (I have also used it to tweak the sound of my P-90's which is interesting.)
Dead quiet pedal, which is not what I expected. Great sound quality.

Rock solid. I have every pedal from the TS-808 series (with the exception of the OD-855), and have never had a problem with any. A terrific pedal series.

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I had never really used EQ's until I started collecting this series. The GE-601 Graphic EQ is a great pedal too, but I am more fond of this one. They are quite effective at what they are designed to do. I am surprised I had not looked into them before. For folks that are unhappy with their pickup sound, the shape of their distorions output, looking for a certain frequency range boost, a 'scooped' sound, or a midrange hump, I would check one of these out. Instead of expecting you overdrive to be exactly where you need it, or your outputs to be spot on while switching between guitars, something like this may be an option.

Extremely easy. This 3 band parametric eq get the sound you want in a snap

You get sound quality using it. Everybody that tried this pedal want it because it does the job well and it`s simple to use.

15 to 20 years old pedal what can I say

Do you really think they care......

Old ibanez pedal are very under-rated but it`s ok to me they sound great, they are build tough and there cost is cheap. But I don`t think it`s gonna last.