Jacques Stompboxes Aquamarine

Three knobs - Pebbles/tone - Sand/Gain - Vol.
Its important that you use this on its own between guitar amp to start off with. Seems to be very sensitive to what you place before/after it. Might be the reason to why someone is not to happy with it!
Mine is a Deluxe version. Green handpainted blue/green colour.
I havent written many reviews here and I only do it if I think its a really good product!

This is suppoesed to be a "Santana pedal" and my brother (who is perhaps more educated there) was impressed! I??ve used this with minimal gear cause I early noticed it was VERY sensitive to what was used with it. My PRS and VOX AC30 worked just fine with this pedal. Not noisy at all. Pebbles/Tone knob works going from soft warm distortion to a rather mean sharp "fuzz" - almost octafuzz. Have you tried a Fulltone Soulbender? Take away the top fiss and thats about what you have here. Turn down the "Pebbles" and voila! A sweet nice full sounding lead tone. And a little different. Aint that nice?

Depend on it? Yes! Dont worry be happy - it seems rugged enough!

Not the fastest in the world to reply BUT this is a one man wonder!! I love this guys site and Im sure he would give 100% attention to mails if he just had the time. Charming!

Ive played proffesionally since 96 and this is one pedal that will be brought along to get that something extra or different.
Like Ive said its a unique sounding pedal with a lots of nice features. Very inspiring and if Id lost it thered be a hard time ahead. I??ve compared this to other pedals Ive had and its really not like anything else and Ive got a lot. Mentioned above, the Fulltone Soulbender is close but... depending on the mood...
Its got no battery adaptor unless you want that and the same goes for on/off led. You have to specify these things when you place an order.

catastrophics,unusable,vol very high more too high,pebbles,sand knobs without effect

unusable,noisy,tone and bad sound ,Santana ????? it's a joke,to lie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i've send 50...!!!!! email never answer!!!!!!!THANKS ALOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

i'm a French guitarist(43 years old) ,i play since 30 years.the Boss,tom Petty,jackson Browne,RHCP,Page,Gilmour,Santana,Gallagher,and more and more anothers guitarists............i never do bought this pedal it's a LEMON!!!!!!!more expensive,with a electronician friends we have open the pedal,need to fix wiring because the board is catastrophic,a man that do his first pedal diy will be best that this lemon pedal,i have never see a board too bad :solders are PFFFFFF !!!!!!! not very components,few metal transistors paint in black !!!!!!!HA HA HA for this secret sound!!!for a pedal so expensive is a swindling!!!!!!!!

I ordered a custom version of the AQUAMARINE pedal (formerly known as "The Laxian Key") in a handpainted Hammond BB box with additional status LED and AC adapter. The standard version is without the LED and the AC adapter and housed in the typical Jacques box that looks like a parallel printer-sharing enclosure, but it will have the same ultracool green painting and the handwritten logos. There is a picture of my unit on Jacques webpage, very easy to find. There are three controls (volume, pebbles and sand) so it's very easy to dial in the tone you want - just plug in and play along !

It's a double-gain (cascade) distortion box, just like the first
mesaboogie amps, built to nail the early Santana tone and that's exactly what it sounds like. Gritty but transparent distortion tone with a good low end and a ton of sustain. It sounds very amplike, dynamical, never thin or fuzzy and the controls interact very nice. Think of Santanas "Aquamarine", "Europe", "Sampa Pa Ti" and you know what I'm talking about. I play it in front of a 4x10" Fender Bassman and tried it with a whole bunch of different guitars. You can use it with single-coil and humbucker pickups without any problems. Personally I like it best with my Les Paul (loaded with Seymour Duncan "Seth Lover" PAF's) and I also like it with my P90 equipped Thinline Telecaster. I tried it also together with some other effects but I like it best as the only effect, directly in front of the amp. Anyway, if you want more distortion out of it, just put a booster in front of it and you're done. I used the Keeley "Java Boost" in front of it and it sounded awesome.
Keeping in mind that it is a distortion unit, it's amazingly quiet and absolutely not noisy in any way.

Well, it's a Hammond box and built like a tank. Jacques offers a lifetime warranty, so there is absolutely no risk. I think Jacques is a builder from the old school and everything has to be bullet proofed. The internal building quality is also great, everything is secured and as far as I can see, he only used high quality parts. As for the painting .... it looks great but I don't know if it will last very long because there is no clear coat on top of the paint and the logos are handwritten. So maybe the paint will getting paler in the sunlight or the logos will come off if the pedal is getting wet - but maybe I'm wrong and it will last forever.

A very friendly and funny guy - it's great to talk to him. We discussed the details by email and afterwards I ordered the pedal through his german distributor (www.tone-toys.com) who was also very helpful and friendly. The pedal arrived in a short time (keep in mind it's a custom order !!!) and was packed very carefully. I'm sure I will deal with Jacques again in the future.

I play a lot of different styles but bought this pedal especially for those old Santana style music. It's pure fun to do some 20 minutes solo lines with this pedal and to enjoy it's pristine tone and the sweet overtones. If you want this pedal keep in mind that it starts to shine in front of a good tube amp. It sounds best if you crank your amp only slightly and let the pedal doing the rest. I would buy it again.