Marshall JH-1 Jackhammer

It's realy ease.

On my super amp it sounds perfect.

Yeah...

So so...

For Metal its oki.

The Jackhammer isn???t that difficult to use. After a couple of minutes I pretty much got a sound I was happy with (Upgraded by Von Lehmann).

I have my Jackhammer plugged into a clean Blackheart amp and it sounds great. My Jackhammer was recently upgraded by Von Lehmann. I found the original sound of the Jackhammer was not really that great. You could get a good sound out of the O/D mode but the distortion was a bit to messy and I notice a bit of noise (it could also been my home power supply). After the upgrade I found that I could get a really good sound very quickly on both modes. The noise improved a lot and it is much better to play. I can play songs from bands like AC/DC, Linkin Park, King of Leon, The Killers, Bloc Party to the slow and clean distortion of Coldplay. I have found that with this upgrade I can also get a good metal distortion.

It is very reliable never had a problem with it. Works like a charm.

I bought it straight from the shop but later I got it upgraded by Von Lehmann and found them easy to talk to and deal with.

After the modification:
I play a lot of Alternative Rock and don???t mine a bit of metal and I find that it is a great match for me and if you are planing to buy or have a Jackhammer I truly recommend it to be modified by Von Lehmann because it was really worth it.

Is rather 'knob twiddley' at first but with time you get used too it and can change tones completely with relative ease. Contour/frequency may be a bit overkill when you have these built into your amp anyway but be patient and it can be a nice touch.

I run this with either a hot rod deville 2x12 and my Gretsch Corvette G-Love signature guitar or thru a Vox AVD-T 100 head and 4x10 Marshall cab with a Fender FMT or Burns Brian May 'red special'.

Have too say...agree with previous comments on the Distortion sound. Find it very murky and sloppy almost. OD sound though is wonderful. I play everything from Bloc Party/Muse/Pearl Jam through too Thin Lizzy/RATM/Pink Floyd and find the Od setting enough for most of these. Have tried/had Ibanez tubescreamer,Boss Od/Ds pedals before and didnt like them at all.

I run my amps VERY clean and with odd settings...Bass@12,Mid@2,treble@2 with a fair amount of compression which really tightens up the sound but do realise that most people will use a classic Rock 'scoop' eq in general.

This is my second time owning this pedal...but only 'cause my first one was stolen!! I gig about 150/200 nights a year and never had a problem with the reliability of this pedal. I t has taken serious abuse...from drink being spilled in it too a cab falling on it and still the thing gave me the finger and kept going!!

Should always have backup though..mine being another Jackhammer!!

Only dealt with Marshall once and took an age so i cant give them good marks i'm afraid but issue was sorted in the end.

Because of it's Jekyll and Hyde persona between OD/Dist i would suggest haveing a definate idea of what your looking for when trying this pedal out. It wont suit everybody but those who do like it will love it. It isnt a good pedal for Metal,Thrash,Death Metal in my opinion but classic rock and alt rock it's perfect.

In the end...it's pretty cheap and punches above it's weight but only if you use it as an OD pedal and stay clear of the Distortion.

Not so difficult to use, it has on O/D switch, gain, bass, treble, contour and freq. Needs a little time to figure it out, but when you figure it, it's easy.

I'm using it with Cort X-11 into a Peavey Renown 400. I heard about JH-1 and it interested me because I heard it wasn't like a regular dist pedals, and when I tried it amazed me. I wasn't expecting that kind of sound from Marshall pedals... Before I bought it, I was using a Gibson Epiphone S-310, and tried it with that guitar. It sounded really great.

Only objection that i have is that it needs a little more treble.

I like to experiment with sounds, and I really like this configuration. I don't think I will trade this pedal for another for a long time...

I've bought it about a year ago, and it fell from a height of 50cm, and it's like a rock. A scratch was left on it. It's the most reliable pedal I have for now, it's made all from metal.

They only introduced me with the pedal and their opinion was helpful to some limits.

I play Rock, Hard Rock, Metal, and it's almost a perfect match. It's a universal pedal, I even play blues with it. I've been playing it for a year. I have digital delay, wah-wah and a chorus pedal and I combine it. I sounds very, very good. If I would lost it or had stolen, I would definitely buy another one.

Very easy, 2 modes Overdrive and Distortion, Gain, bass midd and treble very self explanatory

I???ve tried and played with many different distortion pedals... but the Marshall jackhammer is by far the WORST!, probably the worst distortion I???ve heard in my life! no real tone, just a loud fuzzy mess!, the only part of this entire pedal I would say anything positive about is its overdrive, it does provide you with a fairly nice crunch when playing with the distortion on your amplified. Having said that, for what you pay the overdrive is AVERAGE at best! You would be better off buying a different pedal specially designed for overdrive. My advise STAY CLEAR OF THIS PEDAL!

My set up is a Kramer 5150 EVH, with digitech GNX3000 Fx's box and a marshall mg 50watt amp.

well for the hole 1 DAY that I owned this pedal before taking it back for a refund it did not break.

overall this pedal was a total dissapointment! horribal distortion... average overdrive and one BIG waist of money!

The mode switch, The Gain and Volume Dial and the Bass and trebble dials are self explanatory. However the Contour dials did and still do confuse me.

I literally fluked the settings on those. The manual kind of helped but it comes down to you interpreting the instructions properly

Im running my Epi Zakk Wylde Bullseye through this and into my Marshall Zakk Wylde Ministack.

For starters IMO you can forget about the Distortion mode.
Its just way too compressed and Muddy.

I use the O/D mode and have the Gain at full 100%
Volume is set as per needed to get equal volume between on and off.
Bass is at full 100%
Treble is a little past 1 oclock (about 70%)
Contour Frequency centre knob is just past 9 oclock (about 20-25%)
Contour Volume outer knob is at 5 oclock (about 95%)

With these settings and my amp set at Bass 8, Contour 4, Treble 3, I have pretty much got the sound I was after.
This sound I seeked lies somewhere Between "The Darkness" and "Zakk Wylde"

I will admit the sound I was able to get was a little more on "The Darkness" side of things than "Zakk Wylde" but I am very happy and think its anything but the Harsh and Brittle tones others have claimed it has.

I actually removed my Boss MT-2 Metal Zone from my pedal board to put this in its place.

I am no longer into the hard edged metallic sound it puts out and wanted something smoother which this gives me.

Yeah Definately If the Marshall tone is not your bag then this aint the pedal for you but if a nice JCM800 roar is then go ahead and try this pedal and I reckon you will be satisfied.

Im only giving it an 8 though because I really was disapointed by the flat muddy tone of the Distortion mode.

I dont gig any more so this pedal wont see much if any road action. But I would say its built tough and well.

Cant comment. no dealings in regards to this item.

I did once contact Marshall for an email or E-book of the manual to the ZW mini stack. cause i didnt get one whan i bought it (display stock) and never heard from them.

I play Metal and Hard rock. Kind of Sabbath meets Tool meets Black Label Society. This pedal gives me the tone I wanted for that.

I thought of maybe a Boss DS-1 but had some people tell me they were too weak and not too good for heavy stuff. I kind of just had a brain click one day and thought id try this pedal out so I got on here and read some reviews then tried it out and like what I heard.

As I said in my review of my SV-1 Supervibe I REALLY like the way the switch is mounted on an angled face and the knobs are set back on a lower platform which keeps the swith very accessible and the knobs out of the way of stomping feet.
I have some MXR pedals too and with the flat mounted switch and knobs all on one flat surface can sometimes = squashed knobs.
A big + to Marshall for the style of switch mount.

Only minus is that the Chrome knoba and small position markers make it hard to see where ya are dialing them in at.

Probably the most difficult part of my gear to control. Too many knobs, doing almost nothing but F***** up my sound. It takes me too much time to make a good sound. The volume knob is very difficult and it causes me troubles during gigs because there is a volume difference between the clean and the dirty channel.

Its o/d is almost perfect. I would give a 10 if it was only for o/d. But the distortion is !@#@&$*%(.
But, in general, it's got a pretty nice sound.

It is reliable! Made with metal, it's built like a tank.

Never dealt with them.

Really easy to use. Have to be retarded to not figure it out.

I was completely shocked at how good this sounds. I bought it for $40 on a special sale but definitely worth resale. It's very versatile all the saturation you could need. If you know how to manipulate it with the settings of your amp, you can get any sound you want. I'm playing with EMG's through a fender hot rod deville. EMG's are going to give you a much hotter saturated sound as well, so that's part of the reason there is so much saturation.

so far so good

never used

nothings perfect.

This pedal is relatively easy to use, although the contour / frequency knobs can be a bit tedious if you haven't used anything similar before. The manual is pretty self explanatory, gets to the point and even gives you a few instructions for different sounds.

I WAS using this with my Jackson JS30RR rhoads v, into a randall 75 watt amp. It's not even close to the level of distortion i expected / wanted, at best you will get a hard rock sound out of it. I play thrash metal, melodic death, and so on so i needed something with a little more grunt. Other then that if you are into blues / hard rock i highly recommend it, great sound for those genres.

I can definitely depend on it, most solid pedal i have ever used. Built like an absolute tank, and i would have total confidence in using it without a backup.

Haven't dealt with them.

I play metal and surprisingly this really doesn't deliver. I expected it would be a great choice for my genre of music, but i suppose in the end it wasn't. If it was stolen i wouldnt replace it, seeing as A) i have a boss metal zone on the way, and B) i'd just get something else.

7 knobs to tweak make this pedal not the easiest to use upon first sight. On the other hand it is the most versatile distortion/ overdrive pedl I know and it is very easy to get a good sound out of it, no matter which guitar and which amp you use.

So for those of you using a standard configuration like a Fender Strat through a Twin Reverb or a Les Paul through a Marshall JCM 800, this pedal might be confusing. For all the others this pedal is what you need. It can give you a first class overdrive and/ or distortion sound with any quality guitar and amp, you might use.

I am using this pedal in front of the "normal" channel of my VOX AC30CC1. I am playing Rickenbacker and Burns guitars. The sound quality of this pedal is superior. I have compared it to many other pedals: VOX Cooltron, several BOSS pedals, several Ibanez pedals, Hughes & Kettner Tube Factor, MXR Distortion etc. - the MArshall Jackhammer was by far the best sounding and most versatile pedal of them all. You could get a similar sound out of a BOSS pedal - but only with an additional equalizer.

I have owned it for about two years, so I cannot tell yet. But it appears to be solid as a rock.

Great. The best distortion pedal on the market as far as I can tell.

Ease of use:
Takes a bit of getting used to, and it is pretty touchy. However, tweak it a bit and you'll bet what you're looking for.
Manual:
Uh...says thanks for buying and gives a few suggested settings...not much to it, really.

Sound of favorite artists?:
Well, I thought the idea was to sound like yourself...
Setup:
Dean Zs, Dean MLs, Dean V 79 reissue, all stock as a rock. H&K amps, greatest clean tones in the world. By and large, absolutely KILLS any solid-state distortion on the planet. Does it beat a good tube driver? Uh, no. For the money though, it does a great job.
Sound:
Depends on what you're trying to do. If you're looking for a pretty fair approximation of several Marshall tones, GET THIS BOX. However, if Marshall sound is not your thing, or you absolutely must sound JUST LIKE a SuperLead, then don't. Basically, I find a very good copy of most Marshall series in this little box. It is a bit weaker than a Super Lead for gain, a bit too dirty for a "light" Plexi. Good voicing, not too harsh. A bit too touchy on bass response in the distortion mode.
Noise:
There is a bit, depending on what you're doing. I found ZERO noise on the OD setting, regardless of gain. Distortion setting, though, gets a bit noisy after about the 2 o'clock position. My Hush (pedal version) keeps it clean and singing without any buzz or fuzz. Anything less than about 2 o'clock, and you'll get sweet ring and easy feedback (distortion mode)

VERDICT:
Great toy if you like the Marshall sound. BAD IDEA if you want it to do anything else. I love mine.

Built like a bomb shelter. No issues at all.

Gig without backup plan = stupid

Never had to talk to them....

Honestly, I think that this little guy is as well made as a solid state box can be. It's tough and sounds good. Really, what else can you ask of a pedal? Hard to compare this with other distortion boxes...most of what I've played with in the past have been tube-driven, and there really IS no way to compare them. One thing I wish it had is a presence and saturation control. The sound is "tubey," but NOT tube sound. A bit of saturation control may give it a bit more shimmer. In any event, very good overall.
My experience:
About 20 years playing, 15 or so gigging around in bands. I use an expansive pedal box with all sorts of wonderful toys inside. I use this one mostly for Iron Maiden and similar tunes in which Marshall tone is REQUIRED. It gets me through pretty well. My own tunes get the tube treatment.

Well. let's see, it has two modes, jcm 800 and the plexi, but don't take my word for it it all comes down to tweaking. Important:1.you need to tweak 2.do not have a flat EQ after (on your amp) this.
you will need to do some tweakin but with the tweaking you can get all the sounds in the world.
the manual explains good how it works but you got to experiment with it, then you see its' full power. my first effect box was a magicstomp so now I think everything is easy to tweak:D. when I first got it I sucked with tweaking but now I can do anything with it.

well artist sounds can you copy all youll' ever want. from norvegian blackmetal to 60'rock. zakk wylde and arch enemy if you have the right eq or pickup combination (I find the EMG 81 and 85 togheter good for archenemysounds you can prolly get closer with a good EQ before). The OD\Dist; I use both of them, mostly dist with treble at full bass at 12 , contour both ca. middle.on my amp a little bit treble and 1\4 mid, flat bass. Remember to listen to the front of the speaker not the sides because on the sides you get a sound with more bass and more mid-tone. I like it better than boss mt-2, a buddy of mine has it and we compared. the noise is as expected, not too loud but would be fun if it was lower,. but you only hear it after 2/3 full gain. If you buy this and regret it I'll eat my hat. 9 cos a little too much bass on dist ( I tweak it away though)

this is heavy metal, I love it. really good and solid, the only thing you need to be careful about is the double pots, you might kick them crooked but all you nedd to do to fix them is take them up, out some grease on and bend back and put them back together.

I've already gigged with it twice and going to gig with it december the 7th.

This is my little screambaby

metal and hardrock are the most common of my styles, best match ever. you can create your own sounds in a flash and others' in a dash XD
Its been a year since I got it and it still sounds wonderfull, own a modded strat type guitar with EMGs 81,SV,89 (85 split version) onboard booster and 700hz(fat)control. boss pw-10, yamaha magicstomp, roland cube 30, Crate VTX212B, Boss FV500h, zoom g1x, boss ns-2. boss tu-20.
I cant live without this pedal, but I would like to get another one (maybe this or a metalplanet) for having two different sounds with quick switching.
I wish it had cooler graphics:D.(I painted on it so no more problem)
I am the main song & riffwriter in my band and it gives me the tones that I'm after, silky and max distorted at the same time, with a booster in front it gets really cool fuzzy.. always a pleasure to play.

This is a very versitale, really good pedal, but it takes time to get the best out of it. In fact it took me about a year... But now, I can get almost all the sounds I want.
Good advices: use it with good stuff. With a thin sounding guitar or amp it will sound thin and harsh. With a good axe (like a Les Paul or Strat) and a good tube amp it'll sound huge. First get a good, well balanced clean sound on your amp, so you can compensate if you lack middle or treble (you won't feel like having not enough bass). Set the volume about 9 o'clock on the pedal, so it won't be too loud. The overdrive will give you a more open, crunchy sound, whiler the dist mode a heavier, compressed, bassy sound, so compensate it when you switch between the modes. As the manual suggests, turning the contour and frequency full anticlockwise will give you the natural midrange without scooping mids. The contour is basicly a reversed mid knob, but frequency is a bit different. Below 11 o'clock it acts like a reversed presence, from 12 to about 4 o'clock gives you variuos scooped metal sounds, and when turned full clockwise, it acts like the presence knob full down.
So, it's quite difficult, but when you understand how the knobs work, you can get almost any sound you want.

On good stuff, it sounds wonderful. Tried it on numerous tube amps, with my friends Strat and my guitar. Always sounded wonderful.
I use it with an Epiphone Les Paul Standard and a solid state Fender 212M amp. The Fender has a nice clean, but the overdrive sucks. With this pedal I can get really good Marshall-like sounds, from crunchy blues to heavy metal - always sounds thick and has great bite. It doesn't make my amp sound like a tube amp - and never will -, but gives me really good, alive, bity sound. I can get awesome Peter Green, Gary Moore, Dave Gilmour, Santana or at the heavy side Guns or Metallica sounds in minutes.
The problem is, if you count something good on the overdrive, it'll suck on the dist mode. Also, it sounds very different at different places and volume settings, so if you count a great sound at home with low volume, it won't sound the same at your rehearsal room. Ergo you always have to tweak the knobs when you go to new places, but as I sad, after understanding the working of the knobs, it will be easy to get good sound again in 3 minutes.
At high gain settings it can easily feedback, but it's not noisy at all.

It's really dependable and rock solid, I'd gig with it without a backup.

Never dealt with the customer support, and never tried to repaired it.

I've benn playing for years now, but only since a year have quality stuff. I play blues and also have a rock/metal band which plays quite interesting things like mixing traditional metal with moderner sounds and "hippy-style" quiter passages and numbers. It serves me well, as I can get classic blues and rock sounds. It really helps me to evolve musically. If it was stolen or lost I'd buy it again. Wish it had a memory where you could store the different sounds, but oh well it's a pedal, not a multieffect.

i didn't much care for the double knobs. on mine, if you turned the contour knob, the frequency would turn right along with it.

this thing sounds thin, brittle and harsh. all i was looking for was a warm thick overdrive bordering on distortion, kind of a malcom young meets johnny ramone sound. Problem is, the jackhammer doesn't do warm or thick. i tried this thing every which way, and didn't like any of the tones. ran it through a peavey ranger and butcher. those two amps run the gamut from clean to dirty and the jackhammer sounded bad in both of 'em. there are several metric tons of gain on tap here, they just sound bad.

i got it used on ebay, so i blame the seller for the knob twisting problem i had, not marshall. seems rock solid to me.

never dealt with 'em.

i play punk and rock and roll type stuff. this pedal is not suited for that music at all. maybe this is an amazing unit for your nu-metal, i wouldn't know. if you don't do modern metal, avoid this thing.

If you do your settings in bright light and don't have to make any adjustments "on the fly" you will be ok. It would be a fabulous pedal if the OD and Distortion could be selected by a switch and had some ability to set the levels, contour, etc...for each channel. It has small knobs within knobs that can be difficult for large hands like mine.

I have a very large collection of pedals from cheap to very expensive and this pedal is a really great sounding pedal. I have a 1969 plexi 50 watter and the OD channel is right there. Of course, I am running the pedal through a very good sounding, warmed up, EL84 tube head and 1-12" speaker cab with an eminence lady-luck inside. The distortion sounds larger than life kinda like a JCM 800 series with slightly more bass and compressed. You can turn the bass down and treble up to compensate.

This is a very good pedal. If you are using a thin sounding, sterile solid state amp, do not expect it to sound as good as my setup will.

Works well so far...ask me in a couple of years.

I don't use customer support for less expensive items which can be easily replaced. Just not cost effective to bother with an item like this.

I would class this pedal as a future classic that will be an investment grade pedal. It nails the sounds of two of the most historical rock sounds ever...a Plexi and the badass JCM800.

very easy to find the sound you want

the manual is very clear, it explanes wat every butten does so you kan vind your own sound very easy

onley thing is that the markers to show the level of gain(for example),
wil wear off a bit fast.

the best ever, i used it on a kustom. and it could make it sound like a big marshall. now that i have a big marhsall is sounds even better.

i play on a gibson flying v and in my opinion this is the best set up ever, gibson-marhsall.

it has a overdrive and a distortion stetting on it. the distortion i barley use becouse i dont play metal but is sounds dam good, a mercyless pounding marshall. on the overdrive setting you get more led zep, black sabath sound. old school overdrive, i use this the most. and if you turn the gain a bit lower you have a briljant blues sound.
so screw the marshall blues braker or the guv'nor, this thing has them both and more

mine broke one time, i don't know the couse. but sinds it was fixed (like a year ago) i never had problems with it. i dont use a back up.

never delt with them, a lokal shop fixed it for me for free. it was stil in the warenty

the best overdrive/dist. pedal ever. but one thing if you don't dig marshall you'll wont want this pedall. the sound is marhsall over and over again. if you love marhsall like me. than it is the best ever.

I already owned a Boss Metal Zone before buying this pedal, so I will compare the two pedals in this review. The Jackhammer has the same controls as the Metal Zone, with one difference - the Jackhammer has two modes, Overdrive and Distortion.

On the Distortion mode, the sound is very dark and bassy. I had to turn the treble all the way up and the bass all the way down. Even still, the Distortion mode is too bassy/flubby, and doesn't do well on any fast guitar playing. The Metal Zone is way better than the Jackhammer's Distortion mode.

On the Overdrive mode, the sound is much more trebly and less bassy compared with the Distortion mode. I use the pedal only on the Overdrive mode, for playing classic rock type stuff (like Led Zeppelin, Hendrix). I'd give the Overdrive mode 10/10.

Overall, a 9/10 because the Distortion mode isn't that great.

Solidly built, I don't forsee any problems.

I've never contacted Marshall about anything before.

A very good pedal for the price, if you want to use it for the Overdrive mode. Again, if you are after heavier metallic sounds, get the Boss Metal Zone, instead.

It's quite tricky to get a good sound out of this unit... Mine is the original version without any upgrades... It comes with a multi-lingual manual...

First of all, I'd like to point out my set up: Peavey Envoy 110, Marshall Jackhammer, Crybaby535 Q, Schecter C-1 FR (Mahogany body, OFR, Duncan custom (b), and Duncan Jazz (n)).

This pedal has 2 modes Overdrive(OD) and Distortion. The overdrive mode is really more for overdriving(boosting) a dirty channel of an amp. It can sound good too on its own, but you won't get "In Your Face" distortion. It's more suitable for classic rock and blues tone. The distortion mode, on the other hand, is meant to be as a stand alone distortion. You can get great hard rock and heavy metal tone on this mode.

This pedal is not noisy, unless if you use a very high gain pickups (X2N, Invader, Active Pickups, etc) and dial the volume and gain knobs to the max...

My fave metal settings:
Mode: Distortion.
Gain: MAX.
Volume: 3 O'Clock.
Bass & Treble: Bypassed
Contour Frequency: 1 - 2 O'Clock.
Contour: 12 O'Clock.

Yes!! I've had this for 5 years... Never had a problem with it... I've used it on a gig, no problem at all... It made of solid steel construction, and a heavy pedal too... It is very dependable...

N/A

I've been playing for 7 years. I play stuffs from hard rock to neo-classical, stuffs like ACDC, Van Hallen, Stratovarius, Dream Theater, Yngwie, Symphony X, etc...

I love the versatility this pedal gives. I've had this for 5 years, and i dont think its going anywhere until its broken. Yes I would not mind buying it again if it happens. I use this pedal as my main distortion tone. It gives punchiness for riffing, and for soloing, my notes are very clear and not blur together. Love this pedal!!

It's not easy to use. There are too many knobs for a newbie to get a good sound from it. I've had it for a year and luckily quickly got a "hot spot". So I stick to it and try not to move any knobs in order not to lose the good sound, which I describe further.
There is a manual with some presets, which aren't very good. There should be more.

Riffs - very good, especially on Dropped D tuning. Although palm mute and harmonics could sound better. But still a nice pedal for a rythm player. 9/10
Lead guitar - crappy. Especially on neck humbucker. The good sound is very hard to find. Blues tones, however, could be easily found by simply turning down volume in your guitar. And, as long as you're playing blues, it sounds very good.
But I play metal mainly, so overally I give 6 out of 10, because it's a pity it doesn't provide me with a good metal lead sound.

I surely can rely on it. Hard as a tank. However, I scratched it here and there but they only gives him better looks. I'd be suprised if it broke inside due to damages from outside.

I'm playing mainly metal and rock, some blues and jazz. See Sound Quality section above.
I've been playing for nearly 3 years.
If it were stolen I wouldn't get a new one.

Very good pedal. I like it knobs. you can play with them and get to many sounds.it will be good to take paper and draw on it in which position knobs are placed. to remember after it.there is 1-1,5 mm difference between to knobs. so you can change the position of knobs easily. it has good metallic cover.great pedal.

For getting good sound you must have good amp. but its really good if you dont want to take your amp. quality is really good. from small overdrived sound to good distortioned sound. the range is too big.

yeas, i am using it without backup. its great. you can jump on it and it wont damged

I dont know. ))

I play from blues to trash. so it suits my music. i use a processor too. its great . i am playing on this pedal for a 6 monthi played on my friends Jackhammer. now i have my own JH1 . i would buy again it if it would be stolen.you can kill someone with this pedal))
ITS GREAT

This pedal is very fiddly to use due to the poor construction of the knobs. You will never keep the same sound twice. It is impossible to get a good sound as there is not one at all.

Sounds rubbish. The Distortion mode is so dark sounding - it will not cut through at all. The overdrive is stale like boss ds-1's


It is not that noisy though

It is solid but the rubbish sound means low score

n/a

No good. I have seen guitarists use these in bands and I just do not understand why. why did Marshall stop the Shredmaster?

The two knobs of contour and bass treble on this pedal are probably the worse design I have ever seen. It seems that it is impossible to get a sound decent out of this really. It gets a four due to this.

How does anyone use this pedal for anything, and why did Marshall discontinue the Shredmaster for this? It sounds terrible and mushy. The OD setting is the only one that comes close to being any good but you will never have the same setting twice on this pedal. Lacks any sort of dynamics or mids as well.

Built like a brick s**t house. Only a 7 because of itssound

N/a

I would not use this. I was given by a mate and then sold it for ??30 to some nu-metal loving guy. Says it all. The quality of the actual build saves it from a 1.

I usualy find it easy to create a good sound with my setup, but this thing is quite difficult. The contour is messy and doesn't realy bennefit the pedal creating better sounds, it take the sound from muddy to muddy with less top end and more or less mids.

I use 2 strats 1 with EMG's the other a 2006 Deluxe into a big stone phaser, delay, Big Muff into Fender Hot Rod Deluxe.

I bought this thinking it would be a good addition as a distortion peddal, but in the Distortion/JCM2000 mode it is muddy and unclear, without the crisp, boomy sound of a real JCM2000. In the OD/JCM800 mode you can get a decent overdrive sound as long as you keep the Contour at o'clock, the gain up and volume down.

It is solid as a rock, but i never trust any piece of equipment that relies on complex circuitry to do whatever it may do. The 8 is for construction not reliability of it's function.

If you are a tweaker i'm sure you could get some good sounds out of it. As i said the distortion is Crap, Buy a RAT.

Not so easy to use. The real nightmare begins when you start messing with the contour/frequency controls using the distortion mode. It just takes so much tweaking to get your tone in the sweet spot.

Like others have said, the overdrive on this thing is pretty raunchy! I originally bought this pedal as an alternative to my crapped out Metal Zone, and may end up just getting the Metal Zone fixed and back as my main distortion (plus a Big Muff) but still keep this in my chain as an overdrive/booster. Still, I think it is a decent alternative to the Metal Zone, and I actually enjoy the fact that the distortion mode is bassy - I use a Boss Enhancer EH-2 after the Jackhammer to clean up the lows and squeeze out some higher tones when needed. Perfectly giggable, nice looking pedal too. Probably a good idea to jot down the settings in a notebook, so if you lose them you can come back to them. It'll take hours to get used to the contouring/frequency controls but once you've got it you're sweet to go.

No problems whatsoever. This thing weighs half a KG!!!!! The actual casing is stronger than anything Boss has produced - very very solid! Even the knobs are heavy duty.

Cheap. Good for heavy stuff. Really good for gritty rock-n-roll overdrive. May not sound great out of the box, but spend some time with this thing and you will be surprised!

It's quite a hard-to-tweak unit, I would say.

First off, the dual pot on Gain/Volume and Freq/Contour are something that may need some time to get used to. Secondly, the Contour control is a nightmare. Probably designed for huge versatility, it's very touchy.

I use in the following configuration with the following setup:

Tom Anderson Drop Top -> Cry Baby GCB95 -> T-Rex CompNova -> Jackhammer -> Mesa/Boogie Quad Preamp -> Volcane One.50 (a custom made tube poweramp) -> Engl 2x12 (Celestion V30)

I mainly use it to get a different flavour of crunch from my setup, and does the job pretty well. I get a very Marshall-like tone out of it. The trick (for me) was to use Dist mode, keeping the highs low (LOL) and the Contour/Freq almost flat. Every attempt to touch the Contour ended in a awfully sounding mess, the same goes for the Treble.

I got a very touch-sensitive, bluesy crunch tone, good for soloing and also for rhythms. Adding some drive with the CompNova gives a raw tone that screams "Rock & Roll", very nice for open chord rhythms.

It isn't noisy, but I use it at relatively low gain setting so I wouldn't expect it to be.

Strangely enough, I have tested it with a JCM800 and the whole thing sounded like crap - it's not the first time that I feel like Marshall OD's aren't at their best with Marshall amps.

It's made of metal and look pretty sturdy. I wouldn't care too much.

The knobs look like cheap plastic crap, but they're out of foot reach, so they shouldn't fear any harm.

Never dealt with them.

I'm just a rocker, been playing for 15 years.

If it were stolen I'd probably have another one. I just needed a pedal to give me a good crunch tone, I got it, don't think there's much more to say.

Too bad for the Contour control - I'd love to get a good old Treble-Mid-Bass tone set instead.