Seymour Duncan SFX-03

The Seymour Duncan SFX-03 is very easy to use. You have bypass, a rhythm channel, and a lead channel. There's bass and treble controls, which affect both channels. Each channel has volume and gain (distortion) controls. It has a switch for true-bypass.

You get tube quality sound when using either of the two channels allowing for each channel to provide its own unique tonality (clean to distorted) and volume. The global bass/treble controls allow you shape the tones of the two channels as compared to the bypass mode tonality
of your amp. I would strongly recommend getting this (or any other) tube based pre-amp particularly, if you are plugged directly into your recording equipment or PA system or if your amp is not a tube amp. Is is my opinion that you need to hve tube shaping somewhere in your guitar's output path to get the rich tube harmonics, distortion, and clarity.

It seems very well built.

I have not had to contact Customer Support.

Using the pedal you can now have 3 different sounds (Your amp straight, a Rhythm sound, and a Lead sound). You also get the rich tube harmonics, distortion, and clarity. This unit is great! My only recommendation is that you check out the Damage Control Womanizer or Demonizer pre-amp pedals. They are more expensive than the Seymour Duncan SFX-03, but offer more flexibility of tones (ie. compression and filter notching).

Very easy to use, but at the same time very virsital. Having two channels on one box is absolutely amazing, it makes switching from rythem to lead a dream. I've only spent about 3hours on it so far, but i'm in love with it already.

I used two guitars and put it through two different amps. The first was a tom delonge signature strat, and the other was a strat i built loaded with a 70's dirty fingers pickup. The amps were a small solid state peavey, and a 68 fender bassman, with celestion greenback speakers. It was unbelieveable how much it changed the solid state amp, it sounded like the entire amp was tube driven. My tube amp was even better, it replaced that synthetic sound that happen when i put a boss pedal in front of it. I don't see how you couldn't get any type of distortion you want up to older metal. I was able to match rolling stones music perfectly just as easy as matching up to modern music like jimmy eat world and blink 182. Soloing/leads it's so nice to have a boost right on the pedal set specifically for how you want your leads to sound. There is almost no extra humming when the pedal was engaged. I dropped the boss blues driver which is a great pedal, but doesn't stand up to this at all.

I don't see it breaking, it's definitly built well.

Haven't had to deal with them yet

I've been playing guitar for about 8 years now, the last 5 i've taken lessons. I play a really wide variety of music for fun ranging from the beatles up to rage against the machine. I can hit just about everything in that region. I play with a band and we do modern music, such as blink 182, jimmy eat world, greenday, ect. It matches all of that really well. If someone stole it after killing them if i still didn't have it i'd buy another one. I think my two favorite features are the tubes which create an amazing sound, and the fact that it has two channels. It's extremely useful for playing with a band. I didn't get to demo this pedal before i used it, and i certainly don't have enough money to just hope that this pedal would be good, luckily it paid off better than i could have ever imagined. The price tag is intimidating but if it were 300$, i'd just have need to save a little longer. Oh and i'd like to say that the guy that didn't really like this pedal is a moron, good luck finding a better pedal to that guy. Thank you seymour duncan for an amazing creation.

Very easy. All knobs make sense. The two sets of channel vol and gain controls are stacked on the right side and two tone contols are on the left. I'd prefer to have a channel on each side and the tone controls in the middle below them, but so what, it works fine anyway.
Gettting a good sound is super easy. It is tube based so you get tube sound. However, getting a particular sound in my case wasn't easy. It was tedious and I never got there. Each control affects how the other controls behave. So, if you increase the treble, you may have to decrease/increase the bass/vol/gain to get back to the base tone you had before you increased the treble. Same holds true for the other knobs. tweaking one for me required tweaking others to even out the original tweak. But then I was looking for a particular sound and not just a bunch of good sounds.

Here's the sound I was looking for. I play through two Gibson BR6 amplifiers from the 50s. The amps only have volume controls, no tone shaping/meddling at all. What goes in gets amplified and pushed out. Simple. The sound of those amps breaking up is what I was looking for in the Twin Tube pedal. I couldn't find it. I did find a lot of great sounds that made my amps sound not like themselves. Good if you want that.
Also, voicing between the two channels is different enough to really notice. I figured that I'd use this 200 dollar box as two pedals with different amounts of gain in each channel but it doesn't really work that way because the rhythm channel is darker than the lead channel. You can dial one channel to equal the other, but then when you switch to the other one it sounds messed up. The pedal needs separate tone controls.

Sturdy as can be.

Not with Seymour Duncan. But www.zzounds.com where I bought took it back no questions a few days after I bought it. That's nice.

Good for experimenting and getting new flavors but in my experience with it not good for overdriving my amps to what my amps sound like when they're overdriven.

Really easy to use. Two knobs for eq. Two knobs for each channell. Pretty easy.

I play an American Deluxe Strat into a 74 vibro champ. The only thing between the two is this pedal and it will stay that way. This thing is incredible. Can go from really subtle dirt to really overdriven classic rock. The lead channel is also awesome for soloing.

Built like a tank.

I play bluse/classic rock and this pedal is PERFECT for that sound.

I've only had this for about a week, so I guess I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but I like enough that I felt compelled to submit a review. I've read these reviews for many years but this is the first one I've submitted. It's very easy to get great sounds out of this and you really don't need a manual although the sample settings are a great starting point. It has a switch for true-bypass and a second switch to toggle between two different sets of gain and volume controls as well as global treble and bass controls.

I've used it mainly with a Les Paul Jr. and a Vox AC-15 so far. As far as noise levels, it is very acceptable for an overdrive device. It offers a broad range of sounds from clean warm tube tone all the way up through pretty heavy classic rock overdive. I've been comparing it to some of my other favorite dirt boxes and I must say that I am very impressed. Just to give some perspective to my review, I have the following dirt boxes; Tim, Timmy, COT50, Eternity, old and new OCD, Fulldrive II, Distortion Pro, 69, 70, MI Audio Tube Zone, Tonebone Classic, Chandler Tube Driver, TS808 RI, 3-knob Mosferatu, Rat, Rat II, Boss Dual Overdrive and Boss DS-1. I've spent many hours with a lot of these and I really like many of them and they each have their own voice. I've also owned V-Twins and Klons in the past and enjoyed those as well. I compared the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic to some of my current favorites, COT50, Eternity, Timmy, OCD and Fulldrive II, individually as well as in different stacked combinations, and it holds it's own very well. It has that great feeling of pulling the sound out of the pickups as opposed to giving you the feeling you have to push the sound through it if you know what I mean. The rhythm side can go from being very transparent, to a transparent boost and on up through a pretty heavy overdrive. The lead side can go from almost clean to a very high gain saturated lead sound. The higher gain lead settings have a very liquid sound and feel with abundance of harmonics and even at very high gain settings, individual notes in chords remain very distinguishable. Both the rhythm and lead sides clean-up very well with a lighter touch or rolling back the guitar volume. Another thing I like is that the tone doesn't change drastically when you roll back the guitar volume. The tone controls have a very useful range providing plenty of variation while avoiding such a wide range as to make adjustments difficult.

Haven't had it long enough to make a judgement or opened it up to look inside but it seems pretty solid.

I've never had any contact with the company.

I play a wide variety of music and it's a good match for about any genre. I've been playing for 43 years and use a Strat, Tele, Les Paul Jr, Les Paul and Gretsch through Vox AC-15, AC-30, Princeton Reverb, Marshall 1987 RI, etc. I would buy it again if it were lost or stolen. This is a very versatile and great sounding pedal at a very reasonable price.

This thing is very easy to set up for good tones right out of the box. It doesn't take a computer science degree to operate. The manual has a few settings to get you started.

I have played this through a Fender 59 Bassman LTD with a 52 Tele Reissue and a Eric Johnson Strat and through a Fender 65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue with an Albert Collins signature Telecaster, a 56 Les Paul Historic and a PRS Santana II. It sounds great with all these combinations so far. I can get a good clean breakup with the drive set at 1:00 with single coils. It can go from a ragged edge to full out creamy distortion. It works extremely well with the Vox Clyde McCoy Wah.

It seems to be built to last. I have had a Seymour Duncan Amp (Convertable 2000) for years and two of the Pickup Boosters also. I have had zero problems with them and I expect no less reliability with this pedal.

I have talked to SD customer support and they have always been very courteous and extremely helpful.

I have been playing for 40+ years and I play many different kinds of music. This pedal is like a breath of fresh air. I can see this being a staple in my performance rig from now on. I would buy it again in a heartbeat. In fact I'm probably going get another one for backup.

The Seymour Duncan SFX-03 is very easy to use right out of the box. Just look at the last page in the manual, to see how to set up the rhythm channel and then the Lead channel. If you want more information its in the manual.

I'd give this unit a 10 for its very creamy overdrive and sustain. I use a Tex Mex Tele and a Fender twin amp. I also let my friend try it through his Paul reed Smith Se2 and he uses a DR.Z Mazerati and it sounded outstanding, great sustain harmonics.

It seem very well built, but has a wall wart, 16 volts 600ma. I wish that Seymour Duncan would just use an AC cord, because the cord lenght is always too short for my setup. I've only used it now for 3 gigs with no problems

I have not had to contact Customer Support, so I can't say yet.

I play Blues and Rock, and I'd give this pedal a 10, because you can now have 3 different sounds. 1. Your amp straight. 2. The Rhythm sound ( a little crunchier. 3. The Lead Over drive sound. If it were stolen I would replace it right away.