Seymour Duncan SFX-03

First of all:THIS IS NOO EFFEKTPEDAL!!!
THIS IS 100% A GRADE A GUITARPREAMP WITH HIGHVOLTAGE TUBES- so it's in the wrong category...

it's very easy to use- a little tweaking an you can get a great sound

I use it with the poweramplifier of the peavey windsor head,directly into the effectreturn..

you can get
great fenderlike clean/crunch/lead sounds
I mean, this is no marshall-so it sounds more american-lets say creamy

for more marshalllike sounds I use a marshall jackhammer right in front of it-so I can get a variety of different styles in one pedalpreamp..
after the twintube I run an boss eq-pedal to give it a more prescense,cutting through attitude and also to give it a little kickass for solos incl.volume boost..

at www.tonetoys.com they offer a great mod for this little lady- so you get a less creamy,more dynamic and more cutting through kind of sound..

no problems yet
it's like a russian tank...

support is very good..

I always get an answer for emails within a day...

I play guitar for almost 28 years since I was 11.
I play everything like rock/pop country,blues,jazz,funk,hardrock..
this thing covers almost everything accept highgain-for that you need an extra pedal in front of it (like digitech grunge etc).

I like its creamy/crispy crunch and clean sounds ..
I wouldn't take it as my only amp but as a sidekick for my marshall dsl head it's a perfect match cause it goes more in the american direction...
It would be cool if sd would put it in a small head like orange tiny terror incl footswitch...

I would buy it over and over again,cause its very cheap for a fullscale guitar preamp which makes "expensive sounds"

Tube driven, true bypass, cool overdrive/distortion pedal.
You know the specs. You gonna read most of these before you make up your mind anyway!
It doesn't get any easier to use. Just chicken-head knobs and your ears. Very easy to get useable classic rock, southern rock tones. Nice overdrives. It's a cool pedal. The manual has far too much information-never read it. Control layout is pretty insane!!

I have a heavily modded/halfway distroyed american tele, crybaby 535Q, EVH phase 90, DS1, CE5, DD3, to a blues Jr. I also have the digitech Whammy, Rt. 66, GE7, TR2, DL4, original 535Q, and others I can't remember because I've had a few. I have all my pedals mounted on a pedal train board with a dunlop brick. I like it. It always changes. I have alot of velcro. I've had alot of gear. I opt for simple with true bypass these days. Ya, Ya, I now I have a few boss pedals. It's taboo. But I like them and after Keeley gets his hands on them, they aren't really boss pedals anymore anyways. I have george L's cables as well as Monster Rock cables. I can't tell the difference, I just know the people that can say they are the best so I buy them. What the hell. I've spent alot of time on harmony central!! haha
Anyway, the SD has been on my board for a long time now.
It's not too noisy. Noise is inherent with OD's. It's not overly noisy at all.
The effects sound great to me. I can always find something that will inspire me to play something new. And that's all that counts. It's not going to make you angus. You have to become him yourself. I am a guitar junky. But this helps for sure.
If you like that 70's rock sound, it works good. I'm no good at descriptions like others. I'm a Neil Young fan and I can get alot of his style tones. Not exactly but close enough to make me feel like a rockstar! I haven't alway been neil young though. I went through the metallica stage, sepultura, prong, AIC, etc. Then I hit 30. I slowed down a bit. Really dove into the blues, Johnny Winter, R.L. Burnside, Howlin' Wolf. Then I went into a Johhny Cash/Willy Nelson phase. Now I'm still into it all and also a huge clutch fan. So I'm all over the place.

I have never had an issue with it.

No issues here either

You can alway improve on something. But I'm not going to nitpick it to death. I'm rating this against other effects that have common tonalities. I love the pedal. I use it when I want to get these tones. It's not metal. It's classic rock through and through. Now I'm sure with a combination of pedals you can make anything sound like something. But for getting that classic rock tone, this is it for me. Love it. I have been playing for 13 years. I still suck. I could tell you I have an ear for good tone but tone is in the ear of the beholder. So I'm not going to insult your taste. If it were lost or stolen I'd grab another one. I compared this to alot of other products. I liked the boss products, visual sounds, etc. too. I just stuck with this one. I still own the rest. they have their uses. I like the two in one pedal. Ya, it's big, but it's worth it to me. If I had one wish, that would be a mid control. But you know what? Mess with it a little and you'll find the spot. Or you won't and you won't run this pedal. It is musical. it's not going to get you from emo to screamo.

Easy to use : just the knobs anyone actually needs, to make sounds that anyone would want to hear.

All opinions in this area are heavily influenced by 1/ personal taste and 2/ the gear you use with the rated item. My taste are towards warm, seventies rock and prog sounds, and I use an extensively modified Epiphone Les Paul and two medium power, hybrid or solid state amps (Marshall and Vox). I use the SFX 03 as my tube crunch and lead channels, with the amps set on a good clean sound. I guess it is a reversal of the historic way of getting a rock sound (that is, putting an analog pedal in front of a tube amp). Anyway, the sound is excellent : defined, yet warm, sensitive to touch and to your pickup selection, natural sounding (compared to other tube overdrive pedals) and in spite of the limited number of controls, quite flexible.

Heavy, metal chassis, large knobs. Only been a few times to rehersal yet, but seems solid. I often change the position of the knobs between songs with my boot, and for the moment it's fine.

No problem yet, so no idea on that point.

It won't suit death metal guitarists, or lovers of thick square-wavey fuzz : but for lovers of classic rock sounds, it's excellent. I like the fact that it has its own sound, not a copy of Marshall or another. The crunch channel is warm and fuzzy like it should, can also be a wonderful clean and semi-clean channel. The lead channel is biting yet smooth, doesn't sound "hollow" like some do. I like the fact that it's not expensive : gear to play rock shouldn't be fragile and expensive.

This pedal is super easy to use, just like a tube amp:)

This is where this pedal shines. A previous reviewer said that this pedal draws the tone from your guitar, as opposed to have having to "push" the tone out. I agree.

I use this pedal with an Atomic 112-50 amp and a POD XT. I swear that this pedal not only brings tone from your guitar, but also out of the Pod. Using this pedal is like putting on 3-D glasses at a movie. Take them off and the picture is kinda unfocused. Put them on, and there's color all around you. Same with this Twin Tube/Pod XT/Atomic combo.

Used with regular amps still produces a nice Tube Driver type tone.

Seems built like a tank. I don't like wallwarts, but I do appreciate the fact that it keeps the price of the pedal low, keeps the pedal smaller, and keeps 120VAC away from your feet:)

Never had to deal with them.

This is a wonderful Twin channel pedal from Seymour Duncan. Unlike some tube pedals that use a "starved plate" method in which the tube is starved for voltage-causing it to clip llke a diode, the Twin Tube is %100 tube driven. It's gain is the result of high voltage tubes funning full tilt, making it much more amp-like in response and tone.

Easy as using a tube amp. Turn the knobs for Bass and treble for the overall sound. Turn the volume and gain knobs for the rhythm and lead channels.

This pedal is great for what I use it for, which is as an amp "modeler" at the end of my chain. er, however, is kind of a misnomer because it truely has its own sound. I keep both my rhythm and lead channels fairly clean, using the lead as more of a boost. The tubes in this pedal give it just the right amounts of warmth and bite that I was looking for. Plus it is a whole lot lighter and cheaper than an AC-30 or Bassman would be.

I haven't owned this pedal but a week but it seems to be very solid.

I haven't delt with them but have a friend who had a problem with a set of pick-up he bought and they treated him well.

I play on a couple of worship teams (also why I chose this pedal instead of an amp [reduces stage "noise"])and play Rock, Jazz, blues... This was the best solution for me considering its versatility and sound

Fairly easy to use- set your levels for each channel and stomp on it. It shares EQ for both channels and doesn't have a mid knob- It should- see below.

This pedal sucks in front of my '73 Marshall amp, period. I agree with some other people that the low end is very mushy. I believe this pedal was probably designed for a Fender type amp as it adds a lot of midrange that colors the Marshall tone to the point it is just crappy sounding. I tried every trick in the book to EQ it to work but no dice. I have an H&K Tubefactor that absolutely blows it away. The Maxon tube pedal is also way better. Actually the Fulltone OCD, which is not a tube pedal sounds much better. The overall sound is no where as big as any of those pedals. It probably does a decent Rolling Stones, Keef-type OD but that is about it. The high gain sounds, if you want to call them that are just not there at all, and I'm not even a high-gain guy. For me, Seymour, missed the boat on this one. I know it got great reviews but I've been playing and gigging for over 20 years and have to call it the way I see it- its going back.

Looks like it is built well and will hold up.

I hear Seymour is great.

Sorry, to rain on this pedal's parade but it just wasn't making it for me at all. I liked the idea of having two channels as the first channel on the H&K is good but could use more gain and it makes the other channel have two much when you turn it up. I should have tried it in a Fender to see if it faired better there- I suspect it would. All I can say is that it does not work with old non-master volume Marshalls at all.

Pretty straigh forward.

This is the best OD/DIST pedal I have ever used. I have a Mesa Boogie F-50 and I wanted to ge the sound of Channel one when you overdrive it but be also able to have it clean when I wanted it. I tried many different pedals but liked none until this came along. It sounds fat. It also responds so well to dynamics like turning the vulume down on your guitar. I would like to have tone controls for each channel but I am a control freak.

So Far So good

Great Bunch of guys

I TRY to play everything from Clean latin style to heavy metal and all in between. The only thing that would make this pedal more versatily would be tone controlls for each channel but then that would probably be a preamp not a pedal

in our days where everything needs fat manuals the sfx 03 looks very simple.

i just got it and i was between this and a vpd1 tc electronics because i want to pair it with G system (tc elect. effects ).Now i feel very happy because it has an incredible sound together.
i compared it to a rocktron voodu valve preamp and it sounds mutch better.
what i like the most is the mild hi frequencies it creates while keeping fat lows ,something that hepls me play better..
its overall dist is smooth and sustained..
my fears of getting somethin without listen to it dissapeared..

it seems like a heavy duty stomp..
i wonder if i can find these tubes when i need them..but the S.D .says they will last for a long time..

someone that made a so nice job with it ,must love the whole thing so i believe they must have good support..after all it doesn't seem to need it

my style is between jazz and rock sound and i play and teach for about 20 years .I would buy it again since it really respects its price.
i wish i could by it a little cheaper like the others in USD but anyway i think it is still cheap for it's sound quality!

How difficult can it be to operate an overdrive pedal?
I'd give it a 10 but some people may not get how the EQ effects the amount of gain and the conrols are sensitive (meaning they are very flexible), so 9 it is.

This is the best overdrive pedal I have used yet.
I have various guitars - single coils, humbuckers, p-90s, etc with various amps - VHT, Ampeg, Gibson, Epi Valve Jr and Vox Valvetronix.
This pedal sounds great with all of them.

I had a Homebrew Electronics Powerscreamer (slightly modified) and a Barber Direct Drive DDSSS. I consider them both to be very good pedals. But when I heard the SFX-03 there was simply no contest, at least as far as what I value most. The SFX-03 so natural. The others pedals never sounded artificial until they went up against the SFX-03. It doesn't force it's way onto your tone.....your tone comes through it. It does sound very big though, huge in fact.

Channel 1 can go from a clean boost-like to raging crunch and the crunchiness of the pedal is awesome. It is very neutral in character.
Channel 2 goes from crunch to a lot of drive. It has a bit more mid presence but still is not syrupy in that regard.

In all, the box sopunds like an amp...or an extansion of your amp.
It plays nice with every combo I tried. It makes the Vox come alive, really it does and is equally at home with my VHT, a $3,000 amp. In fact, it is the only pedal I would consider using with the VHT.

In all, just a great pedal.

The thing is a monster, built like the proverbial tank.
It is more than 2x the girth of the Homebrew and Barber.
The tubes are soldered in, maybe not good for when the time comes to change them, but they won't be popping loose, not that they pop loose from an amp, etc.

It all, it inspires confidence.

I never had to deal with Seymour Duncan.
Hopefully the pedal won't be a cause to do so.

Overall rating is a 10.
It simply is the best pedal of it's type I have used....it's perfect for me.

I play all different types of music using all different types of tones. As for overdrive, I prefer great crunch but at times need something more or less. This pedal covers a lot of ground. I wouldn't say it does really intense metal or does the scooped out thing by itself but there isn't much else it won't do from clean to crunch to scream and do it all with class.

FWIW, I have already sold the Homebrew and the Barber, which are fine pedals in their own right. I mention this because I think it says a lot about this pedal.

I wish it had seperate tone controls for each channel. Still, this hasn't been a problem at all.

Anyone wondering about this pedal owes it to themselves to try it out.

Pretty straight forward controls, volume and gain for each channel with global bass(40Hz~200Hz) and treble(2kHz~20kHz) controls. The tone controls work well, but I really would have liked some mid eq. Idealy independant bass, mid and treble controls for each channel, that would make this thing much more tweakable. I do appreciate the ease of use the simple controls afford though. You can pretty much dial in a couple of good sounds within minutes and then do your tweaking at the amp.

I have a G&L ASAT Z-3(similar to a Tele/Strat) and a Tom Anderson Cobra(similar to a LP or PRS). I ran the guitars straight into the Twin Tube and then into a Yamaha DG80 1x12 combo set to clean.

There's a lot of different sounds in the Twin Tube. The way you set the tone controls on your amp can have a huge effect on how it interacts with the Twin Tube, so dialing in your sound takes a bit of patients. With a moderate gain setting the rhythm channel can do a really nice "on the verge of breaking up" sound. A little more gain and you've got AC/DC. Switch to the lead channel and you'll find everything from a fat crunch to saturated overdrive. Playing leads with this thing is a joy. At higher gain settings you get violin like sustain, rich in harmonics and warm tube goodness. The trade off is that chords can get a bit muddy at higher gain settings, especially with humbuckers.

Overall I'm very pleased with the sound of the Twin Tube. It's turned my modest Yamaha 1x12 combo into a really nice amp. Until I can scrape up the $2000 I plan to spend on my next amp it will do nicely.

Seems well built, steel chassis, metal jacks. I wish Seymour Duncan would actually tell us the approximate life expectancy of the tubes.

At $200~$220 you just can't go wrong with the Twin Tube Classic, it sounds better than any "boutique" pedal I've heard. It also sounds better than the Mesa Boogie V-Twin and Formula Pre I once owned. It is the closest thing to an overdriven tube amp you're going to find in a pedal.

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.