Visual Sound JH1 Jekyll & Hyde Ultimate Overdrive

It's a 2 channel pedal. Each one has it's one tone, gain and volume. The Hyde has an EQ knob. You shouldn't need a manual for simple stompboxes like these. Just turn it on and start playing with knobs. Kinda like a woman.

My rig is a '02 Les Paul, '03 Strat into a Marshall Plexi. I'm running a dunlop wah, boss tu2, boss flanger, boss phaser, boss dd3. I have a Dan-o Spring King and Pro Co Rat I haven't taken the time to configure in to my pedal lineup. The J/H sits at the end after the delay. My sound is dependent on my mood, but I mostly go for medium to heavy overdrive. I try to retain some clarity for solos and funny chords. I got this pedal for the overdrive when the Plexi is broken up at higher volumes, and the distortion for quieter playing. Anyway, the overdrive is blase at lower volumes on the plexi. Turning on the sharp setting ups the treble and makes it brighter, but not much. When I turn it up the overdrive sounds a lot better. The distortion is really versatile. I got pretty much everything from blackface sounds to muddy, mesa type stuff. It's a well-rounded pedal. Since there's so many knobs on it, I still like to twist them around and see what else it can do. I only took off one point for the "eh" vibe I got from the overdrive at low volume.

The thing lets well built. I'd gig with it. I've only had it for a week though.

Haven't had to deal with Visual Sound.

I'd say this will do everything except high gain metal. You can get a Mesa-type sound from it, so if you're into something bassy and thick you can get it. But anyone into Opeth should probably try elsewhere.

Two overdrives in one pedal .
If you don't understand how this pedal works then you must be a drummer :-).
Suggested settings in the manual are a welcome addition though.
Controls for the "Jekyll" side are drive, tone, volume.
Controls for the "Hyde" side are drive, tone, EQ, volume.
One mini switch for sharp or blunt (darker and more compressed)
Two footswitches allow you to select both drives separately or together.

I'm currently playing a standard mexican Strat and a Cort M600, plugged into a Marshall VS100r.
I've been playing 20 years or so and have been through quite a lot of different overdrive units (Boss SD1, Zoom Driver, Marshall drivemaster, Boss Metal Zone, Pearl Overdrive, my amp's ownoverdrive channels...) all of which failed to convince me in the long run as they sounded too harsh for my likings.I was looking for an smoother sounding overdrive .
Jekyll's drive remains politically correct and is supposed to emulate the now much sought after TS808. I never owned one and probably never will, given the bonkers money you must now for out to get hold of one. Visual Sound say they used the same operational amplifier, but I'm not going to open up the stompbox and check if it's true, since all settings on this side sound great and really make sense. Full arks for Jekyl's drive.
Just in case you would be deaf a red led indicates the Hyde overdrive is on. Plenty of gain. Great tone control that never make s your sound muddy or harsh. Eq control lets you boost or cust the mids so as to obtain a "classic" or "metal" distortion. I personally let the "sharp/blunt" switch on "blunt". As far as noise goes,yes there's hiss when you set everything on "10" but any hard pushed amp also hisses, so this is not really a problem. Besides you don't need to go for extreme settings to get a good sound.
Switch both drives together and you're rewarded with a volume boost and controllable feedback.Great.

Seems ruggedly made and able to widthstand the knocks of life on the road. As I've just bought it, only time wille tell. If it fails I will have to use my amp's own overdrive channels.

Never had to deal with them, so I can't tell.

I play heavy pop/rock and this unit really fills my needs. It's not one of those multi fx boxes with just one or two interesting sounds and all the others barely useable. I live in Belgium and purchased it on the web from Musik Produktiv.com (Germany) who were able to deliver fast and at a better price. Full marks for this company. I doubt it will ever get lost or stolen since I always keep an eye on our band's gear. Should this happen (and provided I'm am not taken to court for murdering the culprit) I would certainly buy another one.

Two footswitches, a handful of knobs, and one switch. It can be a bit intimidating, but once you realize it's two pedals in one, it's pretty easy. No funky lables here, i.e., "cheese=tone, beef=drive, etc." it just says "tone, scoop, drive," and so on.

You can set everything at about 12 o'clock and get a good sound out of both sides. The manual is brief but provides some good settings (really, for a stompbox, you shouldn't need more than a "set the dials here for a good sound" instruction).

I run a fender strat with texas special pickups and a Epi Sheraton with Alan Holdsworth pickups through this, occasionally run other fx, and either amp it through a Behringer V-Amp or an old Peavey Classic tube amp. The tone is very transparent, so if you have a good guitar and a good amp, the pedal will make it sound like your amp's natural overdrive.

Its two pedals are the Jekyll side, which mimics the Ibanez Tube screamer, and the Hyde side, which has more controls, a bit heavier of an overdrive, and can capture some more metal/hard rock tones.

Two cool features: 1, its "enhanced bypass" mode, which even when no effect is on, it modestly boosts your tone so that other effects don't drain it (it works on my Vox wah), and 2, the dual distortion effect. You can turn both OD's on at the same time to take your solos over the edge, and the footswitches are close enough that a single stomp can turn both on, both off, or switch between the two.

One downside, the pedal is a bit heavy on the high ends, even when you EQ them out at the pedal. BUT the easy solution to this is to roll your tone knob(s) on your guitar back a touch if it really bothers you.

It's got a steel chassis and the footswitches are pretty heavy-duty. My first JH toured with me for 2 years of daily playing in lots of hot, outdoor settings, and other than getting a lot of "character marks," or scratches, the only things that went wrong with it were the op-amp chip (which VS sent me a new one at no charge), and a shorted-out input jack, which was easy to repair. It is dependable and I would use it without a backup.

A lot of users complain about the battery setup, but Bob Weil, president of Visual Sound, claims that the setup is safe, and I've never had a problem with it.

Another aspect of reliability is its ease of repair. The JH is a bit time-consuming to disassemble and reassemble due to the large number of knobs, but anyone with basic soldering skills should be able to open this puppy up and fix it.

It's a small company with great customer support. I can't say enough good things about them; basically if you have a problem, they will do their best to repair their product or help you out, usually at a minimal cost to you.

I play mostly contemporary Christian stuff, which means everything from country to metal, though usually just straightforward rock. The JH gets a lot of different sounds, but they are all very good and very practical.

This is the whole reason I'm writing this review--my first JH was stolen AND I am replacing it. That's how good of a pedal it is.

3 knobs for the Kejyll side, 4 for the Hyde and 7 together..Extremely simple.

Awesome, marvelous, perfect, great crunch, the best overdrive i never heard. The two sides used at the same time, simply kicks all the other dist/drive pedals around the world. Perfect for brit-rock, garage, punk, grunge, hard rock, etc etc... Nick Valensi from Strokes uses it.
I have a Boss SD-2 Dual Overdrive and a Ds-2 Turbo distortion too, but this pedal ROCKS!

NO PROBLEM

Never dealt with

I play from Rolling Stones to AC/DC,,,Beatles to Oasis, Strokes to Smashing Pumpkins... it's a fantastic match.
If it were stolen or lost i'd buy it again and again.

This thing is easy as pie to get great sound out of. There is no "patch editing", which is why I got it to begin with. 3 knobs on the Jeckyl side, and 4 knobs plus a sharp/blunt switch on the hyde side. The manual is a sheet of paper with some starter settings to get you going.

The Jeckyl side of the pedal is a TS808 clone that really gets it right IMHO. I play Fender guitars (Strats, Tele) through Fender amps (DRRI & Blues Junior) and I can nail any sound you can name using this combination. The Hyde side gets you the "harder edged" sounds you may crave and makes even my classic rock/blues leaning rig sound as scooped as it gets. As a true child of the 70's, this guitar->pedal->amp gives me the sounds I remember so well.

This is my second Visual Sound pedal, the other being the Liquid Chorus and Echo (which is also superior). These pedals are well engineered with a truly silent bypass that neither adds nor subtracts any tone that I can detect. It is not a true bypass design, but according to Bob Weil (the company president), the "pure tone" bypass actually improves the signal quality in a long signal chain. I don't know about all that because I only have 5 pedals, but I can tell you that this pedal does not suck tone at all and it is built like a tank.

How many comapnies have you called via a toll free number, and gotten the company president? Bob Weil seems to be a genuinely good person, and I have little doubt that he would do whatever it takes to make anything that might go wrong right again.

As I said, I am a classic rock/blues fanatic with a shmatering of jazz throw in these past few years. I have been playing for nearly 32 years now and I am very particular about my sound. This pedal does exactly what I want it to do -- gives me a good solid-state (yet not digital) tube screamer tone. The Hyde side is a bonus for me and it feeds my dark side quite nicely when I want to headbang. I also own a Tonebone Classic Tube Distortion pedal that I just love too, and this pedal compliments that one beautifully. I also have a Carl Martin compressor, MXR Phase 90 RI and a Visual Sound Liquid CHorus and Echo pedal in my chain.

Jeckyll-side, three knobs, drive, tone, volume, simple huh?
Hyde-side, four knobs, drive, tone, EQ, volume...
pretty easy to twist to a good sound.

I use a handmade Patrick Eggle Berlin Plus, Epiphone Gibson SG, Ibanez Artcore AM73T into a JH-1 wah into the Jeckyl&Hyde that goes to a Boss NS-2, CE-2, DD-5 into amp.
When I use my cheap Vector transistoramp it sounds like shit. When plugged into my London City DEA130 MK5, it produces such sounds like Zakk Wylde's to SRV, it RULES!!
I use Hyde-side the most and when I kick in the Jeckyll it adds a boost for solos! Alone, the Jeckyll gives subtle soft overdrive.
Hyde channel is certainly capable for deathmetal gainiacs, when you use the right amps.

Worth your money! Two distortions in one box!

Very easy to use and dial in great tones

I was very impressed with this unit, I had read both good and bad reviews on this site, let me start off saying I play mostly originals in a Bowie/ Beatles/ Aerosmith style, and also do alot of covers and I think this pedal is great, I have been playing for 22 years and think this one of the nicest sounding, natural distortions I have ever played. Now, I'll note that some reviews said this unit is too trebly, but in my case I'm playing fenders and gibsons through a mesa rectoverb, which as we all know are very bassy and muddy sounding amps, and I did not like the gain on the Mesa, I think of it as harsh with not enough clarity and sustain, so I got this pedal on Ebay and tried it yesterday at rehearsal and loved it, I set my mesa to the clean channel w/ a little bit of gain (think petty or the stones), and set the jeckyll (overdrive side) with the gain on half so when I kicked it on it took me to an Aerosmith, Zeppelin type of clear gain, then I set the Hyde side on full gain and used this for lead work which sounded incredible (very clear note definition and sustain for days), I currently just use this pedal and a boss delay dd5 but plan on getting a compressor unit and EQ as well and did not find this unit to be noisy

seems to be built well

I think it is a very transparent unit capable of getting a wide variety of OD/ Distortion sounds that are smooth and not harsh like rats or some of the boss pedals

Just two devices in one case - very easy to set up when a friend plays guitar and I turn the knobs.
For me the eq (off) and the switch (blunt) are both useless.
The tone controls are not good enough and the lower half of the eq brings no further change.

I wanted two sounds:
One really bluesy overdriven sound suitable for chords and single notes. Jekyll is able to deliver this sound but even with the tone off it is a little too bright. Drive at 10h, tone off, vol on 5.
My Vox Valvetone responds better to dynamics.
The second sound I searched was a big fat solo sound - and yes, I found it within Hyde.
Drive 12-14, tone off, eq off, vol on 12.
Even with tone and eq off it is a little too bright.
Extra bonus: Both parts together produce a creamy solosound -
Now this is it for me !
This device will get noisy with extreme settings !
I used relatively low settings - so it works for me.

I play blues, rock, funk, pop and independant music.
J&H is good for blues and rock, but for funk I prefer my Vox Valvetone.
I compared many Overdrives and the J&H is really one of the best.
It does NOT fulfil my dreams but I think I will use it for a while.
I will continue my search.

It is STUPID simple. Two channels. Tow sets of controls (treat them as two separate pedals and you're off to the races...

This is where the pedal shines. Although I primarily use the pedal with full "Drive" I have fooled around with other settings. All dials noticably affect the sound (unlike some pedals)

Although I have only had the Jekyll & Hyde for a week, I also own the Visual Sound H20 and Route 66 for a year or so and have had NO problems so I don't anticipate anything less with the Jekyll & Hyde..

Never dealt with.....

Love it... Love the series... Nice short & sweet manual with examples.

Each section of the pedal was fairly easy to use, but as it combines two pedals into one, it requires that you know how to operate both individually as well as in tandem (in order to make full use of the pedal). There are, overall, some eight or nine different controls / switches.

The sound quality of this pedal is described most aptly by its name. It has both some really fantastic sounds available (The Jekyl side set for a semi-dirty tone) and some rather unimpressive ones as well (just about any setting with the Hyde side in 'blunt' mode). I used this pedal through two different amps, a 100w Fender Dual Showman ('89 'red-knob' head) and a Reverend Hellhound (amazing). For guitars I used a stock American Series Stratocaster, a '71 Hagstrom H2N, and a Guild Bluesbird.
No matter which guitar or amp combination I used, the characteristics of the pedal remained pretty consistant. The Jekyl side produced every thing from a mild clean boost to strong, medium-gain tones that remained clear, if a bit compressed. The tone knob was equally useful in mellowing out a brighter tone as it was adding clarity and bite to the humbucker equipted guitars. However, with the tone knob turned all the way up, the treble frequencies tended to sound a little artificial. Though really, it's a smooth-sounding versatile overdrive in it's own right, and probably worth the price of the pedal alone.
Now for the Hyde side. Despite the versatility and musicality of the Jekyl side of the pedal, I simply could not find a tone I really liked with the Hyde mode. No matter what the EQ setting and reguardless of weither or not it was set to 'Blunt' or 'Sharp' mode, the Hyde section of the pedal sounded artificial and seemed to lack any complexity. It sounded as though the amp was rapped in tinfoil, and while it produced tons of gain, never really seemed to very punchy or full. What's more, the when the Hyde section was combined with Jekyl side, the tones seemed to become even less natural and distinct, while the background hiss rose dramatically. The only use I could find for having both modes engaged was producing feedback, but even that sounded metalic and not very musical (rats!)

I can't really give an acurate estimate of the reliablility of this pedal, as I only kept it for a couple of months, but, from the looks of the thick metal housing and well-seated rubber knobs and switches, it ought to be pretty sturdy.

There are two ways to consider this pedal. One is to think of it as a solid, versatile overdriver / booster (Jekly) with the added ability of making some pretty over-the-top(if somewhat uninspiring)sounds (Hyde). Seen that way, it's probably well worth the price. Alternatly, the Jekyl & Hyde can be seen as a pedal that makes a promise of being an all-in-one distortion machine that delivers both blistering grind as well mellow overdrive and boost, but seems to fall a bit short of the mark. Thus, in deciding if the Jekyl & Hyde is the right overdriver for you, it would make sense to consider if you are looking for something that is the best of both worlds, or simply an tube-screamer-esq overdriver with a little something extra. For me, I was hoping to knock-out the distortion / overdriver problem in one shot, and found myself a little disappointed.