Incoming NPD: Jackson Audio Golden Boy Mini

Jarick

Rock Star
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3,344
I decided to order a couple things to put together a little HX Stomp board (2-button foot switch and TRS cable), and was thinking about a good drive pedal to go in front. I’ve got a bunch of pedals but they’re all either too low gain or high gain. Searched for Bluesbreaker clones and this pedal came up.

I had the regular version last year as I tested a bunch of pedals in the store and really liked it. The drive goes from a fairly transparent boost all the way up to distortion, and the 3-band EQ is really effective. It was great at taking an edge of breakup sound to a good rock crunch without sounding too fuzzy or honky.

There were two things I didn’t like about it…one is that, because of the gain cycling and clipping switching, the pedal switched on when you released the switch and not when you step on it. Really annoying. The other thing is there was a built in boost which added a second footswitch, but the pedal was not very wide so it was hard to step on just one.

This new mini pedal seems to have fixed both issues. They dropped two of the clipping modes and put asymmetrical/LED on a physical switch, they dropped the gain cycling (which was kind of useless because there’s a gain knob), and dropped the separate boost.

Also, they had it in black, which matches my all-black board (HX Stomp, black 2-button switch, and Polytune Mini Noir).

Will give it a solid review when it arrives, but I have a feeling it’s going to hit the sweet spot. I’m planning to purge most of my pedals anyway, so it should replace about half a dozen drives and boosts.
 
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