NPD Black Country Customs TI-Boost

mbenigni

Rock Star
TGF Recording Artist
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I got a $50 gift card for my birthday. So naturally I bought myself a $200 birthday gift. :D

I very rarely buy individual pedals anymore, but the captures of this pedal were about my favorite thing on the QC cloud. I finally decided I had to get my own mitts on the controls.

ZEm3c4X.jpg
 
How does it match your experience from the QC capture? Are you pleased with the pedal?
Not there yet. I pulled it out of the box and immediately had to run an errand. I'll post a review here after I've had a few hours with it. All I can say for the moment is that it's definitely the sexiest stompbox I've ever owned. Surprisingly small, really nice materials, super-smooth pots, etc. If you care about that sort of thing.

It also came in a cool collectible tin. Sadly, Amazon chose to ship it to me in no box whatsoever - just slapping a label directly on the shrink wrap - so said tin is half-crushed. :( I'm probably going to return this one for a replacement. (I'm a little neurotic about packaging, resale value, etc., even when I don't expect to resell.)
 
Not there yet. I pulled it out of the box and immediately had to run an errand.

Arrghhhh! Such a tease!

Funny you should mention the tin box dent. I have the BCC Secret Path Reverb here and that came in the same tin box. That was packaged well and it still had a dent in it. It's a nice looking box, but thin and very dentable - I suspect that a lot of them are like that, so if you order a replacement, you may well get another dented box or worse.
 
I got a $50 gift card for my birthday. So naturally I bought myself a $200 birthday gift. :D

I very rarely buy individual pedals anymore, but the captures of this pedal were about my favorite thing on the QC cloud. I finally decided I had to get my own mitts on the controls.

ZEm3c4X.jpg

Congrats! I agree it is a damn fine looking pedal. :love


20230106_182005.jpg


No idea why my pics are so damn Jurassic. Holy Brontosaurus Batman!
 
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Arrghhhh! Such a tease!

Funny you should mention the tin box dent. I have the BCC Secret Path Reverb here and that came in the same tin box. That was packaged well and it still had a dent in it. It's a nice looking box, but thin and very dentable - I suspect that a lot of them are like that, so if you order a replacement, you may well get another dented box or worse.
Hey, thanks for the heads-up, man! This is the kind of information that might push me off the fence when I start dancing my inevitable "THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!/ Why bother?" jig. :rofl

It just bugs me is all. This is literally the first time Amazon's ever shipped me anything without some kind of packaging. They just had to go suddenly crazy minimalistic with a $200 stompbox?

:facepalm
 
Hey, thanks for the heads-up, man! This is the kind of information that might push me off the fence when I start dancing my inevitable "THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!/ Why bother?" jig. :rofl

It just bugs me is all. This is literally the first time Amazon's ever shipped me anything without some kind of packaging. They just had to go suddenly crazy minimalistic with a $200 stompbox?

:facepalm
The Washington Commanders don't buy themselves you know
 
But yeah curious what you think. I recall chatting about treble boosts and whatnot when sharing our Sabbath presets on the QC. The good ol daysTM
 
Had some time to work with this pedal over the weekend.

First off, yes, it can be set to sound very much like the QC capture I had grown to favor. (I gravitate toward the low-mid setting, personally, which is a bit warmer and smoother than the high-mid boost. I suspect the latter is more like the actual treble booster Tony would have been using in the '70s, but the smoothness of the low-mid setting works some magic that would likely have been done in post on any studio recording.) Obviously, it's nice having the full analog controls at hand with the real pedal, but putting it in the effects loop introduces a bit of noise, depending on how much gain I'm adding, whereas the capture is nearly silent.

Plugged into my Mesa Express (the only tube amp I own at present) things are more subtle - mainly because the Mesa has so much gain on tap and so many different voicings of its own. There's a lot of overlap between any given channel dialed in any given way vs. different settings plus the boost (dialed in any given way.) I don't have an old JTM I can dime to hear what the pedal is "supposed to do". It definitely helps with feel a lot - more squish, more feedback, etc. And it lets me add more gain to a channel whose voicing I might otherwise prefer to the Mesa's "Burn" channel. So far, so OD pedal.

I have to chuckle when I watch demos of boost pedals, so many of which begin with, "Here's my base tone, without the pedal on... BRAAAAP." Then they turn the pedal on and it sounds like an amp I might actually buy. :D My first response is always, "OK, the boost helps a lot, but WHY (at any point after about 1990) would that be your base tone??" :unsure:

Anyway, it says Tony Iommi on it, and it's 25% birthday present. ;) I don't really need it, but I'm going to allow myself one more "trophy pedal" LOL.
 
Had some time to work with this pedal over the weekend.

First off, yes, it can be set to sound very much like the QC capture I had grown to favor. (I gravitate toward the low-mid setting, personally, which is a bit warmer and smoother than the high-mid boost. I suspect the latter is more like the actual treble booster Tony would have been using in the '70s, but the smoothness of the low-mid setting works some magic that would likely have been done in post on any studio recording.) Obviously, it's nice having the full analog controls at hand with the real pedal, but putting it in the effects loop introduces a bit of noise, depending on how much gain I'm adding, whereas the capture is nearly silent.

Plugged into my Mesa Express (the only tube amp I own at present) things are more subtle - mainly because the Mesa has so much gain on tap and so many different voicings of its own. There's a lot of overlap between any given channel dialed in any given way vs. different settings plus the boost (dialed in any given way.) I don't have an old JTM I can dime to hear what the pedal is "supposed to do". It definitely helps with feel a lot - more squish, more feedback, etc. And it lets me add more gain to a channel whose voicing I might otherwise prefer to the Mesa's "Burn" channel. So far, so OD pedal.

I have to chuckle when I watch demos of boost pedals, so many of which begin with, "Here's my base tone, without the pedal on... BRAAAAP." Then they turn the pedal on and it sounds like an amp I might actually buy. :D My first response is always, "OK, the boost helps a lot, but WHY (at any point after about 1990) would that be your base tone??" :unsure:

Anyway, it says Tony Iommi on it, and it's 25% birthday present. ;) I don't really need it, but I'm going to allow myself one more "trophy pedal" LOL.
I love trophy pedals :guiness Sounds like a keeper!
 
That PG flanger is stupid but has some insane sounds in it. Dirt pedals are a VAST black hole :oops:
I get adequately confused trying to convince myself that coveted amp A can't be dialed in to sound more or less exactly like coveted amp B. Throw a few dirt pedals in front I'm hopelessly lost.
 
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