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$100.00 USD |
This won several prizes for best high gain pedal in 2016.
It is CKK's Metal offering...and not a bad one at that.
CKK are a small Chinese company that was set up with the goal of making serious gourmet pedals. Not easy because
they knew price may not win out over the image of made in
China pedals.
It holds up well to 2017's choices from KHDK, Keeley and Wampler and is less then half the price.
The others mentioned are more versatile...which really means giving their pedals a wide range of options to do everything from traditional Metal to Modern Metal.
Who in the hell needs that?
We are talking modern Metal
A modern Metal amp has typically a lot more headroom in the amp ... this sacrifices compression but gives you a sledge hammer attack for keeping those quarter note rhythms which are part of the style powerful and crisp. The sustain is taken care of in such an amp with an extra tube to double the gain in the preamp. By focusing on this CKK give you a truly authentic modern Metal sound.
SO WHAT IS MODERN METAL ???
Djent, Progressive Metal/ Mathcore and a few others we might agree on or not
I could list 26 genres of Metal (seriously)
I am sure someone out there could add another. lol
It is any Metal that favours -cutting the bass below 200Hz
- boosting a little around 800Hz to tighten and clean it up
-and a nice spike at 1.6 Khz to give it some attack from your pick
-and any strings not being played are palm muted
The Construction Drive has the standard volume and gain. The 3 way EQ is active with lots of nuance to tweak the near perfect tone.. There is also a mid switch to put a boost into either the upper mid or lower mids. This is all unusual for such a modest priced pedal. It quickly becomes apparent why it won so many awards. This would be a contender at any price.
This pedal has some serious balz.
Just plug in ...dial up your sound and PLAY!!!
AND all for a hundred bucks!!!
HANDS ON
Jan. 22/18
Well mine arrived in the mail today.
I was surprised just what a rich tone it has when you back it off a bit.
The sustain is the best of any pedal I've ever played thru. That alone is amazing!
The thing I really love is it has nailed the 'Modern' Metal sound ...in fact so well it is justification to still keep my KHDK for classic Metal sounds.
As much as I love the classic sounds ... I refused to live my life in yesterday ...this pedal is fresh and exciting. I love it!!! There is enough left over from my Prog days to slip those ideas into a Progressive Metal .
Within minutes of first playing it I rewrote the chorus of a song that I was using a fuzz on but was not completely happy with . It was pure magic what it does for my tune,
This is a keeper!
At the moment I know of no other pedal that has gone for a true straight on Modern Metal sound.
So if that is what you are looking for ...you have found it.
The killer is ....only a hundred bucks!!! How cool is that!!!
Hey Paul, I've been on the lookout for this pedal for quite some time and I have a question. I really like the sound characteristics of this one, bot does it even clean up with the volume knob? Also, could you provide me with any sound samples of yours? I've listened almost every YT video there is about this haha. Peace! You blog is amazing!
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