New Pedal Day: Biyang Overdrive

Lately, I have been buying Biyang Pedals direct from Hong Kong.  I have found they are amazing pedals, and the price can't be beat.

Here are some previous reviews I have done

The Reverb Pedal:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2015/03/new-pedal-day-biyang-reverb.html

The Blue Pedal:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2015/02/new-pedal-day-blue.html


I always wanted a good Tubescreamer pedal.  However, the real ones cost a good chunk of change.  And the cheap copies tend to sound just awful.  A long time ago, I bought the Bad Monkey Overdrive pedal used, and it just sounded cheap to me.  Since the Biyang pedals have really surprised me so far, I decided to take another chance on their Tubescreamer copy.

First off, I had to decide between the OD-7 and the newer OD-8.  The OD-8 is kind of neat in that it comes with multiple chips that you can change out to adjust your sound.  I honestly want to plug and play so I decided on the OD-7. 

I have to say, it nails that Stevie Ray Vaughn sound.  I had a Danelectro Wasabi Overdrive that I used as a bright boost, and this does that sound, only better.  I've found that I tend to put all my controls straight up at 12 o'clock, and that is a perfect sound for me. 

The OD-7 has an interesting feature.  It has a switch so that you can flip it to, TS, Bright, or Warm.  I run it at Bright all the time.  I kind of found the other settings were not needed.  You can get the same sound from the bright switch, just adjust the tone and drive settings.  I guess if you needed to change the sound on the fly it would be good for live settings, but otherwise, I think they could have skipped the switch, and left it on the bright setting all the time.

One thing I think is cool is that the "on" light is a brilliant shade of green.  Like classic Tubescreamer green.  In the darkness, it is very bright so you know whether it is on or not.  I really like running the OD-7 along side the reverb pedal.  It's like they were made for each other.

Like other Biyang pedals is has true bypass, and can be plugged right into your pedalboard.  So you can either run a battery or an adaptor for it to work.  I also love the hard metal casing.  This thing could survive the end of times. 

Something I really like is that this pedal pretty much adds another amp to my collection without me having to buy another amp.  Right now, I am playing a Laney GH-100-L through Warehouse Guitar Speakers Veteran 30 speakers.  My Laney head is equipped with the British sounding EL-34 tubes.  So my whole set-up is very British sounding. 

But when I put my amp to a clean setting, and engage this pedal, I get a very Fender/American type of sound.  It's like I changed rigs with just the step of a pedal. 

But here's the great question, what does it really sound like?  Well, here's a review of the pedal on Youtube.

Most Tubescreamers start around $100 and go up to over $200.  This pedal is as good and maybe better, and I paid $45, and that includes shipping.  I would completely recommend this pedal to any player needing a Tubescreamer pedal.  Again, I would put this pedal up against any other Tubescreamer type pedal, as well as other Overdrive pedals.  It's really just that good.

New Pedal Day: Biyang Reverb

A while ago I wrote a review of the Biyang Blue pedal.  Take a peek:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2015/02/new-pedal-day-blue.html

I have a few moderately hilarious thoughts to begin with.  I actually ordered the Biyang Reverb pedal before I ordered the Blue pedal, but it took it a while to make it here from China.

So why did I order a reverb pedal?  Well, my main amp right now is an older version of the Laney GH 100L.  Here's the link to it:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--LNYGH100L

It's a heck of an expensive amp, so you'd think that there would be every toy on it.  Well, it's kind of missing something, and that something is reverb. 

So I bought the Biyang after seeing it on Ebay, and watching some videos of it in action.

Here's the photos of mine:

So here's my review of it.  This pedal starts where other reverbs end.  It can get a huge almost tremolo effect.  I was messing with it, and turned everything way up, and my Sister started complaining.  Why?  She said I was trying to do what the Smashing Pumpkins did, but I was doing it much worse.  Now you have to understand my Sister hates everything I do, but she was right about the Pumpkins. 

The sound had that huge delay/molten ball of garbled mess that the Smashing Pumpkins had in a lot of their songs.  But honestly, you can get a very nice sound if you put both knobs at 3 o'clock.  You can get a huge reverb bordering on delay if both knobs are at 12 o'clock.  After that, everything starts to go into delay territory. 

I will say one thing that made me go "huh?" was when I put the settings up high, it sounded like a drum splash cymbal was being hit, and coming through my speakers.  I have never heard anything like that ever come through my speakers.  It just surprised me.  I didn't know what to think of it.  In fact, I still don't.  If I was playing with a full band, it might come through as being pretty cool. 

Something that this pedal has that kind of surprised me was the A/B input/outputs.  If I wanted to have fun I could run two of my amps at the same time with this pedal.  One of these days for the fun of it I am going to do that. 

Like the Blue pedal it also has true bypass, and is built like a tank.  It has the built in adaptor connector so you can attach it to a pedalboard or 9V adaptor. 

So my vote is, I love it.  I already have the TS Overdrive Biyang pedal coming at me in the mail.  So expect a review on it in the near future.