Catalinbread - Dirty Little Secret - just won on ebay!!

Dingwall

Just won this on ebay for £74 but bid was rather impulsive and I very seldom win these things!

Anyone have any experience of Catalinbread or more specifically the DLS?

Looks ok from you tube vids etc

ezietsman

Joe Moore wrote: I had one ( did nothing for me ☹ ) and sold it onto Singemonkey here on GFSA , perhaps he will comment on here or you'll have to pm him.......dunno if he still has it anymore though :-[

Its a good little pedal. He doesn't use it anymore for gigs, maybe he does at home on his Bassman.

AlanRatcliffe

Decent little Marshall-type distortion, holds it's own with the big boys. Very popular.

singemonkey

It's really great for simulating a live marshall on a clean amp. I get compliments on tone at band practise sometimes playing it through a marshall valvestate (very clean). It is dynamic.

Saying that, it sadly can't compare to EZ's 18watt marshall clone which is just so much more dynamic it takes your breath away. But that's not the pedal's fault. They just can't do more than approximate that clean-to-roar sound that a cranked tube amp delivers. To assume they can is to spend your life going through one pedal after another.

To illustrate, the DLS cleans up on the neck when I drop the volume on the guitar to about 4-5. On the 18W, the sound cleans up immediately and obviously at about 7. And the clean the amp delivers is just so chimey.

The DLS is one of the best amp simulating drive pedals you can get. Huge dynamics. But running a pedal like that into a clean amp is never going to compare to the dynamism of a tube amp that's pushing hard. And I'm talking from direct comparison.

Dingwall

Thanks chaps.

It should be in the post so hopefully it will arrive this week! On the You Tube videos it sounded best to me when stacked with other pedals and hopefully this will enable me to get a good hard rock marshall-esque sound. I use a Cornford amp and a big pedal board!