Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde V1

Now here's a trusty companion that keeps coming back to my pedal boards.

I managed to dial in some satisfying settings for both sides of the effect, so I better take some pictures to fight forgetfulness.

Since I acquired the pedal Visual Sound managed to release two more versions of the pedal and even change the company's name to Truetone.

Although I haven't used the newer versions, I can say that at least version V3 has one improvement I would like to have on my pedal too, namely the ability to change the order of the two effect sides.

As its name implies the "Jekyll & Hyde" combines an distortion and an overdrive, both can be used independently or together.

The signal hits the distortion side first, then going through the overdrive.

Now I would personally prefer it the other way round. As I said V3 offers this by giving each side its own outputs.

Most sources on the www consider the Jekyll section a "Tube Screamer - ish" overdrive with an added bass switch while the Hyde part of the pedal is described as "Marshall Shredmaster - ish" with a Sharp/Blunt option.

I won't comment on that but I will say that I like the sound of both sides and I use them separately as well as stacked on top of each other.

Using Two Amps - Dry / Wet Setup

So I decided to put a very simple pedal board together to use two amps at the same time.
Of course there are several ways to go about this but I wanted a dry / wet setup.
Since the stack on the left has more clean headroom it would be my "effects amp",
the smaller combo on the right would be the dry amp.

With a small pedal board I am able to get my basic sound ideas covered.

It's just an overdrive pedal with two variations, a delay pedal, a tuner, and a splitter box which isolates the two signals going to the amps and takes care of phase issues.

The white coil cable goes to the effects amp, the red one goes to the dry amp.

Now to recap my signal chain:

Guitar goes into the Jekyll & Hyde for overdriven sounds; 

into the Silvertone guitar splitter box;

from there one signal goes to the dry amp;

the second signal goes to the Double Deca delay;

out of the delay into the wet amp;

(the tuner is connected to the splitter box too via a separate output);


Both amps are set to a clean sound but just the wet amp gets the effect from the delay pedal.
When I use the overdrive pedal, both amps get driven, but again, only the wet amp gets the delay added on top.

Very useful for running time - based effects or any kind of modulation pedals way "wetter" than usual because there's always the essential sound coming from the dry amp to provide a clear and responsive foundation.