The AD-10 Baby Boom delay came in on Friday and here's my preliminary review based on the few minutes I had over the weekend to try it out.
The unit came with an alkaline battery but no external power source (wall wart). It is to be expected for a pedal that only cost $60.00 delivered. The battery compartment is easy to access by loosening the one thumb screw at one edge and lifting the lid off the body. Putting the lid back on with the battery in place wasn't as easy. Due to the tight fit of the battery in the compartment provided, the lid was very difficult to close as tightly as it was without the battery in place. There is a jack provided for a std. Boss type external power source. As I'll be using the pedal with my BBE Supa Power when it goes on my board, I'm not overly concerned about the poor cover fit. More on that after the description of the tone.
I tried the pedal with a parts-o-caster I put together with an ash body, a maple/rosewood neck, and some 60's type wind custom single coil pickups. I ran the pedal through the effects loop in my Ceriatone OTS for the test. I tried the pedal on several settings, first on 600ms, then on the 1000ms setting. The pedal delivers the full range of delay tones you'd expect from slap back to long, lush delays, to space noises. The overall clarity of the pedal does betray it's digital circuitry, but there is just enough "dirt" in the decay to give the tone a certain analog feel. Additionally, the pedal isn't dark sounding as many analog pedals tend to be. It isn't overly bright either, just clear. Since I only had a short time to test out the pedal, I wasn't able to try it in any overdriven modes, nor with any of my humbucker equipped guitars...something I'm anxious to do as soon as I have time.
The pedal appears well built, the switch positive and noiseless (no "pop" when engaged). The pedal was noiseless in operation, and did not suck any tone. With its true by-pass switching it didn't suck any tone when switched off either (I compared the tone with and without the pedal in the loop).
Another word on the power source: This thing is a battery eater. After playing throught the pedal for about 10 minutes I was interupted for about the next 15 minutes or so. I left the amp on standby with the effect plugged in and on until until I returned to play some more. In that brief 15 minute period the battery had lost about half of it's juice. From the reports I had read I already knew it ate batteries, but it was a surprise just how fast it did so. So, an external 300ma power source is a must.
Just with the limited testing I've done so far, I'd say that this pedal is well worth the mere $60.00 I paid for it. I don't think it will fool or satisfy an analog purist, but it does what it was designed to do pretty well - emulate the tone of an analog pedal.
BTW: The delay pedal Jay at GFS is offering is a repackaged Biyang AD-8. His whole selection of pedals are made by Biyang are are identical to them despite Jay's claim that he provided his own specs to Biyang. He got caught advertising his delay pedal as 100% analog and had to retract it after Biyang admitted that the pedals were in fact, "digital with analog voicing". Hardly sounds like Jay had anything to do with the design specs. The description of the delay pedal on the GFS site is copied word for word from the Biyang site description of the AD-8 pedal as well. Jay sells his for $55.95 plus shipping, so it's just a couple of bucks more with shipping than I paid for this one.
More to come later....
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