Joyo US DREAM – Guitar Pedal Review – Cornwall Guitar Lessons

Hello good people, here we go again with another guitar pedal review from Cornwall Guitar Lessons. This time I’m talking about the ‘Joyo US dream’.

I came across the Joyo pedals when searching on YouTube for a high gain distortion pedal, I was looking for something big sounding and a lot of videos were speaking very highly of the ‘Suhr Riot’ pedal. After many days of trying to convince myself that the riot pedal was the one for me, I couldn’t bring myself to parting with the cash for this boutique pedal. So I began searching for a clone of the US dream sounded very close at lesson than 1/5 of the cost.

Joyo are a Chinese company producing a wide range of guitar pedals at extremely affordable prices, generally they’re around £20-£30. So the pedal is as simple as it gets, a metal tank like enclosure with 3 knobs for volume, tone and distortion amount.

In terms of the overall sounds and tone of this pedal it has all the gain you will ever need. When you put the gain on full it starts to get muddy so I have generally been using it with the gain around 6-7. The tone knob is also very flexible allowing you to create a huge range of colours in your tone. Volume wise its very loud, it could be used as a high gain boost pedal. I have had my pedal at around 6 on the volume.

Overall, I love this pedal! I have never really been a fan of big distortions but this really is amazing value for money, its very versatile and has a huge amount of character. It definitely makes me want to try some of the other Joyo pedals on the market.

Xotic EP Booster review – Cornwall Guitar Lessons

I have continued my pedal buying and selling obsession over the last few weeks in search of my perfect combination of pedals! My latest is the Xotic EP booster.

I have previously used a MXR micro amp and Boss GE-7 as the main boost pedal on my board, both of which are amazing but I was never 100% happy with them. After several recommendations and great online reviews I finally decided to buy this pedal. It took me around two weeks to find a shop that actually sells them in the UK, turns out these boutique pedals are hugely popular and sell out very quickly. When it arrived I definitely wasn’t disappointed with the wait.

The EP booster circuit is said to be based on the famous Maestro EP-3 Echoplex made famous by players like Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry, Jimmy page and Eddie Van Halen (the list goes on). At first glance it’s quite surprising how small this pedal is, making it perfect for pedal boards of all sizes. The pedal is extremely simple, stomp on the switch to get a clean volume boost, when stomping the switch a bright blue LED will light up, stomp on it again to switch it off. There is one single knob that controls the amount of boost you have, and it goes stupidly loud without affecting the tone of your guitar. In fact the pedal seems to round of your tone and make it seem thicker in some way, it’s very hard to describe exactly what it’s doing….but when using this pedal the original frequencies in my guitar sound that are pleasing seem to shine through even more. If the pedal wasn’t so expensive I would have two of them on my board.

The tonal options for this pedal are revealed once you remove the back plate of the pedal. There are two dipswitches, which allow you to change the EQ of the pedal. After messing about with all the variations possible I currently have mine set to the default settings. I am currently using the pedal after my drive pedals on my board rather then before them. I have tried it both ways but do prefer it after.

The only down side to this pedal is that you can only mess about with the EQ options by removing the back plate, it would be great if these switches were on the front of the pedal.

Overall I would say this is a must have pedal. It is simple yet extremely effective. It is a boutique pedal and therefore has the price tag that goes with it, but if you are willing to part with the cash you will not be disappointed.