Drive Dilemma - Zen vs POT
After ages of searching I've obtained a decent clone of both a Prince of Tone and a Zen Drive (both from the lovely Mr Photek)
My intention was to play them both against each other and choose which one I wanted to keep. The only problem is they are both awesome, but quite different.
The Zen is very smooth and fat great into the clean channel, really low noise and has great sustain, but doesn't really work into the drive channel.
The POT is a bit more raw, lower gain doesn't have as much sustain, but it sounds spectacular at pushing the drive channel as well as sounding good into clean.
I already have a Liquid Sunshine for low gain and if I was to have three drive pedals the final one should probably be something with epic gain like a fuzz face or a RAT.
I don't want to end up as one of those people who has 5 low gain overdrives on my board and I'm quite limited for space. What should I do?
My board looks like this (shown here with the POT):
Sounds like the POT is the winner to me, if it sounds good both with and without your gain channel. The LS seems to cover everything the POT can't.
If you want to sell the Zen...
"The World don't wanna be saved, only left alone"
I've been around similar loops, it can get confusing (for no good reason)
Things I've done to stop the analysis paralysis at different times:
1. Pick one. Randomly. Toss a coin. Put the other one in a cupboard for a month. You'll get by, and enjoy doing so. Then swap them over. Ditto. IF you find one approach is much easier than the other, keep that one. Or as I do, end up keeping both and swap them occasionally just because
2. Only worry about your gainiest option and set up for that. Anything "less" is guitar volume controlled.
Red ones are better.
As timmyo said, keep both, whichever you choose you will hanker after the other one on 6 months.
Winners are not people who never fail.
Winners are people who never quit.
I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm going to have to put both on my board temporarily and see which one I end up going for when I'm playing out.
Had a very similar dilema a while ago, the outcome was a bigger board!Originally Posted by monquixote
FS Marshall 2266c, TC Nova System
At any one time I've got two drives on the board, and the rule is one in one out
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Gandhi
Ha, my dilemma is similar. Also have a Liquid Sunshine for low gain, and aquired a Little Green Wonder and a Jetter Gold Shift (not dissimilar to the Zendrive apparently) to "shoot out" and choose one. They've all got their place though, my intention is to find which two stack the best for ott gain, thus saving having to get another high gainer, and then set one for low an one for medium. Then I have three drive sounds covered. The LS and LGW are wining out at the moment but need to turn them up a bit to really know. But one of them will go. Do you need high gain with your rig, you have the SS22 drive channel for that?
Indeed I can use the drive channel for high gain, but I tend not to bother. Much as the SS22 drive channel is very good I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm more of a pedals into a single channel amp kind of a guy and may end up going back to a single channel amp at some point.
Yes, again, that's exactly what I have done having recently sold my SS22 and gone single channel. Means that pedal GAS steps up a notch though! Stacking OD's can give interesting results - get it wrong and it sounds like a 10 watt solid state practice amp from the 80's (which is why I've always avoided it), but hit upon a winning combination and it's entirely different.
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