Ethos Pedal

[tag101]

I had the ethos and Zendrive, and several twoRocks and a Fuchs at the same time. I also owned a Dumble. Side by side both the ethos and Zendrive were good, but the Ethos was closer to the amps by a good enough margin to send the Zendrive packing. Using the ethos into the clean side of my Dumble yielded pretty good results, but still sounded like a pedal. I still have it, and have several clips of it if you want to hear it. I now have the Mad professor Sky blue overdrive, and it is by far, the best D style pedal I have tried. You can hear my clips of it on the other thread. The ethos is a plug and play pedal, while the Sky blue you have to work with, but the Sky blue will give you the strain, correct mids and even note flipping ability that no other pedal I have heard even comes close to. IMO, to my ear, and all that other stuff.

[deanf]

I bought an Ethos TLE classic pedal/amp a couple of months ago. Honestly, I had to play with it for quite a while before I found the D-Style sounds that I was happy with. Given the significant number of options on the pedal, i suppose I shouldnt have been surprised that it would take some time. Having said this, I now have 3 fantastic sounds which I use all the time.

I've experimented and gigged with the pedal through a number of different amps.( 4x10 Deville, 76 Vibrolux, 63 pro-reverb, a couple of cloned Deluxes and finally a Twin. IMO, It sounded best through 12" speakers, 10's just sound a bit to compressed for my taste.

I've just started using the pedal without an amp for recording.. and the results are incredible..No question in my mind that I will be taking this to the next gig without an amp and trying it out.. The less gear I have to haul the better

[Zippy]

I had the ethos and Zendrive, and several twoRocks and a Fuchs at the same time. I also owned a Dumble. Side by side both the ethos and Zendrive were good, but the Ethos was closer to the amps by a good enough margin to send the Zendrive packing. Using the ethos into the clean side of my Dumble yielded pretty good results, but still sounded like a pedal. I still have it, and have several clips of it if you want to hear it. I now have the Mad professor Sky blue overdrive, and it is by far, the best D style pedal I have tried. You can hear my clips of it on the other thread. The ethos is a plug and play pedal, while the Sky blue you have to work with, but the Sky blue will give you the strain, correct mids and even note flipping ability that no other pedal I have heard even comes close to. IMO, to my ear, and all that other stuff.

Any comments regarding the Kingsley Jester?

Thanks.

[Harald.Nowak]

I do own an Ethos OD with the TLE and a Ceriatone ex Bluesmaster, modded to ODS HRM by now.
Soundwise, the Ethos is a very nice pedal - it produces lots and lots of overtones in OD mode, and it has a dynamic feeling that a miss from pedals like the Zen (which I tried both as original and also built as a clone). The tone from the Zen is more straightforward - it does not change a lot while the signal from the guitar fades away; not so the ethos - the composition of the overtones is ever changing while the signal strength changes, just as you would expect from an overdriven tube amp. So, in this respect it is very close to what my ODS does, but also similar to what other overdriven amps do. The overall sound is also similar to the ODS, but it is ... how do I phrase this - less powerfull? Also when you are in the EThos OD channel, there is hardly any going back and forth between overdriven and clean - there is touch dynamics, of course, and more so than in many other pedals, but the touch dynamics of the Ceriatone ODS are way stronger. With the ODS Amp you can easily play clean with the OD channel on and playing soft.
Also, the quality of the sound of the Ethos depends in the Amp you use - of course! A good fender seems mandatory there - feeding the thing into a PA directly sounds like crap, and using a H&K or something won't help either. Be sure you have a good sounding tube amp if you want to use it. What astonished me most is, how much the good sound of the Ethos depends on the speaker - if the speakers are too harsh, it sounds very transistor like, so there is some high end in the tone, that wants to be rolled off by the speakers. You can roll it off with the control on the ethos, but that rolls off too much to my ear.
To sum it up: a real ODS Amp is better, but for traveling light the ETHOS is very great - provided, you have a good tube amp (Fender Bassman, Twin, Deluxe, you name it) and a nice, not too cold speaker. Also the Ethos is one of the best overdrive pedals to my ear if you want a dynamic, lively, changing kind of overdrive tone - that is, an interesting tone, that doesn't get boring too fast. Funny enough I also once played the Ethos as Frontend to the Ceriatone ODS Poweramp and the tone was also very useable - more compressed and less touch sensitive than the Amps frontend, but all in all nice!

[amplifiednation]

Ooh a pedal thread at TAG, eh?

I heard the Ethos is pretty awesome.

[M Fowler]

I use the Zendrive with slight delay.

Had a Golden Cello pedal that sounded very Dumble like but didn't like the delay part as well and adjustment is internal trimmer.

[bluesfendermanblues]

Hi Guys,

I also like the Zen a lot....and it took me some time to tune my D-amps to the same smoothness and velvet like tone as the Zen.

Another favorite for "Dumble OD in a pedal" is Providence Stampede Overdrive SOV-2. Soundvise it's a mix of the Zen and a good tubescreamer - I like it a lot and at the moment it has taken the Zen's place on my pedalboard (which is used at band rehearsals when carrying an amp is incovinient).

Both pedals are, like D-amps in OD mode, best, with bridge pickup.

For solo on neck pickup, IMO, use a tubescreamer.

[Structo]

We don't use no pedal for dat D tone.....

Seriously, listen to Robben Ford's live sound, many times a Twin or Super Reverb and a Zen.
It doesn't seem to matter what he uses, a lot of it is him.

He could probably use a Bad Monkey pedal and still sound like him.

[bluesfendermanblues]

We don't use no pedal for dat D tone.....

Seriously, listen to Robben Ford's live sound, many times a Twin or Super Reverb and a Zen.
It doesn't seem to matter what he uses, a lot of it is him.

He could probably use a Bad Monkey pedal and still sound like him.

You're right...first time I heard Robben live was in early 90's, playing his Dumble. Second time mid 90s the band was even hotter and so was Robben. At the latter occasion he played a rental red knob twin and two reissue tube screamers....his tone was actually better, than the first time.

[Harald.Nowak]

Seriously, listen to Robben Ford's live sound, many times a Twin or Super Reverb and a Zen.
It doesn't seem to matter what he uses, a lot of it is him.

Beg to disagree - heard him live with his dumble and with a Twin-Pedalboard combo (with his Zendrive) and it was night and day. Of course you can hear his phrasing, his pickingstyle, his playing style through and through - but the amp sound was a whole different thing - the Dumble sounded way fatter and more powerful to me than Zen through Fender amp. So, "a lot of it is him" - true, naturally. "doesn't seem to matter" is the part I like to disagree with.
Of course we all hear different things - our ears are different and we also concentrate on different things in the tone. Also not saying one or the other tone is better - you can work with both tones, and so can robben. But to my ear they are definitely different.
Ahja, and not to forget the guitar! Essential part of the sound, even more so if its at least partially clean - if the guitar stays the same, there is for sure another component (besides the player) that you can hear staying similar over both setups, that is too often forgotten. Still. ;D
Btw: I recently heard a VERY dumblelike tone with components very unexpected: the player was Doug Kearney from Seattle and the components were a Xotic BB into a Dr. Z Maz 18 (EL84 based stuff) and the guitar was a Don Grosh with Humbuckers.

[M Fowler]

Exactly why techie people in the audience drive artist crazy. The music lover would be enjoying the performance where as we are figuring out equipment.

Mark

[Harald.Nowak]

Exactly why techie people in the audience drive artist crazy. The music lover would be enjoying the performance where as we are figuring out equipment.
Mark

To me thats not an either/or - I enjoy to do both. Never failed to enjoy robben for example. It typically gets me thinking after the show - while its on, I am in the zone.

[Structo]

You can always tell a guitar player from a music lover because the guitar player will stand in front of the stage with his arm crossed, thinking "I could play that so much better".
Or, "Dude, why are you using a Zen pedal for that part when PAB would be so much better."