Got mine last night. Only had about 30 minutes to play it so I just tweaked everything to get a feel for it.
Gear Used: Tom Anderson Tele (3-single coils) > BEEST > Retro Channel RR1 > Mesa 2x12 with Vintage 30's
Initial thoughts: This is much more in line with what I expected from the BEEST. It's like a HBOD being pushed by a nice boost. Lots of grind and plenty of distortion to be had. There's actually way more gain on tap than I would ever use and typically found myself running the gain knob from fully CCW to about 2 o'clock. The nature knob is useful throughout the full sweep and really provides a lot more tone shaping ability and EQ focus than I remember with other HBODs. It seems to have a little more treble content than I remember my HBOD's having in the past which is a nice change of pace. It's also tighter aI can get great grindy smokey sounds out of the neck pickup and biting distortion out of the bridge. It provides a ton of tones with different pickup combinations and the volume and tone knob really interact well with the pedal. My immediate thoughts upon playing the BEEST was CRANKED Supro. Got me some great smokey Led Zep feeling tones out of it which I'm really digging
Initial Criticisms: Even with my single coils and the gain fully CCW I can't get it to clean up all the way even with a light touch which is a little disappointing because that one of my favorite things to do with the HBOD -- let the picking dynamics take it from clean to distorted but this guys already got a fair amount of hair even on the lowest gain settings. I'd really like to see a little more sweep on the low end so with the gain fully CCW and a light touch you can still get that awesome HBOD clean and dig in for the dirt. That said - this is probably by design and if I really want that tone I should probably pick up a regular HBOD. My only other complaint is that the pedal tends to get muddy with more complex chords even with the gain low. For example -- seven chords don't really ring out very well and anything more complex gets lost in the distortion. I think this would also be solved by backing the gain down a bit -- but again -- this all may be by design.
Well there's what I have so far. I'll try to spend some more time with it tonight and run it with the MGMV to see how well they play together. Although I have no doubts those two together will sound killer.
Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2011 11:13 pm
Id like some fresh, discriminating ears on it before we unleash it on the world, in case we missed something .... 
