BJF Mimics ? (Cornish etc....)

[Donner]

In response to my trade add - Mikepick and I swapped some pedals to check out and Im trying his Cornish G2 and SS3 and Tube Driver w bias knob....

And after playing them for a couple of hours of course I wanted to see if I could mimic the sound with other pedals......

The G2 is a 'sculpted' fuzz and the Pink Purple will cover alot of this and some of the SS3 which is more an overdrive...

What I hear tho is the Cornish' have this sort of encapsulating buffered slight compression ....

The tones are great - really topnotch ..... but you cant uncompress them.

They are sort of Gods own Boss pedals to my ear...

with the SS3 of course this is understandable as I beleive the SS stands for Soft Sustain and thats a good description of its sound.

For this sound I would pair either the LGW or the EGDM with the PGC and this way you can get an even less intrusive compression and have direct control over it --- the trio of PGC - LGW -SBEQ can do these sounds and more or subinthe Eg or even the SYODs...

anyway thats my first dance impressions ......although thats about the same conclusion I came to a few years ago when doing the same thing with a few other Cornish peds ....and thanks Mike !!!

what do y'all think ?

[thesjkexperience]

The tones are great - really topnotch ..... but you cant uncompress them.

They are sort of Gods own Boss pedals to my ear...

I think you hit the nail on the head. My friend has a lot of Cornish as he is a Gilmour disciple (to a fault) and has most all of them except for the tape echo. To me the pedals are so refined they lack soul. It is like Cornish took some great old designs and perfected them to sound like a studio record, added a great buffer to each and the results are a bit like Bose speakers. They sound nice, but something is missing.

The nice thing about BJFE is you stick dirt between a PGC or FGC and end with a SBEQ you can get the same refined sound, but you can get crazy with them as well by stacking and pedal order.

[mikepick]

When I first got the Cornish I did not bond with them, but the longer I play with them they start growing on me more and more. I thought that the G-2 would have more gain and it did sound a little raspy with the gain above 4 O'clock. The PPF can get close to the G-2, but the G-2 sounds bigger. If I had to pick one it would definitely be the PPF do to its wide range of great sounds.

The SS-3 took a little getting use to as well. Again with the gain around 3 or 4 O'clock it sounds too raspy for me. I also notice that the gain and tone controls are interactive. The higher you set the gain you get more high end or treble. So in order to maintain the same EQ you have the adjust the tone controls. I don't know if I necessarily like this feature. One thing I do like about the Cornish is that it does not seem to color the sound. It truly does sound like an extension of my amp. Now this may be good or bad depending on how you like your base sound. Also the Cornish are very amp like, pick light and they clean up, pick harder and you get more dirt, but as we all know BJFE pedals have this same great feature. The Cornish are very pristine and studio like quality. I don't know if I would agree that they sound compressed, I might say that they sound a little sterile and BJFE sound more alive.

Both BJFE and Cornish are great pedals. Cornish really seem to cover the basic sounds that you have heard over the years while BJFE takes you beyond that with so many more possibilities. Both pedals stack very well together or by themselves.

The size of the Cornish pedals has scared me away until I recently decided to take the plunge. Pete offers smaller battery less pedals, but they are still much bigger than BJFE.

[cajone5]

I think the info in this thread is pretty interesting, although I don't think either brand clearly "wins" -- I think it's just different tools for different jobs. For the record, I've never played a Cornish pedal and think the BJFe stuff is some of the (if not THE) best stuff out there as far as overdrive/distortion pedals go (and Vibe!). I just want to give a different perspective on this topic...

Let's say hypothetically I'm looking for the sound of the SS-3 -- maybe this is the "sound in my head". I might be able to get close or even 100% there with a PGC > EGDM > SBEQ. However given the choice, I would take the SS-3 in a second. First, it's by far the cheaper and smaller alternative (when compared to 3 pedals ) and I only have to deal with 4 knobs and one footswitch instead of 9 knobs, 1 trimmer and 3 footswitches. I think you could argue that with that much flexibility in EQ, compression, and a few dirt pedals you could approximate a LOT of different pedal sounds. But being the type of person I am, I prefer simplicity and having to dial in 3 different pedals (which will all interact thus a change in one necessitates changes in the others) just doesn't make sense to me.

So that's just another take on things.

Now on to the real reason I started writing this... could you guys post some comparison clips?

[hawaii121]

Great classy dialogue here, I would expect nothing less from the folks on this site. As some of you know, I have a few of both and really love each of them for their own thing. I also agree that the Cornish tend to offer a more compressed and, perhaps, refined sound while the BJFE are much more dynamic and raw (all statements meant as compliments to both makers). I'm with Sonic - they play VERY well together and I am completely sold on a board with the best of both. I regularly use the Model G to add a softer feel to the SS3 - together, they are magic.

[thesjkexperience]

I have a G-2 on loan from a friend to see how it works for me. Unfortunately, I don't have my Swart back yet (Sunday), so it will be harder to tell how it really sounds. Cant wait for that Bludotone 4x10 Bassman!

[SteveA]

Never tried the Cornishes. I guess I can imagine what a pristine sounding pedal would be like. I'd love to see how they stack with the BJFEs. How can you make something this great even more great! It seems like the cornish can really bring out the character of the BJFEs from a few comments i've heard.

[hawaii121]

The Cornish buffers seems to make the BJFE more "juicy" thicker sounding. The BJFE help to make the Cornish sound more organic - imagine the BJFE/Cornish Duplex ... jk

[cajone5]

The Cornish buffers seems to make the BJFE more "juicy" thicker sounding. The BJFE help to make the Cornish sound more natural - imagine the BJFE/Cornish Duplex ... jk

So the buffer pre-drive is OK? I tend to have issues with buffers before my BJFe drives. Especially the DRD although I have only tried the T1M buffer so far.

[thesjkexperience]

I noticed that as well. I did find the Cornish didn't stack well into the BJFE, but the reverse works very well. I am going to slip the G-2 in after the HBOD and before the SBEQ which will now be at the end.

I listened to a bunch of G-2 youtube demos and I could hear the Gilmour's tone, but when I play it I don't hear the same sound. But, it is nice to have a different color to play with and the G-2 sounds more like I wished the Dyna Red sounded like. I just wish the pedal was a more reasonable size!