Dijin72

Andy, thank you mate, that's cleared up where my signal lines had been sporadically going wrong. I was forgetting some basics and forgetting impedance mismatches as well as getting confused all round. Brilliant, you're a genius mate that's one big problem cleared up.

Just wondering about gain staging, it's hard to tell how a pedals going to react when it's expecting a much lower signal level, so when you check reviews you can fall in love with something like the rusty box, barber etc but they might not have the same reaction to the signal as you'd think. That's where the level of overdrive becomes an issue, fuzz takes up too much of the spectrum and colours the low end too much, but running a line level signal into a pedal that's expecting instrument will already have the overdrive peaking so you've lost a lot of control already, plus it'll mean that what you thought would be a nice gnarly tone will already be hairy and airy. I know the mastotron has the push/relax to move between active and passive, and is internally gated but it's not quite what I was looking for. At the moment I use a dha in parallel and it provides all the heat and then some, but I was after another tone. A more defined tone with a mid scoop, tight but extended low end and an upper mids crunch for the attitude. Andy, I've got a feeling I've just described exactly what you suggested, a di box with eq would do exactly that wouldn't it? Damn, sorry for being long-winded but thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

yeah, it's one of those questions and I need some expert help please? Cos of the signals going in it needs to cope with the impedance issue, it also needs to retain the low end so blend would be good as it'll be kicking frequencies right down to the boom. A big healthy dose of grind (but not demon fuzz) and a big helping of character would be bang on too. If you could pick one dream option and one budget option what would you go for? It's going DI, no amps involved. Thanks for any help

Bought a VT2 from Matt, he was great to chat to via email, very helpful. Answered all questions quickly and got the pedal to me super quick, I paid after 5pm and it was dispatched that day. Top quality.