NPD: Mosky Silver Horse

[bnt]

I recently picked up a Ly-Rock Tone Monster DI pedal - see this thread - which has opened up some more possibilities around split processing of my signal. I've been looking to avoid the expensive bass drive pedals - DarkGlass etc. - while trying to avoid the dreaded bass suck associated with using pedals made for guitar. I have two drive pedals before this latest purchase: a Tone City Matcha Cream Fuzz, which acquits itself rather well as long as I keep the tone control down, and a T-Rex Diva Drive, which is basically an inexpensive Tube Screamer with a Mix control. With split processing now available, I thought it was safe to try a Klon type pedal. For this NPD test, though, I used it on its own without splitting the signal.

 

The Silver Horse has a voice switch for two modes: switch down for the classic low gain "golden" Klon type, and up for the higher gain "silver" Klon type. I found the "silver" mode less useful so far, and I think I could have gotten away with the Mosky Golden Horse instead, but it only cost me about a tenner extra for the option. In "silver" mode I think the distortion comes in too quickly and heavily, which may be more suited to guitar. At the highest gain levels it just kills the bass frequencies.

 

In "golden" mode, things are much better on bass, I think. After I placed the order, I read that the Gain control on these pedals is essentially a blend control anyway. With Gain down and Volume and Tone at 12, switching the pedal on or off made no difference to the tone at all, so I can believe that. Increasing Gain also increases the volume a fair bit before you hear much distortion, which makes sense given the way some folks talk about using the Klon as a clean boost.

 

So "golden" mode is low gain in normal use, and on lower Gain settings it didn't seem like the pedal was doing all that much until I turned it off. I think this will work well in combination with an amp (or cab sim) and sit nicely in a mix. Higher gain tones are less useful and I'm not so keen on them. Amazon UK has the Golden Horse for under £40 today.

 

This is where your input signal level can have an influence too. With my "always on" Orange KongPressor, the gain was too much and weakening the bass by the 12-o'clock position in either mode. With the KongPressor off this didn't happen until I boosted the Gain further. I'm not too concerned about this since the split signal will have different gain structure, and I may find myself using the "silver" mode again with the parallel bypass signal blend.