HotBox Tube Preamp Pedal

My biggest complaint is I would have liked a little bit more gain. Solution: add a slight booster in front of it. You can also experiment with adding your other distortion pedals in front of it. It has seriously enhanced my big muff pi. It does have a frightening output though, so if I wasn't playing this on a solid-state amp it would be just fine (and believe me, now that I have this I'll have to get one). Cause the thing is, it still sounds great on a solid state amp, but I've heard it on tube amps, and it's euphoric. I've heard people complain about the treble control. I play it through a 65 watt fender princeton 650 dsp and I think all effects are trebly except when I'm on the dark timbre-filter (Might have something to do with me playing it on a relatively low volume though. Dunno.). So that's where it's always on, and even here the matchless can be set so that it's too trebly, but that doesn't mean there's only one useful setting like another reviewer said. Noise level: zero, even at highest gain. Overall I think this is a very versatile and good sounding unit, but I'll give it minus one because the sound you get with treble all the way up deploys super trebleness.

I've had it for two days. Eventhough when I got it it was broken. Two caps had failed. It's built very sturdy though. The casing is crome plated steel. But it IS a tube unit, so of course you'll have to be careful. I would use it without backup though, because it is a matchless, and the insides look it.

Easy of use... The only controls on this thing that behave oddly are the bass and treble controls. These two are very interactive. The treble works by thinning out the bass. This give you some cool tools to shape your sound, but as fun as they might be, that's a slight minus. The controls are divided into colour-coded channels like on a real matchless head. Red channel, the distortion channel, has the following controls: Gain, Bass, Treble, Channel 2 volume - so that's fairly simple. The clean channel only has clean volume however. This channel does not offer EQ either. The clean channel should really be thought of as a bypass (since this pedal doesn't have a bypass), except it still adds that tube touch to your tone. The volume control can then be used to level the volumes between the two channels. So I guess if you absolutely want that bypass without adding tube tone to it, and you want eq on the clean channel too, then that's a minus. I don't see it that way though. So to sum up, here are the things that can be thought of as bad from a usability perspective: EQ-controls are different (though they are very interactive.) Clean channel does not have EQ. Pedal does not have true bypass. I don't think it's that bad though, so I give it a 9.

I wrote matchless about my problems, and we solved it. He even sent me schematics. I asked him about the manual, and he didn't recall ever having a manual for the hotbox, but I've seen a manual in pictures, so that's a minus. Phil is very kind though!

I play rock. Especially queens of the stone age. Josh Homme uses one of these which is the reason I wanted to try it. I'm not the kind of fanboy who accepts it with no critique though. But it is a matchless. If this was lost or stolen, I'd definitely get a new one, but unfortunately they're hard to find. No product is perfect, which is why I never gave a 10 above.

Main thing is that you send a perfect clean sound into it. I use it most of the times in combination with a 50w silverface Bassman top. Sometimes I use a 150w Kustom Tuck & Roll top also nice vintage clean of his own. I use 3 total differant guitars, a Gibson ES335 solid body with "57 humbuckers, a Fender tele custom and a Fender strat with a Semour duncan Hotrail pickup. So I can get every sound I want. The cab is in my opinion also a crucial thing. I normally use an old mesa 4*12 cab with EVM12L 300w each. I like the low clean, even if you use this stack for Bass its blowing you away. For the high gain, my Silverface is giving me troubles and I have to be sharp with the settings.. Sometimes the valves are working against eachother or something. For Hi gain I prefer greenbacks. 

This is an old pedal and I had a problem with it ones.. One of the bolts of the knobs turned loose and gave a problem.. But my Peugeot 206 of 2002 has giving me allready more troubles so I do trust my Hotbox.

I own a HOtbox of the first setting.. Advantage into other Hotboxes is that you have got a 1 valve for your clean sound, when you turn the level up you can get a sound like TS9.. By using the other chanel, the sound goes to valve 1 and then to valve 2. You can play with this so you can get a sound like QOTSA distortion. (Deep low overdrive sound) till FooFighters High gain sound. And the best is, when you are in the mood for bleus that this is also possible!!

A friend of me also has a Hotbox and he had a problem with his power supply.. But although Matchless is not doing to much with Hotbox any more he got a brand new power supply with in two weeks!!

I play from Radiohead clean to QOTSA overdrive and I can get my sound each time I use it.