DOD TEC8G Grunge

I play through a Fender Strat to a small 15 watt amp or sometimes direct to a Mackie 1202. Some of the effects are, as others have noted, very sterile and artificial sounding. The noise gate clamps MUCH too quickly, and the 10-position compression is useless. I could put up with all that... but the distortion effects are NOISY. I never bothered to figure out how many DBs of plain static hit my noise floor when this tacky device comes active, but lets just say DOD put a noise gate on this thing because they knew darn well it needed it. Time spent editing new patches can produce fairly good results, but I think buying pro-quality seperate effects in the first place would have been a smarter way to go.

It's never broken, or acted flakey. I have not stressed it in any way, though. I'd use it on a gig... forget the pedal. It's not going to break, but if it's junk who cares?

I play blues and 70's rock when I'm just fooling around in my studio, while the "main" use for my electric guitar is to add expressive leads to my acoustic folk compositions and covers. I'd like overdriven distortion ala' SansAmp Comptortion for the blues, and singing, clean Carlos Santana sustain for the modern folk work. I'm not going to get either from the TEC8G. A recent purchase of a SansAmp Classic seems to be taking me in the right direction. Overall: I guess you could do worse for your money but this thing is DEFINITELY NOT something you want to bring into a studio or any stage where the audience is actually going to listen to what you're playing