I A/B'd this with a Tube Screamer TS808 reissue. The results were CLEAR, as in this thing made the TS808 sound muddy and limited (read MORE headroom). I then A/B'd it with a Mesa Bottle Rocket Tube overdrive pedal. This was closer but I decided that this thing was more lush and smooth whereas the Mesa was more gritty and teethy. The boost function allowed me to replace another pedal as well. In the end I came out with a better array sounds and it paid for itself and then some by way of replacing pedals.

Well it's been a while since I started looking for a pedal that could do what the plexitone does! I own a '65 Fender Twin Reverb (a beautiful clean amp) since I am a hobbyist and play only in small/medium gigs, I did'nt want to buy a marshall head in order to get a good distortion. went thru some boss' pedals, marshall's..mxr's even thru other cool pedals as fulltone's. But I have to tell you...never before my twin sounded as it does now, when I plug my les paul and run it thru the plexitone. It gives you the chance of having 2 different channels in order to get 2 different distortions! The tone knob REALLY gives u TONE CONTROL, and the boost is awesome, you can use it to boost this pedal or others in your effect chain. Hands down...a pedal that will never go off my pedalboard, a distortion that can make a fender amp like a plexi W/halfstack. I really recommend it!

Okay there is a sound we all here in our heads when we're not chunkin some ultra high gain power chords or playin some soft blues on a dinky ts9 or BB Preamp...ITS THAT IN BETWEEN sweet harmonic sound that everytime you plug in it sounds like you just put ON a fresh set of strings on...Well thats where the plexitone takes the cake..I've heard "its only for humbuckers"..BUT thats not entirely true (it loves my american strats plugged into my hotrod deville 2X12)...this pedal is able to take you anywhere from **testify by SRV all the way to Angus & Malcom with a touch of Audioslave.. and the built in power supply is a nice touch also. When I first fired it up, all the knobs were set at noon and I instantly knew it would only take seconds to dial in an ABOVE average sound. A tube amp is probably reccomended but I'm nowhere near an expert, but my tone search is over...YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED!

This is a little monster! The tones and "feel" are just like my old Marshall that was hot-rodded by Jose. It sounds like a stack, but won't break your back. Delicious, nutritious and sooo good for you!

The Plexitone is a great pedal for those players that need the boutique sounds found on Marshall Plexi heads plus boost without the hefty price tag.

Features The build is amazing – really strong metal chassis with “chickenhead” retro style knobs. This pedal is also full bypass so it doesn’t degrade your sound when not in use. Another useful extra is that Carl Martin has built the power supply inside the box itself, so you will never forget your adapter last minute before the gig. The downside of this design is that the unit has to be used on US electricity alone and cannot be taken to say Europe while you’re on tour. CM makes versions of this pedal for other countries so you can buy one for different electricity as well. If you power supply blows up due to a clubs’ power failure (happened to me before) you’re also toast. You cannot use batteries due to the fact that this pedal requires higher voltage to run. With these cautions aside I find the benefits outweigh the cons and it is more likely that I’d forget the power supply than blow the pedal so I am happy in regards to this design. The CM Plexitone has a guitar input and output ¼ in. jacks, 5 chickenhead knobs labeled “Boost”, “Level”, “Tone”, “High Gain”, “Crunch” and 3 on/off momentary switches labeled “Boost”, “Select” and “Drive”.

In use To test this unit I used an Ibanez mid-grade guitar ($500) with Seymour Duncan distortion pickup upgrade and a Dean Z with PAF Joe Satriani humbuckers. The amps I tested it with were: Fender Princeton 112 (clean solid state amp), Marshall VS100 head amp, Laney AOR 50 Head (tube) running into a 2x12 speaker loaded with Celestion greenback speakers. To top it all off I also ran it into an H&K Redbox (speaker emulation device). On all amps tested the CM Plexitone had a very distinct sound to it and one thing that always came through in the sound was “quality”.

The pedal has 3 switches – “Drive”, “Select” and “Boost”. The manual provided with the pedal was too busy boasting Carl Martin’s other products and offered little insight on this pedal, besides showing some presets. It took me a while to figure out why the “Select” button by itself did not change the sound. It turns out “Drive” has to be first on in order for “Select” to work by adding the second distortion section! It would’ve been nicer to at least have a diagram or a simple explanation on how this ting works – I was about to ship the unit for servicing until I remembered the usual operation on the Plexi amp, which required you to hot patch one channel to the other in front of the amplifier itself. So in essence, “Drive” engages the “Crunch” section, which can be described as ranging from bluesy Clapton sounds to AC/DC distortion. By engaging the “Select” button on top of the “Drive” the player engages a second overdrive channel on top of the first one adding yet more gain which brings the sound closer to Van Halen 70s and 80s sounds. The “Tone” control basically changes the tone of the unit and the contour as well. From the left you can dial in a smoother bassier sound with the highs rolled off and as you move towards the right the sound gets grittier and the high frequencies start to become more predominant. The “Boost” pedal engages a signal boost which is very useful for soloing, and the “Level” knob controls the output of the pedal. There are lots of useful sounds to be found on this pedal, by playing with the two OD sections (“Crunch” and “Drive”) and varying the “Tone” controls. One thing that I missed on this unit was a dual eq for each channel or at least a bass and high eq control for the whole pedal. Regardless of that omission the pedal sounded great with pretty much anything I threw at it. It kept is character on all amps but sounded best on the solid state units. I tried to also run it as OD pedal in the fx loop but it didn’t seem to work too well in that capacity. The boost can still be used in the fx loop for your leads so that is an extra bonus if say you needed the Plexi sounds but also need a boost pedal for another amp. Another setback was the fact that the distortion was voiced on the cold side – basically high gain death dealers need to look elsewhere for their sounds. I was disappointed because it would’ve been great to be able to get a screaming thrash metal distortion sound out of this thing because it is voiced so well. CM could’ve added more gain to the second knob and made the pedal more versatile. As of now it strictly stays in the retro category and it doesn’t deliver higher gain sounds than say Metallica circa “Kill ‘em All”. If you’re looking for a great blues, classic rock or hard rock distortion with the true sound of a Plexi amp – this thing totally delivers. For the money it might seem expensive at first but for $200 you get CM “Made in Sweden” durability, 2 gain channels and a boost. When you compare it against boost pedals nowadays running at $120 alone this stomp box at its current price is a steal.

Visit www.houstonmusic.info to hear how the Plexitone sounds.