JHS Moonshine V2 Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedal

Pedal choice is an extremely personal thing these days for all sorts of reasons. The sheer choice of overdrive pedals means we neither have to 'make do' with whatever a shop has in stock or use something that doesn't properly meet our own particular purposes. And that is the premise of my review - buy the right pedal for what is needed. Which for me was a good clean sound that needed boosting into overdrive without any real 'colouring' or major frequency changes.Sounds - the Morning Glory V4 delivers exactly what it describes it will. An uncoloured, boosted signal into the front of the amp to get natural clipping. By comparison to other overdrive pedals, something very 'standard' like even a Boss OD3, it is certainly low gain. Even engaging the higher drive toggle switch, it is still lower gain by comparison to others out there. Where as a Timmy, Bluesdriver or Super overdrive will get into hard clipping distortion when set to full. So you need to be sure of what you want in terms of available gain. The amped tone is crystal clear however you have the pedal set and the tone control has a very 'sweet' effect on the sound. Only by setting the tone to the maximum or minimum is where I have found a bad sound, regardless of the guitar.I use it with the toggle on light gain as a core sound, which is a clean Fender tube amp that I want to push just into break up with more overdrive dialled in from a pedal when needed. The headroom in the Morning Glory and transparency mean you can set a higher gain sound and substantially roll off on the guitar volume to completely clean without any loss of clarity if you want absolute simplicity. Very fit and forget. For reference, no overdrives I own or tried clean up anywhere like this. Even the comparable 'Timmy' doesn't either.Sounds wise, if you like the core clean tone of your guitar and amp but are looking for the same but over driven, this should be toward the top of your shopping list.Build quality - I feel some of the review comments here stating a poor build quality are incorrect. JHS switched from through board components to PCB's and top mounted components a few years ago. Yes, it made the pedals noticeably lighter due to smaller components compared to the early versions but Josh Scott stated they only did this once they had properly tested the reliability. Which was better than through board! I've opened up all my pedals and they are all PCB top mount, yes even the Boss ones, the ones recognised as a market leader in durability. That JHS offer a lifetime warranty on their pedals, even second hand ones with no proof of purchase, should tell you about the build quality so please consider this. Both those questioning it and those of you who may be worrying about spending nearly £200 on 'just' an overdrive pedal. As for 'the look' being cheap... goofy, cartoonish, is their 'thing'. If it puts you off, go to Wampler or Earthquaker etc then. Or take it all a little less seriously.If you want 'more' of an existing core clean tone that you like, the Morning Glory V4 is the one to go for. If you want a drive pedal that can be used as the foundations to create different overdrive and distortion by stacking it with other pedals, the Morning Glory V4 is the one to go for. If you already use a gain channel as a core sound and want some 'punch through' then it probably isn't and something like a Tubescreamer style is better as the Morning Glory, like any overdrive pedal, will just further compress the gain channel sound and muddy things up.But as a core component of a clean tone, or to go on a pedal board with other 'stock' type pedals like compressors, OD, tremolo and modulation etc, the Morning Glory V4 will fit really well. It is so quiet too, even breaking the 'rules' as an experiment and putting it before a compressor there was so little noise. And if you are worrying about spending £200 on an overdrive pedal, consider this. In the search I have been on the last few years for the sort of overdrive and gain sound this delivers, I have bought a Boss OD3 and Bluesdriver, a number of Tubescreamer types and others. About £600 worth I reckon, which are now redundant as I have added the 'Little Red Remote' to foot switch between the low and high gain settings meaning I no longer need to stack a second OD pedal for higher gain. £240 for the pedal and foot switch Vs £600 for other pedals that never QUITE delivered over the years....Cannot recommend it enough.

What's not too like, Price was good, noise floor is good it's compact and we'll voiced can't see this one coming off my pedal board.

Best overdrive pedal ever, so versatile you can go from creamy blues, to marshal mids, to heavy metal and at the same time the pedal is transparent. I have tried them all and this is staying on the pedal board.