Review of Goosonique’s Seventheaven High Gain Distortion Pedal

I really enjoy how Twitter has connected me to various musicians and pedal builders out there. With the numbers of pedal builders rising, there is no better place to connect with them on a more personal level. A few months ago, @Goosoniqueworx and I started following each other and asked if I’d be interested to look at their high gain distortion pedal and of course I agreed.

Goosonique is based out of Singapore and they have the Seventheaven distortion touring the States from one blog to the other. I thought that concept was quite cool. I received the pedal from Bobby DeVito and after we were done, I shipped it off to Blake of WhatsThatDudePlay.com. Okay, enough of this, and let’s get to the pedal.

Here is their basic break down of the pedal and functions:

DUAL CHANNELS
Seventheaven comes with dual channels toggle switchable gain channels where the Green channel is more of a low gain offering primarily but gets into heavy distortion with the boost engaged. The Red channel starts of distorted and gives much head room and variety in tweaking the saturation. Both channels cleans up with a rolling off guitar volume knob.

EQ
The EQ onboard, Bass, Mid and Treble all responds sensitively and gets very versatile for the player to archive different amp tone. They mimic high gain amp tone controls which are place after the gain stages thus giving a post dirt tone stack. Very interactive! Together with a presence and feedback switch, allows the user to tweak make some final adjustments in different amp situations to get a more darker tone with added bass, or to brighten his tone up.

BOOST
It also features an In-line boost which is not a gain halve switch, but works in boosting your settings to archive a notch up on your overall setting. it’s not pre/post standalone and only activated when the pedal is engaged.

DYNAMICS
As it’s pick sensitive, it allows flexible dynamic control either by the playing style, again, roll it off nicely with the volume knob on the guitar. Another great feature that i need to add is that it plays well with other effects thus eliminating any pedal board conflicts.

POWER
The Seventheaven powers up via a DC power jack for 9VDC, up to 18 VDC power. 2.1mm plug negative center. This unit does not operate on batteries.

This pedal is incredibly versatile going from clean boost to full on metal tones. With the the two channel option (green/red) you get two different gain levels. Having the boost is excellent for leads with plenty of gain. The versatility really comes into play with their three band EQ and the ability to dial in the mid-range. You can scoop them or bump them which gives you the ability to really shape your tone to a particular style or need. Both the channels of the pedal are very transparent with very little tonal change. The red is the same but with more gain.

There are two footswitches on the pedal. Right switch engages or disengages the pedal. You need to switch the toggle for green or red channel. The left switch is a boost switch, where you can leave that on (but is on activated if the pedal is on) so you can go right to lead tone (boost on) or stage it by stepping on the pedal.

Additionally there is a feedback and presence knob/switch to help shape the tone.

This pedal has the ability to stay ‘tight’ at high gain.

For this demo, I asked my long time friend and fellow guitarist Jimmy Rolle to take it for a ride.

This first demo is using his ‘light’ gain channel of his Matchless DC-30 (12ax7 channel). His guitar is a Les Paul Gold Top with P90 pickups. SM57 mic on the Green Back speaker and Audix D3 on the Vintage 30 speaker.

This second demo, Jimmy is switching to the higher gain setting of the Matchless DC-30 (ef86 channel). Same guitar.

I also have higher quality audio from the above videos here:

Having contact with the builders, I also like to interview them and see what they were thinking when they created and designed the pedal. I think a little insight can be quite useful when searching for the right pedal for your line.

What were you trying to achieve and/or avoid when you put this pedal together?

To develop a decent high gain amp-like in a stompbox and to breakaway from the usual op-amp pedal distortions.

What were you going for with the presence/feedback selection

For amp voicing variable which helps with various amps and its speaker types. Primarily, Presence mode for extra presence/brightness when using darker sounding amps, and Feedback mode that provides a bigger bass response when using brighter sounding amps.

What are the differences between the green and red channel? Diode clipping, etc?

The Seventheaven has a cascaded Jfet circuit thus NO Clipping diodes.

What was the deciding factor for going with the 3 band EQ vs. just a ‘tone’ knob. We both thought it was great to have mid control.

Most smaller clean amps for home practice come with one or no tone control. Secondly, since it was designed to mimic a high gain amp, a traditional three band EQ will allow user to sculpt tone further and not be limited by a single tone control.

Have you considered adding a footswitch to handle the channel selection?

Yes, but adding another foot-switch will narrow the distance between each other considering the current box size. What we wanted was gain control via guitar volume knob not pedal switching which may be fun for bedroom but not so when performing. We also did a field test and found that most who prefered a channel switch, later, decided to go without, since both channels can go dirty cleans up very well with the roll of guitar volume knob.

What style (if any) of music (or guitarist) were you tailoring this pedal for?

Anyone and and everyone who wants something different out of the good ‘ol stompbox.

The Goosonique Seventheaven pedal can be yours for $299.00 USD + Shipping (they accept PayPal). There is currently no wait list. They sell them each week as they build them.  For more information or if you’d like to purchase a pedal, please check out the links below:

Main Site : http://gsonique.webs.com
Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/user/gworxTV
Mailing List : http://gsonique.webs.com/apps/auth/signup
Twitter : http://twitter.com/Goosoniqueworx
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/goosoniqueworx/204563740960