DAN AGOSTO: Hi. Welcome to Gearwire.Com. We're taking a look at the Damage Control Demonizer pedal. It's sort of like their Womanizer pedal but it has more gain so it's better for some heavier music. Let's take a look in the box.

All right, right on top we got a little sticker, a nice little creature to have, and we have a nice, large manual. Let's take a look inside. Okay, over here we see an explanation for different parts of the pedal, different switches, knobs. We have their descriptions on the other page. Over here we have some tips on how to use the pedal. Over here, we have some settings or like presets. On the next page, we have a template so that you can save your own settings. We got quite a few of those. On the back, we just have basic specifications and warranty information for registering the product.

Let's take a look at the pedal. One thing I like about these pedals physically is that they have this handle on the front. Since they're larger pedals, it let's you hold it, pick it up easier. All right, let's take -- A primary feature on this pedal, we see there're tubes through these little windows. Those will light up when we turn the pedal on. Also, we have up, at the top of the pedal, this Magic Eye Biofeedback Meter they call it, and that’s basically -- it's just sort of a light thing that you can take a look at what you're playing. We have two toggle switches. We have the engage switch which will turn the pedal on and off, and on the other side we have the nuclear swich. You can see that little nuclear sign right there. This adds an extra amount of gain to the input stage so it brings up the volume as well as the amount of distortion. As far as the knobs go, we got our level knob, drive knob, and an opto compressor knob. Both the Demonizer and the Womanizer have a compressor built in, helps you get more sustain, then we have our tone controls, selectable frequency over here, actually parametric so it's continuously variable. Up here we got the boost or cut, so whatever frequency you choose you can boost or cut it. Over here we have a scoop control, which allows you to perhaps scoop out the mids; we'll have to see what that does when we plug the pedal in, and then we have a treble knob at the top to add some more clarity or give yourself a more laid back dull sort of sound.

Let's take a look at the back of this pedal. We have our instrument input, all the way on this side, for guitar. We have an amp output. This is what you'd use if you're plugging into an amplifier. We also have a direct out right next to it, and this would be if you're plugging directly into a direct box, recording with -- this is a recording tool basically. So that's that.

And then over here we have the adapter for the pedal. Let's take a quick look at that. All right, so it's an in-line adapter. I like when they do that so you don't have a wall-wart that you have to plug in that takes up a lot of room where you plug it in so it's sort of like what you'd get with a laptop, which makes a little bit easier. So that's the Damage Control Demonizer out of the box.

All right. We're back. We got the Demonizer plugged in and ready to go. I'm playing an American Standard Fender Telecaster and that's plugged into a Marshall JCM2000 half stack which is mic'ed up with a Shure SM57. I'm set to the neck pickup on this Telecaster so let'see what kind of sound we're getting with just the guitar, no pedal.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER BYPASSED]

All right. Let's bring the pedal in. We got everything set up to about midway.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, SETTINGS AT 12 O'CLOCK]

All right. So it's really not adding all that much. You get a -- it's a pretty clean signal, just adding a little bit of sort of preamp distortion. It's got the tubes in there so it's a pretty warm sound. If we turn this on, we're going to get a lot less volume...

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, SETTINGS AT 12 O'CLOCK]

...so we compensate using the level knob.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, HIGHER LEVEL SETTINGS]

It does a pretty clean sound, just kind of adding a little bit of tube warmth to it, but this pedal can get pretty darn distorted. I'm going to bring the level down a bit.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, HIGHER DRIVE SETTINGS]

So, you might be wondering, is that as far as it goes? But it isn't. They have a mode called nuclear around here that adds extra amount of gain to the preamp stage. We're going to bring that in, and turn up the drive.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON]

Well, it gets pretty distorted. I'm going to bring that down to about here. I'm going to leave it on the nuclear mode, and let's check out this opto compression knob. If we turn this down, we're going to lose some of the gain on the lower level signals.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, OPTO COMPRESSION AT LOWER SETTING]

We turn that up again, we going to get a lot more sustain, and actually let me leave it down and just old some sustained notes.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING SUSTAINE NOTES ON GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, OPTO COMPRESSION AT LOWER SETTING]

It sustains pretty good, but there's a lot of change in the sound. We're losing a lot of the higher frequencies on the sustain. We can turn this up a bit.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, OPTO COMPRESSION AT HIGHER SETTING]

So it's just more of a uniform sound during the sustained part of the note. Let me keep that about here. Let's check out the tonal shaping possibilities on this pedal. We can cut some of the frequencies that we select with this knob, so the top knob is cutting and the bottom knob is selecting the frequency that we're cutting.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, ADJUSTING FREQUENCY CUT]

So it's sort of a subtle cut, really not a lot of cut in there. Let's see how the boost goes. You can already hear on the noise that it's a bit different.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, BOOSTING AND ADJUSTING FREQUENCIES]

I kind of like it. Let's boost a little bit at about that frequency, the center frequency. It's subtle, just about straight up. Over here we got our scoop control. Let's see what that does. It we turn it all the way down...

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, SCOOP CONTROL ALL THE WAY DOWN]

...now turning it up.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, SCOOP CONTROL ALL THE WAY UP]

So what it seems to be doing is actually when we turn it up it's cutting some of the higher midrange frequencies so we're getting a more scooped out sound when it's turned up. I kind of like it down a little bit. And let's check out the treble knob. It's over here. We turn that down...,

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, TREBLE KNOB TURNED DOWN]

...we turn it up.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, TREBLE KNOB TURNED UP]

So that also gives you a lot of gain for the upper frequencies. I'm just going to leave it about here. There's one more feature we haven't really looked at that much, and that's the Magic Eye Biofeedback Meter. That's an option on both of these pedals. You can't really see it when I'm just playing with these lights on everything, so we're going to go ahead and cut the lights a little bit so we can take a look at what it's actually doing.

[DAN AGOSTO PLAYING GUITAR WITH DAMAGE CONTROL DEMONIZER ENGAGED, NUCLEAR SWITCHED ON, DEMONSTRATING USE OF THE MAGIC EYE BIOFEEDBACK METER]

So it's basically just flashing red on a green background. I got the light's back on. So that's the Damage Control Demonizer Pedal. Thanks for checking it out here with us on Gearwire.Com.