Former pedal sceptic Paul Reed Smith surprisingly launches own range of PRS Pedals

In a somewhat odd turnaround of events - one Paul Reed Smith - who’s trash-talked the very existence and purpose of pedals every which way for years - including “I don’t like pedals, they remove the interaction of the sound between the guitar and the amp” and words to that effect ...

Said self same serial pedal-basher is now eschewing the delights and benefits of the very format he spoke against so frequently. Some might suspect a little mercenary cynicism at play. In fact so negatively has he portrayed ’Pedals’ throughout the years that he constantly has to refer to his own as rather being ’Professional Studio Gear’ as if no one else has made hi-fidelity studio quality pedals before. In fact a little like the British right-wing press that have so denigrated the word ’Immigrant’ that they have to refer to their own Immigrant population abroad as ’Expats’ to avoid stigma!

And Paul then preaches from his pulpit as if we mere mortals had never encountered pedals before - trying to make it sound that only his pedals are imbued with that special studio magic that you cannot find anywhere else. Apparently he’s tried every kind of compressor and they’re pretty much all rubbish apart from his own 2-knob job ’Mary Cries’.

I’ve always felt that Paul addresses the audience in something of the manner of a High School Teacher or Head of Faculty - talking down to supposedly naive and semi-ignorant freshmen. He seemingly addresses us as if we’re all novices. And apart from mentioning the special Germanium Diodes that go into his Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive - he doesn’t really focus on the specificity or nature of the parts - in stark contrast to his highly descriptive break-downs of every single part of one of his guitars. He says at one stage that his pedals use the highest quality THT components and pretty much leaves it at that. 

I don’t doubt these are very well made pedals - and they’re actually very reasonably priced - with the ’Mary Cries’ Optical Compressor at $219, the ’Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive’ at $249, and the Dual Analog ’Wind Through the Trees Flanger’ at $349.

He goes out of his way to say that his Horesemeat Drive is not a Klon Clone, but it is still a Klon killer! So not an identifiable derivative of a Klon - but certainly inspired by one, and Klon-adjacent for sure. In fact I personally would classify it as a Klon type - you don’t have to copy a circuit exactly to not be in the exact same ballpark. In any case it’s the overdrive of all of these which is the most interesting here for me. I really see it as a 3-Band EQ pseudo Klon Clone - where Voice is actually Upper-Mids control!

There is a plethora of superb Studio Style Compressors out there - and while I admit that this one sounds pretty great - saying that it’s better than anything else out there without proper comparative in-context evidence is all a little fatuous really. There are numerous more refined Studio Style Compressors in significantly more compact enclosures - albeit the price-point here is very good, and the Mary Cries makes for a formidable Clean Boost too.

As for the ’Wind Through the Trees’ Dual Analog Flanger - that’s just too big really to be practical - and for sure it should have had two sets of ins and outs so you could separate each Flanger onto a separate Stereo Channel and do various clever cable routings - that seems a missed opportunity to me. If I want to deploy multiple Analog Flangers simultaneously I can run two or 3 of my superb PastFX Flangers together - with even more granularity and variability. The Flanger sounds great for sure though and has some properly neat functionality - but it’s too large for most to be a properly successful and practical proposition.

I actually really like the graphics here - which look like fairly random and abstract topographical contours or ley-lines - while they’re actually the outline contours of some of the PRS Bird Symbols - possibly just different aspects of the main one featured above in the Yellow overlay logo - really cool in any case - and it looks like those lines are properly laser-engraved into the enclosure - but that may just be an optical illusion! The names here are very good too - while ’Horsemeat’ is slightly arrogant in how it’s being used - a nice humorous bent to all of these though - and as distinctive as the trade dress styling here.

I’m not sure this selection has everything it needs to be a runaway success - while I feel that the Compressor and Overdrive will probably do quite well - they’re still mostly within practical means with their vertical BB-size enclosures and top-mounted jacks - they’re both ’nice-to-haves’ for me - while I’ve still to definitively decide if and when these go in on the wishlist. All in all a pretty decent stab as a first attempt actually.

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