JHS Pedals delivers its first proper High Gain Distortion - the very aptly named and symbolised - Hard Drive

As is often the case - just after I complete my annual Full Metal Racket Rundown - we all of a sudden have another handy candidate or two!

It seems like these days everyone is looking to jump on the High Gain Bandwagon - with JHS just the first of many of this new wave. Supposedly J Rockett has a High Gain candidate fairly imminent, and there are several others sort of waiting in the wings!

In many ways this is also a tribute to recently passed JHS Head Engineer Cliff Smith - for whom this is his last project, which supposedly stretched over a period of nearly 8 years. So we can be fairly sure that plenty of refinement and fine-tuning has gone into this pedal.

The ’Hard Drive’ moniker is a really smart touch - along with its matching 80’s style Computer Hard Drive Graphic. And it’s also descriptive of the core tone and character of this Distortion pedal - as it has the kind of hard-edged density thing - versus the softer profile of more vintage style distortions. While the extensive Tone Stack allows you take the circuit into pretty much all and any High Gain and Metal Distortion territory.

Right at the start - the original source reference was the 1999 Ibanez 7 Series / Tone-Lok Series SM7 Smash Box - albeit that one has 2-Band EQ with additional Edge / Sizzle control. The control topology here is pretty much identical to the Boss Metal Zone - but this is quite a different circuit. The Metal Zone has some degree of softness in some of its EQ-Shaping, while generally the Hard Drive has a much more Harder Edge, and kind of denser character of distortion in many ways.

In any case the Hard Drive pedal is pretty much entirely evolved away from its original inspiration/s and is a relatively unique OpAmp circuit take on those Higher Gain tones.

Engineer Cliff has quite evidently honed this pedal to the max, and it seems to have incredible extended range - along with expansive Metal Zone style tone-stack - or 3-Band EQ with Semi-Parametric Mids!

Controls - Volume, Mid Freq, Drive, Bass, Middle (Cut/Boost), Treble.

I pretty much like everything about this pedal - it seems very well conceived and with a fairly expansive range. Of course I won’t know the full story until I get my hands on mine! You can read up more about the pedal on the JHS Pedals Website.

The formula here is definitely pretty much spot on, and the $199 price tag is very much industry standard for these kinds of pedals. Of course the only right choice here is to go for the Black variant!

I will look to pick one up early next month.

This seems to be a job really well done - not too much hype or extravagant narration - just straight down to brass tacks!

A rather well rounded project then!

I do find the Demo selection a little odd - just a smattering of proper heavy hitters there - I would have thought there would be more suitable demoers for this pedal overall - to bring out the High Gain side of this pedal and do it proper justice! Some of the choices here are just plain odd really! My top demo choices though do the job really well! I particularly like the Jamie Slays demo!