I recently picked up a pedal called The Green Wonder, by Mad Professor.
What do I think of it? Here are my first impressions.
What Did You Buy?
I bought a Mad Professor The Green Wonder overdrive pedal.
- “Mad Professor” is the manufacturer.
- “The Green Wonder” is the name of the pedal. This is a play on the name of its predecessor, the Little Green Wonder.
This pedal is Mad Professor’s take on the classic Tubescreamer. One of the main obvious differences is that The Green Wonder has separate Bass and Treble controls, while classic Tubescreamer pedals normally come with a single Tone control.
I bought mine from the UK second-hand market.
Why Did You Buy It?
I’ve never really gotten on with Tubescreamer-type pedals, so why buy another one?
Mostly? Curiosity.
I already own the predecessor pedal (the Little Green Wonder). I want to find out if having separate Bass and Treble EQ controls makes The Green Wonder easier (for someone like me) to work with.
At some point, I am going to be writing a lot more about plexi-tone and JCM 800 amp-in-a-box pedals. Just as I have a go-to set of pedals that I use for boosting tweed-tone pedals and amps, I’d like to have a somewhat settled set of pedals to use for boosting the more Marshall-in-a-box (MIAB for short) pedals and amps.
And a Tubescreamer variant absolutely needs to be on that list.
My Rig Today
Overall Signal Chain
Today, I’m playing:
- guitar
- into my Axe-FX 3 (just for the tuner)
- out to my pedalboard
- into my Blackstar Debut 100RH
- speaker out into a Two Notes Captor
- back into the Axe-FX 3 (for virtual cab, delay and reverb)
- out to my audio interface
- and into my DAW.
My Guitar Today
For guitar, I’m playing my PRS Paul’s Guitar (aka The Earl). I think that this guitar is a very good match for a Marshall-voiced signal chain. I also wanted to show it some love, as it hasn’t been featured much this year.
Unless stated otherwise, I’m playing on the bridge pickup in full humbucker mode, with both the Volume and the Tone control on 10.
My Pedalboard Setup
On the pedalboard, I have the Mad Professor The Green Wonder and the Fire Custom Shop Carpe Diem pedals. They’re in separate loops of my trusty Gigrig G2, so that they cannot colour the signal in any way if/when I’m not using them.
The Carpe Diem is one of those pedals that I’ve rarely featured on the blog, because I bought mine before I started this blog. It’s a well known and well respected plexi-tone / MIAB pedal. I figure that it’s a great choice to use as a test bed today.
No Mad Professor Little Green Wonder today, sorry. I don’t have time to do a comparison right now. That’ll come in its own blog post at a later date.
My Amp Today
I’m using my Blackstar Debut 100RH amp head. This is a very affordable solid-state 100W pedal platform amp. I’ve only recently added this to my rig, and I’ve got to say, so far I’m very happy with the sounds I’m getting out of it.
The controls are set like this:
- ISF at 12 o’clock
- Treble at 1 o’clock
- Middle and Bass at 11 o’clock
- Clean channel Volume at 12 o’clock
- Clean channel bright switch OFF
Speaker / Impulse Response
I’m taking the speaker out from the Blackstar amp into my Two Notes Captor; and I’m taking the Line Out of that back into my Axe-FX 3.
In the Axe-FX 3, I’m using Celestion’s G12M-65 Creamback 1×12 open-back cab impulse responses. These are dirt cheap to buy, and they should work just about anywhere that can run IRs.
I’ve gone with a Creamback IR (over the Celestion V-Type IR I’ve used previously) because I think it’s the better fit for vintage plexi-era tones. To my ears, the Creamback IR plays an important role in sending the overall tone in the direction that I want for this blog post.
No Post Processing
All the delay and reverb that you’ll hear is coming from the Axe-FX 3. It was not added in post-processing. (I don’t do any post-processing.)
I will have level-matched the audio demos before uploading them.
I’ve applied an extra 3 dB of volume reduction to the clean tone demo, to get it closer to the volume of the overdriven audio clips.
How Does It Sound?
My Clean Tone
To start with, here’s how the guitar and amp sound, with no pedals at all.
I don’t normally record the initial clean tone. Does anyone find this useful at all? Let me know in the comments below if you’d like me to do this with every blog post.
The Carpe Diem On Its Own
This is how the Fire Custom Shop Carpe Diem pedal sounds on its own:
Boosting With The Green Wonder
Here’s how the Carpe Diem sounds, when I boost it with The Green Wonder:
To my ears, The Green Wonder is adding more bite and clarity to the overall tone. It’s brought out the scratchy quality of the note attack a little more, and it has tightened up the low-end in a pleasing way.
Final Thoughts
As someone who never uses Tubescreamer-type pedals, I found it really easy to dial in a boost tone on The Green Wonder that put a smile on my face.
I think that’s a good start.