PSK DST-3 Distortion Reviews 
3 / 5 based on 1 reviewsAs a brief summary... I have been playing guitar for around 3 years now. I play 80's-style hard-rock/heavy metal, mainly do shredding and rhythm riffs. Musical tastes? Van Halen, Vai, Satch, etc. etc. etc.
Well, the aquisition of this pedal was down to the fact that, 2 years ago, my band and I had our very first gig... and, having then only been playing guitar for a year, I didn't have an amp with a footswitch to change between clean and overdriven/distorted tones... so this put me in a bit of an emergency! I was reccomended the PSK Distortion pedal by a friend. I bought it from Varsity Music in Edinburgh for £40 - a little expensive for a no-name pedal. However, I also got a free 10ft. guitar lead along with it. I should think so too, at that price!!!
Put simply, it does what it says on the tin. It's a distortion pedal; don't expect a smooth overdrive like a Soldano SLO-100. But it's good. The controls are basic - Volume, Tone and Distortion. Basically like a Boss DS-1. The tone control is rather useful and can make you sound dark and smooth or noisy and harsh. There is also plenty of distortion available should you happen to be a metalhead. The pedal also seems well constructed. The colour scheme looks like it's been warped from the mid-1980's - no bad thing, I'm an 80's reject myself...
Well, there isn't much to gripe about. The control knobs seem to work loose from their spindles, but this is no big deal. Also, this pedal has a more razor-like, edgy distortion, and seems to have a slight mid-scooped sound - I prefer a sound with plenty of middle, which is generally why I've moved away from using this pedal. Perfect for metal though.
The pedal is fine for use with single-coil-pickup guitars, however, it doesn't work well with humbuckers - a little annoying since I bought an Ibanez RG recently!
To sum up - very good. Like I say the knobs have a tendancy to work loose but apart from that you could fling the pedal from 3000 feet up and it wouldn't even have a scratch on it.
The bottom line - this is a good pedal if you're into modern metal, grunge or lo-fi garage sounds. But it's not a device I would call "toneful" - although it doesn't sound bad. I have stopped using this since I got a Marshall AVT50 amp which has a great overdrive channel and has a footswitch, although just in case I have the PSK as a backup. I occasionally use it at home.
One tip though - if you live in Edinburgh, UK, DON'T buy anything from Varsity Music. They are rip-off merchants.
Heavy Metal Hero rated this unit
on
2006-03-31.
