30 Pedals in 30 Days: Hardwire Pedals DL-8 and SC-2

 

 

Don’t forget to check out the video at the bottom of the page. 

Hardwire came on the scene in 2007 with the intention of making pedals built for the road for gigging musicians. And in that brief six years, they’ve already caught the eyes of players like Bill Kelliher (Mastodon), Chris Loocke, and, friend of TTK, Phil X. When we here at TheToneKing.com were setting up the schedule for 30 Pedals in 30 Days, we knew that Hardwire had to be involved. So, we checked out Hardwire’s DL-8 and SC-2 to see if they are truly road worthy.

Hardwire’s selection of pedals isn’t vast. The thinking behind this is simple: Instead of putting out a million pedals that all sound mediocre, put out ten pedals that sound great, are built tough, and give players the versatility to create their own sound. Hardwire kept this in mind when they designed the DL-8 and the SC-2

HardWireDL8-xlargeThe DL-8 is Delay/Looper that basically acts as an all in one unit. Reverse, Modulated, Analog, Slapback, LoFi, and Tape are all available, giving players a myriad of different sounds. Classic rock, Funk, Psychadelic, Industrial, or Metal delays are all available with a turn of a knob.

Speaking of knobs, the DL-8’s got a Level, Repeats, and Time controls. Anytime someone asks me what a Level knob does, I fear for our world’s future. The Repeats and Time control are just as unambiguous. But, that doesn’t make them any less significant. The controls on the Hardwire DL-8 give players a wide spectrum of different sounds. A subtle delay to accentuate a solo or a crazy, trippy mind-funk that will get even the most straight-laced listener to say, “Whoa dude!”

The delays range between 15 milliseconds to 8 seconds, which is almost five times the range of many other delay pedals. And, if you’re not sure how fast you should be going, the DL-8 has a tap tempo feature. To top everything else, the DL-8 has a Looper with 20 seconds of Looping time. That’s a lot of time to have on your hands, or…um at your feet.

The SV-2 Valve Distortion offers two distortion tones: Crunch and Saturated. Again, keeping it simple does not a simple pedal make. Valve 562978795_osounds from Zeppelin and Sabbath to Avenged Sevenfold and Periphery. You might even be able to play some Lady Gaga on this thing if that’s what you’re in to.

The status quo is to use the Crunch for rhythm and the Saturated for leads. Which is fine. But, the versatility of this pedal begs for more experimentation than that. If you’re using a clean tube amp, dialing down the gain on Saturated will give you a nice muddy blues sound. Or, turn the gain on your amp and hit the Saturated Channel on the SV-2 on low gain for an over the top fuzzy industrial Ministry type sound. Hardwire’s SV-2 has more than enough versatility for just about any style.

Like I mentioned earlier: Hardwire is made for the road. Which means that these pedals are built like mini-tanks. They also run with a little more headroom than your standard 9V pedal to eliminate the clipping that’s inherent with using active pickups. Both pedals can be used in either mono or stereo for some of you two amp using muthas out there. And, all Hardwire pedals feature true-bypass. Even if the battery runs out, the signal between your guitar and amp remains uninterrupted.

Hardwire’s idea is simple: Stick with the sounds that gigging musicians want and make them sound good. Then, make sure that they can survive whatever the road can throw at them. Hardwire’s DL-8 and SV-2 are for road dogs. Heavy duty enough that they can withstand a stomping night after night, and versatile enough so that they can handle whatever pops up in your song list. TheToneKing.com is always on the look out for those pedals that keep players in mind, and for 30 Pedals in 30 Days, we found two of them. The DL-8 and the SV-2.

For prices on the DL-8, SV-2, or any Hardwire gear, check out: Sweetwater.com

Click here to enter into TheToneKing.com’s 30 Pedals in 30 Days Randall Give-Away! 

Official RD1C Give-Away Page: https://thetoneking.com/gear-give-away/2013-2/randall-rd1c-give-away/

Official Product Write-Up: https://thetoneking.com/digitech-hardwire-valve-distortion-and-delay-looper/

Randall Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/randallamplifiers

Product Page: http://digitech.com/en-US/product_families/hardwire-extreme-performance-pedals

Unboxing Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awzVgyV6xF8

Official Full-On Demo & Reviewhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eM5_tS9DNE

 

[youtuber youtube=’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eM5_tS9DNE‘]

 

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About the Author: Marc published his first novel Becoming in 2010. It’s a kick-ass book with monsters and dreams and stuff, and you should buy it. Since then, he’s written thousands of articles for TheToneKing.com, many of which have been picked up for circulation by manufacturers and other news outlets. His next book, Drugs and Pancakes, should be available early 2014 if his alcoholic editor can find time to work on it in-between destroying his liver and screaming about punctuation. He graduated from Roosevelt University with honors, which means that he’s not as dumb as he looks. He’s been playing guitar for over 25 years, which is almost twice as long as most of his students have been alive.

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