NPD - Finally found one! Carpe Diem

colourofsound

Picked this baby up on eBay for a steal. Couldn't believe my luck. Will be trying it later on tonight when I get home. So stoked. Got a Bitquest on the way too as a birthday present!

Wazmeister

Hmmm, I saw this on eBay and it went before I could bid !!

colourofsound

Made him a cheeky offer behind the scenes

hotpickups

Any good after all the hype @colourofsound ;? What amp are you using it with?

colourofsound

Not got it home yet @hotpickups, it arrived at work. I'll be sure to give you a run down! I'll be using a Tokai Breezysound into a Fender HRD (which has had some lower power preamp valves put in and a Celestion G12 installed). Nothing fancy but it works!

colourofsound

It is pretty fucking tasty.

@hotpickups

So I've played around with it a bit more, and yeah it is good, but you really have to crank your amp to hear it sing. Which i guess is fairly standard with solid state pedals into valve amps. 

I have a Jetter JetDrive too and the blue side of that which is sort of British voiced sounds fairly similar. I was really hyped about that too after watching videos but once I got it in my room on my amp I was disappointed.

The Carpe does have something to it though; difficult to describe. The most surprising thing about it is that it does low transparent gain really nicely! And I wanted one as a high gain option, haha.

I need to play with it more, crank the amp a bit, do some recording, etc before I properly get the measure of it. Also my amp is doing some weird crackling, I think one of the power tubes has a loose connection, so I don't really trust anything I'm hearing at the moment!

johnhe

Sounds like a great pedal. How are the mids? Scooped or full? Can you compare it to any other MIAB pedals? How is the eq in general? I noticed that on "The Pedal Show" they seemed to be running the treble up full, which worried me a little.

Lew

Enjoy the BitQuest. It's fun!

colourofsound

@johnhe it's a very versatile pedal EQ wise. It seems to me that instead of it applying gain and then the signal being EQ'd after (or before) the clipping like normal pedals, it applies gain to bass and treble independantly. Thats how it sounds to me. So the bass and treble controls are actually gain amounts for those frequencies. If that makes sense? But if you turn the bass right down it does roll it off too.

You can get a very full mid sound or you can roll the bass off entirely, crank the presence and get that raspy Marshall sound too. I noticed the EQ on TPS too; but I think that show is mixed quite dark anyway; for example they're always playing the bridge pickups and they never ever sound harsh, whereas I hate bridge p'ups because they're so harsh in real life! I could just have shit ones though

Funnily enough, the Carpe Diem sounds very similar to the blue (right) side of my Jetter Jet Drive. The Jet Drive is a double OD with american voicing on the left side and british voicing on the right. The Carpe Diem has fuller bass and mids though; and a lot more gain on tap. If you were after a MIAB theres a thread in the classifieds with a Jetter 45/100 here: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/79870/fs-a-boatload-of-boutique-pedals - i'd grab that if I were you, the Jetter pedals are great and you don't see them very often. If I didnt have the CD i'd be snapping that up!

colourofsound

@lew yeah can't wait! Wish it had presets though! Have you got one? Would love to know if you use it live.

Lew

colourofsound said:

@lew yeah can't wait! Wish it had presets though! Have you got one? Would love to know if you use it live.

Yep got a UFO in December. I'm sure you could use it live. I think it has a rep for being more random than it is. A bit overwhelming at first perhaps.

colourofsound

@lew yeah i've got the UFO one coming. I take the difference between that and the script one is purely aesthetic?

Lew

Yep!

colourofsound

https://www.thatpedalshowstore.com/products/carpe-diem-pedal GO GO GO

velvetsky01

GONE GONE GONE 

colourofsound

Shitty phone video comparison with Jet Drive. Plus all 4 drive channels stacked! ALSO Hocus Pocus! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6KkRbq-b6Bia0Z6V2JVR3A3ems/view?usp=sharing

damm73

velvetsky01 said:

GONE GONE GONE 

I was curious to try this pedal given all the hype on TPS and I got one from the latest batch which arrived yesterday. It does sound good and I like the form factor but...personally I prefer the thorpy Gunshot. 

So I was going to return it but thought I'd offer it up here first in case anyone wants one? PM if interested

MrSwanson

damm73 said:

velvetsky01 said:

GONE GONE GONE 

I was curious to try this pedal given all the hype on TPS and I got one from the latest batch which arrived yesterday. It does sound good and I like the form factor but...personally I prefer the thorpy Gunshot. 

So I was going to return it but thought I'd offer it up here first in case anyone wants one? PM if interested

Potentially how much were they?

damm73

MrSwanson said:

damm73 said:

velvetsky01 said:

GONE GONE GONE 

I was curious to try this pedal given all the hype on TPS and I got one from the latest batch which arrived yesterday. It does sound good and I like the form factor but...personally I prefer the thorpy Gunshot. 

So I was going to return it but thought I'd offer it up here first in case anyone wants one? PM if interested

Potentially how much were they?

It was £234 including delivery.