JHS PedalsJHS Angry Charlie V3 Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal

The JHS Angry Charlie was one of those pedals I was "around" for years, but somehow never tried out...until now. Like many JHS pedals, its circuitry is based on a classic pedal of yesteryear (The 90's era Marshall Guv'nor), along with some further tweaks and enhanced EQ control. The V3 edition has bass, middle, and treble controls - these are set so that a 12:00 setting is basically "flat", and then you can cut or boost each frequency band. The mids control is crucial to pedal's versatility, as it will transform your sound from chunky to cutting, or from scooped to punchy.The idea of the Angry Charlie is that it's a "Marshall JCM800 in a box", which is the classic, hi-gain Marshall sound from 80's rock and metal. However, what's most notable to me about the pedal isn't how close it gets to a Marshall, but the variety of different sounds and styles it can accommodate. I've tried plenty of pedals that go for that similar driven sound - the MI Audio Crunch Box and Wampler Pinnacle come to mind. But few of them can do that...and also crunchy, just-breaking-up blues sounds with lower gain settings. In fact, the pedal puts out usable sounds with decent output almost through the entire sweep of the gain knob, which is an impressive and much-appreciated design feat. The Angry Charlie has stood the test of time for a reason, and I was pleasantly surprised how well it could be dialed in to work with different guitars, cover different gain ranges, and pair with other overdrives/boosts in front of it.

So I got this one at a discount because it was supposedly used or returned or something. It has some scratches on the knobs like it got knocked upside down and slid on concrete or something. I don't care though because this is the single best sounding pedal I've ever heard! This is my new sound! I like to play a Slash type of distorted rock and this puts me right there! Sounds 9 out of 10 of a Marshall amp. I'd imagine that if it sounded 100% like a Marshall the end user wouldn't know though because in the end, the amp you're using isn't a Marshall and the speakers in it aren't cellestions. If they were you wouldn't need this pedal, that's why you buy this pedal. It's cheap than that set up. It sounds good and right at normal practice levels and at higher volume (bar band volume) it sounds exactly like a cranked up Marshall on about 7 or as close as one can get without having the real thing. I've played it only through my solid state amp thus far because my tube amp is waiting on new tubes at the moment but when I finally get to play it through my tube amp I will update if there's a negative you need to know about. Otherwise assume it works equally well on either style of amp. I was worried it wouldn't be able to "push" my solid state the right way to get the right sounds but it works perfectly. I also turned up my amp to the same levels with its onboard distortion and while it sounds damn good, this pedal blows it away because of the pedal's specific Marshall-y sound. There's just something more powerful and trebly about the pedal even at the same levels of my amp's distortion. I've played a lot of pedals in my life and none have ever compared to my amp's distortion but this one is definitely better! This also doesn't produce obnoxious feedback like many other pedals do. This just pushes the amp just hard enough to sound like a loud Marshall halfstack instead of overly compressing your sound into a fake crappy distortion that is unusable like pretty much all other destortuon pedals do. If I were buying again I'd get this or the @ version.

The Angry Charlie has a great sounding distortion and the active eq is very versatile, which is a very nice touch as most pedals have lower fidelity passive eq's. It's modeled after a Marshall JCM 800 amp, so it's voice certainly leans that way, and it leans that way extremely well. It's a fairly high gain pedal, however, it sounds gorgeous at low gain overdrive settings as well. What shocked me the most was how quite this pedal is even at extreme gain settings. I've owned many dirt pedals and I have never heard one this quite. I hear virtually zero hiss coming from it at even the highest gain settings. The circuitry and quality of components must be outstanding to get this level of quietness and musicality. In this case you are definitely getting what you are paying for. There is really not a bad sound on this pedal and the usable settings are broad and work well with the guitar volume knob. I own a strymon sunset which is also an outstanding overdrive/distortion pedal and this is on par with the sound quality of that pedal. It would be very unlikely you'd have buyers remorse.

Works well as a high gain overdrive pedal

I love JHS pedals and this is no exception. Gets that awesome Marshall high gain sound. Just what I was looking for.

JHS absolutely nailed the JCM800 sound with this. I am running it into my 65 Fender Princeton Reissue and it works great with the amp. It makes my amp sound like absolute monstrous. The bass on this pedal is perfect and the EQ allows you to dial in the bass along with the mids and treble perfectly. The nice thing with this pedal is it isn’t over the top as far a bass so it doesn’t make my amp sound like it’s flanking out. Some pedals have so much bass that when you use them in a smaller speaker amp like mine it can be too much for the amp and sound bad. This pedal also sounds takes overdrives one front of it really well. I use my Boss SD-1 with it and it throws the amp into heavy, thick, wild saturation. Buy it. It is worth every penny.