JHS 3 Series

In this article, I’m debuting into the world not one, not two, not even four, but seven brand new pedals. I’m just going to take a second and let that sink in.

Seven. Pedals. That wasn’t a typo. This is actually happening.

In this article (and in the episode of the JHS Show that dropped earlier today) I’m going to show off the newest series of JHS Pedals: the 3 Series. I love them, and I think you will, too.

Here’s how it all happened. Several years ago, lightning struck my brain. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt, but in that moment I was struck with a problem I knew I had to solve: the fact that so many new pedals nowadays have amazing features, tons of controls, but they're too dang complicated. Plus, more features means more money, so they usually have a bigger price tag. I’m a simple guy. Sometimes I just want a simple pedal, preferably from a super affordable series so I can have fun and try a lot of different effects. I said to myself, “Josh, can you make a line of pedals that are under a hundred dollars and easy to use?”

Yup. We can, and we did.

That’s the 3 Series in a nutshell. Every pedal is $99, no matter what the effect is, and they all have three knobs, one toggle, and one footswitch. They're incredibly easy to use, and I took my inspiration from some really classic budget pedals.

In fact, let’s take a look at some of those pedals real quick.

The History of Budget Pedals

The first ever budget pedals hit the market in the early 1980s. They offered a more affordable option to the powerhouses BOSS and Ibanez, who ruled the pedal market. In 1983, Arion Effects was one of the first brands to ever gain prominence and respect with a series of budget pedals. There are several of these pedals that go for huge money on the used market because they sound amazing, plus they've been used by a lot of famous players. Then we see other brands like Rocktek come along in 1986, making pedals even more affordable. In 1989, Ibanez got involved with the Soundtank Series. This was one of my very first pedals ever, and you can find them all over the place. They sound really great.

Even into the nineties, we see brands like ProCo making cheaper, more affordable versions of their famous pedal, the Rat Distortion: the Roadkill and the Brat, which came out around 1997.

In 1999, we saw the release of one of the most important budget lines ever made: the Danelectro Food Series. Let’s put aside the amazing fact that this allowed you to play pedals with names like Chicken Salad, Grilled Cheese, and PB&J. This was a very important series for me, because it allowed me to play tons of circuits that I could never have afforded in their original form. These were everywhere. So many guitarists, including myself, cut our teeth on effects by buying these in the mid-2000s.

Then Behringer dropped an (arguably infamous) compact line of effects, following in the footsteps of Danelectro’s Food Series by offering expensive and rare circuits in this form factor at a low price.

With the 3 Series, I wanted to build on the backs of these great budget lines because they're so important. That said, as a pedal maker, I wanted to fix some of the glaring and obvious problems with budget pedals:

Quality. I love budget pedals as much as the next guy, but I need pedals that sound great and that I can trust to keep working on a crazy six month tour. Most budget pedals would probably do it, but I couldn’t be sure. If I’m going to make a JHS budget pedal, that’s the first problem to fix. I want the same quality in our $99 pedals that we put into our $200 pedals, which is why we use the exact same hardware, enclosure style, foot switches, jacks, and toggles in the 3 Series.

Originality. Most budget pedals are just clones of classic pedals with minor tweaks, and there's nothing wrong with that. I love it because it lets you try classic circuits. But I wanted to take this a step further with the 3 Series and create a budget line of pedals that offers something unique. That’s why the 3 Series are mainly all original designs. When we did use an existing circuit or design, we modified it in such a way that turned it into a totally different pedal.

As far as I’m concerned, the 3 Series is our opportunity to make the greatest budget pedal line ever. I'm really proud that we put together a USA-made pedal series for $99…not to mention, they’re all pretty baller.

Now, let’s take a look at these individual pedals.

Overdrive

Let's start with the 3 Series overdrive, which we call the Overdrive. Yeah, we didn’t go for fancy names or clever puns (as much as I love both of those things), because we wanted to keep this series simple. Thus, we call our overdrive “Overdrive” because it overdrives.

This is a fantastic overdrive circuit that uses soft clipping, an op amp, and pays tribute back to all of our favorite overdrives from the ’70s and ’80s that utilized this topology. It has three knobs: volume, body, and drive control. Volume obviously turns the volume up. The body control is really unique. It's not quite a tone control and it's not quite an EQ, although it does both of those things. I’d say it’s a sort of gain structure knob. Lastly, the drive control allows you to dial in how much saturation and clipping you want in your signal.

This pedal also features a gain toggle, which gives you a different style of clipping. Basically, flip the toggle on and things get really, really loud. It'll blow your head off, and it's fantastic slamming into the front of a tube amp.

Delay

Next up is the 3 Series Delay. It's called “Delay” because it delays your signal.

It has three controls: mix, time, and repeats, plus it has a toggle for type. Mix is the wet signal, which means you can roll in the amount of effect you want. The time knob starts at slap delay and goes up from there; you can turn this knob all the way up if you want a beautiful, crazy sound. The repeats knob controls how many echoes you get: one, two, three, four, five, six, or infinite.

Plus, the type toggle lets you switch between an analog style repeat (a dark, beautiful, mysterious echo) and a digital repeat (clearer and more pristine).

Chorus

The chorus is called “Chorus” because it creates a chorus effect. This ain’t rocket science, folks.

It has three controls: volume, rate, and depth. Volume is the overall output level of the pedal, which is really great if you want to use it for lead parts or push your guitar out of the mix with modulation. Rate lets you go from slow to fast, with a very handy speed status LED for visual reference. Depth is kind of the mix or wet perception of how much chorus is in your signal.

Then you have a toggle labeled vibe, which is beautifully simple: when it's down, you're in chorus mode, which means you have modulation with the dry signal. When you flip it up, you remove your dry signal and create true pitch vibrato in the same vein as a BOSS VB-2, which can go from subtle to seasick. It’s awesome.

Coincidentally, if you want to play your guitar and sound like a Beatle wannabe, this is a great pedal to use. Just watch the JHS show episode we dropped today if you don’t believe me.

Distortion

The 3 Series distortion has a name. Would you like to take a guess?

Yup. Nailed it. It's called “Distortion” because it distorts your signal. If I had a sticker with a smiley face on it, I’d totally give it to you right now.

There are, yet again, three controls: volume, filter, and distort. I like calling it distort, ‘cause distortion can sound a little too overwhelming. We want to keep it simple. Volume is the overall volume of the circuit. Filter is an EQ sweep effect, and it's fantastic. Distort is the overall amount of gain/distortion.

There’s also a gain toggle, which gives you a different saturation and feel. Flip it down, and you get a heavier sound. Flip the toggle up, and you get more of a crunchy boost tone.

Compressor

Next up is “Compressor”, so named because it compresses your guitar signal.

It has three knobs: volume, attack, sustain, and a bright toggle. Volume control is exactly what you think. It lets you turn the volume up or down, and it also allows you to boost this pedal into your amp or other overdrives, giving you a really powerful tone-shaping device that's useful in other ways than straight-up compression. The attack control is how quickly your guitar is slammed into the detection circuit of the compressor, essentially how quickly it responds to your guitar’s input signal. Sustain control could also label compression, but that's the name of the pedal, and my goal here is to keep things simple. Sustain mixes it up a bit. It’s the amount of compression that occurs in the pedal.

The bright toggle adds high end back to your signal, something that the older ’70s topology style compressor circuits (that this pedal is based on) steal from your tone.

Reverb

The 3 Series reverb is called “Reverb”, because--

I’m not going through that again. I trust that you guys are intelligent adults, and I assume you’ve picked up on the theme here.

Now, this one's exciting. It’s a digital reverb that covers a lot of sounds that you love, and a lot of sounds you will love. You'll discover you love them once you play it. It goes from “singing in the shower” all the way to “crazy ambient, never-ending verbs that sound like pad textures from the backside of Pluto.” Because you need a pedal that can do both.

The Reverb has three knobs: verb, EQ, and decay, plus it has a toggle called pre-delay. The verb knob is basically a wet/dry mix for how much reverb is in the signal. The EQ knob gives you an amazing spectrum of sound, from the dark, more tame side of things all the way to a bright mix that lets you hear every aspect of the decay. The decay knob is here for one reason: to be completely maxed out at all times.

Pre-delay does what it says. I can’t put it any more clearly than that.

Fuzz

Last of all is the 3 Series fuzz, which we call “Fuzz”.

It has three controls: volume, bias, and fuzz, plus it has a toggle called fat. Now, this is based around classic 1960s style two-transistor fuzzes, and it's done in a way that gives you maximum flexibility from the circuit. It keeps it simple, but still gives you some great options. Volume is exactly what you think it is, up or down. You can boost, you can slam it in the front of an amp, you can cut it, whatever you want to do. Bias is a voltage control directly tied to the Q2 transistor of the circuit, which gives it more or less voltage. Basically, bias could be called a gate control because it results in beautifully sputtering gated sounds, but bias sounds cooler so we called it that. The fuzz control is the overall clipping and saturation, and unlike a ton of ’60s style fuzzes, this control is completely usable from zero to 10, which is awesome.

Then you have the fat toggle, which fattens up the signal.

I'm excited for these pedals, and I'm super excited to see what you guys and girls are going to do with them. The 3 Series pedals are the people's pedals and you are the people.

Guest UserOctober 2, 2020