goosoniqueworx mangojuice

by 44ofjuly and airhole

Local this and local that.

What in the world does the word local mean to you anyway?

Perhaps eating a bowl of meepok at the 24-hour kopitiam, buying toilet paper at NT*C near your house, or just simply taking the so-called "world class transport system" every day to and from work, where everyone basically gets squashed for nothing and the fare keeps increasing every few years and yet one of the lowest in the world, like what they say...

Hmmm, do I sound like I am complaining? Not exactly...Since this month’s issue looks at all things local, wouldn't it be nice if we review a locally made pedal? WMUM overdrive? Oh well, that's already been reviewed in the March issue. For the month of May, we will look at another locally made pedal, which not only sounds tasty, but also rather fiery in tone.

Introducing the Mangojuice overdrive/distortion pedal by Goosoniqueworx. At first look and touch, it will be hard to distinguish this from other "booteek" pedals made elsewhere. The paintjob on the exterior is really good and in fact, I would love to call it "mangoburst".

On the pedal, the five knobs are as follows:

Gain- as in gain, from clean to slight overdrive to massive "DJUNG DJUNG" *
Juice- volume in disguise
Bass- for boom boom boom
Mids- for increment muscle
Treble- for piercing sharpness

Like the knobs on an amplifier, the Mangojuice pedal functions like a preamp section. Although the pedal can be used for distortion, what you can get from it is not the "chuga chuga" type of metal distortion, whereby the characteristic of the original guitar tone is totally changed beyond recognition. As such, using the pedal with different guitars and different type of pickups etc will yield differences in the overall tone.

Different guitars (a tele, strat and semi-hollow) were used to test the pedal. The beautiful thing about the pedal is that the characteristics of each guitar still breaths through easily at high gain settings, with retention of clarity.

With a humbucker-equipped semi hollow electric on the neck pickup, the characteristics of a fuzz pedal were achieved with the pedal's gain set at the 11 o'clock position and the bass, mid, treble levels set to taste. The tone seemed to be an in-between of a slightly heavier overdrive and fuzz. I have a feeling that some might actually find the pedal having a buzzy characteristic at moderate gain. This might turn them away from the pedal but then, tone is subjective, and my poison can be your meat and vice versa.

Oh, and in case anyone is thinking of doing lots of palm muting through the Mangojuice, perhaps it will be good to look somewhere else. Personally, I find the pedal should not be wasted on palm muting.

To obtain the best results, use a tele with the pedal (ok, I admit, I love teles, anything through it will be good anyway ;-)). The tele sounded really good, and you can really hear the characteristic sound of the tele through the pedal.

Some observations about the Mangojuice at different settings. First of all, the gain knob. With the gain knob all the way down, there is no sound from it. Once the gain knob is around the 8 to 10 o'clock position, there is a nice boost/overdriven tone.

Having the gain knob at around the 8.30 position and adjusting the bass, treble and mid knobs, if you vary between light plucking to heavy strumming, you can get a clean sounding to a crunchy tone. Another way to utilize the pedal, as indicated by the manual, is having the gain knob between the 7 to 8 o'clock position and turning up the juice knob between the 10 to 12 o'clock position. The result? A really powerful treble mid boost! With the tele, it pushes the tone for huge bottom and brightness. Turning down the tone knob on the tele yielded a rather sweet chimey tone. But do watch out for the volume difference when switching between bypass and effect "on" if you use the pedal in this way.

And being not just touch sensitive, the impression we got during the testing was that the pedal was probably/perhaps designed to be "On" all the time. Just by adjusting knobs on the guitar, you could roll off your volume and get a nice clean tone with a bit of a volume drop (normal though, its the lowering of volume anyway)...and then for solos, just roll the volume to the max, VOILA! You have a slightly boosted distorted tone. This behaviour being commonly used in tube amps, it exists for a pedal!

Up to now, if anyone reading this is wondering, how does the overdrive quality differ from the usual tubescreamer? Well, they are different circuit designs and use different components and thus should not bear any resemblance to each other. The first impression on trying the Mangojuice is that it does not have the "famous" mid response of the tubescreamber, which some might like and some don't. Genuinely, this is one pedal that is really transparent. If you have a terrible sounding guitar or setup, do not expect this pedal to make it sound better. The pedal allows the tonal qualities of the guitar to be projected with dirt (dependent on the amount of gain) but yet allow the guitar's characteristics to breathe through.

There is also a sweet spot on the gain side. Set about 8 o'clock, the pedal can be used for a real clean boost. No distortion at all and this pedal can really be loud. Once above the 8 o'clock position, the dirt starts to come in and beyond 12 o'clock there does not seem to be an increase of gain, however, there is a reason for this. This allows you to set how much gain you want when you roll your volume on the guitar. At max, there is a lot of dirt when the volume is rolled to 1. With the gain at 10 o'clock and guitar volume at 1, the tone cleans up nicely.

On to the bass, mids and treble knobs. It looks like a parametric EQ, but it is more like an interactive EQ. The mids knob is very powerful. You can hear the sludge/mud come in when turned to max, just add some treble to let the notes shine through while adjusting the bass accordingly to your preference. If anyone has the chance to try the pedal out, do spend some time with these 3 knobs. Any adjustment to any one knob may result in the others having really little or really obvious changes to the overall tone.

Next, moving on to other areas of the pedal. The Mangojuice pedal can be powered with a 9v battery or using an adaptor. Words of caution, though. Remember to use a regulated power supply for it. Go ahead if you are into having hiss/hum in your setup to further modulate through delay pedals/ring mods for your signature tone, if not, regulated power supply please. As for battery consumption, the pedal was designed to consume as little power as possible at 3.65mA. So the battery should last quite a while under normal situations.

Like any other gain pedals, there will be a certain level of noise as the gain/volume is increased. Most importantly, if you have a setup that already hums or hisses, do not expect the Mangojuice to tame it (applies especially to those who only want to increase gain and nothing else). Everything plays a part in the signal chain, as usual. The pedal, guitar, the cables etc.

Opening up the pedal, you might find yourself staring at some neat soldering work and a couple of blue-coloured trim pots. Like what the maker suggested on the manual, take a while to enjoy the beauty of the layout and components (yes, there are geeks like us around who enjoy such activities) and get trippy... Oh well, the important things here are the few trim pots. Although the markings on it are set to the optimum performance level, it can be tweaked to the player’s liking. But be warned though, if the settings strayed too far from the original, the "clean to distortion" setting will be lost. So please remember to check the optimum setting level before doing anything.

To conclude, the Mangojuice has its characteristics, which is the signature sound of the pedal itself. And combined with the guitar of choice, you can have your own sound. And if you are waiting for the pros and cons of the pedals, oh well, there is none this issue. Why? Because the Mangojuice is a pedal made locally and besides being able to contact the maker himself directly (goosonique@yahoo.com.sg), the pedal can be tested from Wakemeup Music.

If anyone is interested enough, do yourself a favour, go try out the pedal and decide for yourself whether it is for you or against you. No matter how beautifully or horribly we write about any pedals, reviews are just reviews. If you don’t try out the pedal up close, you will never know. Trust your own judgement!! If it's not working out for you, oh well, move on dude, it's a pedal after all, it's not going to affect your gender preferences in the real world...right??