In two other guitars I have the EMG PA2
as I love pre-amps the QDD2 really peaked my interest, I chose to install it in the Daion I bought from Muff Wiggler (one more chance to show it off
). It replaced the lower left tone control with no modifications needed.
right away you can see how more there is to the QDD2 than the PA2...both have trim tabs and on both I keep them low...also there is not a PA2 on the Daion, I'm just using it for comparison.
Installation was a snap and I was playing in minutes, I wont be posting soundclips, sorry that's just too time consuming. I tried it with several models in my POD xt I'm using on some songs now. The by-pass is true with no difference detected and the clean boost is very good. Back in the stone ages I had a toggle switch type pre that was made by a company called audiocraft, it was a three position with a similar boost to the clean boost here and a boost adjustable to 18db. I loved that pre as it gave me two vastly different drives as well as a bypass, sadly I had to give up the small boost with the PA2.
The Blues overdrive position on the DD2 is about perfect for me to use after the clean boost, it's a great warm tone with power. Both it and the clean boost really improved the "singing" on bends, something my warmoth does well.
The rock distortion is pretty much like a Rat, kinda fuzzy but not to fuzzy. The metal is scooped and pretty good if I need to cut up some firewood while playing.
The unit itself is about as noisy as the PA2, not bad but the expected noise is there. Of course it's easy to deal with that these days.
The Daion has coil taps for both pick-ups so I can split either one to single coils. Obviously with 4 choices of drive plus no drive at all, the splits and the typical three way pick-up switch the amount of possible combinations is awesome. Naturally I found that the pick-ups wont wimp out now when played low and with pre-amp choices combined with the splits I could go from a strat sound to a paul sound with emgs (think zakke) to a paul with soapbars. I was able to get some of those bright tones you might expect from a jaguar as well which was cool.
I'm gonna spend weeks exploring the myriad of tones this beast creates, it certainly is worth the price tag of 27.99usd. I wonder how many more I might own before the end of the year. If you're looking for something useful, inexpensive and fun to add to your guitar this might be worth a look. Also I ordered it Friday and it arrived today...
