Heya,
I just got the Barber Small Fry on a musicians flea-market the other day.
I liked the look of it and the sound demos were promising but I couldn't check it out when I was there.
to my surprise it sounded better than expected... just the notes were a bit too gritty when using my neck P90
I read the manual and opened the back and started screwing around with the internal trim pots till I got what has to be the best sound
from a dirt box I have heard so far (and as you can see I own quite a few dirt pedals)... settings are (note shape: minimal / bass: maximum / mids: minimum / presence: minimum - and yeah I admit those are extreme settings but it sounds AWESOME this way.)
I just noticed one thing..... when turning the note shape all the way counter clockwise the pedal gets a bit noisier... (I can understand the fact that it gets more noisy when turning up the presence - which I understand is a treble boost before the clipping) but I have yet to work out why decreasing the bass feeding into the clipping section (which is - and I'm GUESSING here - what turning the note shape ccw does) causes more noise....
guess there's something way more sophisticated going on there.... anyway.... the noise ain't super bad and with humcanceling pickups it'd be gone completely but if this would be a perfect world that'd be my only gripe.... but since it's not and there will always be compromises I'm happy to tell you that the Barber Small Fry is the best dirt pedal (especially with the settings of the internal trim pots) I have owned so far.
but wait since it's christmas soon:
if Dave can get the noise level of the pedal with the note shape trimmer fully counterclockwise to the noise level of the same pedal with everything set the same but the note shape trimmer fully clockwise - that'd be on my wishlist this year...
cheers,
mully