Here's my little, tiny and small review of the Barber BarbEQ pedal:
my amp only has one tone control which can either cut highs or cut lows. It can also be taken out of the circuit completely. This means my amp is quite mid heavy... which can be a beautiful thing when using a Fuzz or dirt pedal to get a really smooth tone - but sometimes you want that crystal clear Fender clean tone or a more scooped sound for crunchy stuff.
that's where this pedal comes in.
to begin with.. it is REALLY quiet. there's no added noise when switching the pedal on. this pedal doesn't only add one kind of tonestack to an amp but three. you can choose between a '59 Bassman tone stack, a '60 Blackface tone stack or a late '60 Marshall kind of tone stack. In the following file I'm going from Bypass to Bassman to Blackface and to Marshall - first with OCD - and then the whole thing again without the OCD to give you an idea how it sounds clean.
http://www.leftoverlasagne.com/demos/BarbEQreview.mp3
this pedal is REALLY great. I'm not sure if those tonestacks sound exacly like the tonestacks inside these old amps because a) I don't own those and b) it would be hard to know how much difference in tone comes from the tone stack itself.... but that being said all of them sound great... I like the Bassman and the Blackface setting the most... the Marshall one is great for dirty stuff though (as you'd expect - the bass is not over exaggerated like in the tweed mode)
there are however two small things that I wish were different.
the three settings all have a different volume so you can't simply switch between the settings without adjusting the volume control.
and the mid knob of the push pull kind which when pulled simulates the bright input of those amps. Another mini toggle switch would've been better from a user point of view. I simply don't like push pull knobs.... they feel flimsy and it looks stupid when they're pulled.
and one more thing (keep in mind though that most of my negative points are pretty small things) the plastic washer used on the footswitch is something I never like with any pedal. Is there ANY advantage to plastic washers at all? they look cheap and amateurish imo - metal washers ALWAYS look better and they've always worked for me just fine.
PROS:
noisless
versatile
three great sounds
CONS:
volume differences between the three different modes
push pull knob for the bright channel
plastic washer