Dark Blood KHDK's Evil Pedal, Dark Blood, Delivers Evil, Merciless Amp Distortion

Okay, please take this review for what it is...my opinion. I am running a Mustang GTX100 amp with a Gretsch guitar (Les Paul sytle) with standard humbucker pickups (EMG's are on the way). In any case, I must be extremely naïve as I thought this pedal (along with the Ghoul Screamer) would make me sound close, similar, or something like Metallica, specifically Kirk. If that's what you are looking for, you've been warned as this is not it and will NOT help you achieve that goal. I am returning mine because the pedals aren't even close to helping me sound like the most successful metal band of all time. The only reason I gave 2 stars is because I didn't want to totally thrash my guitar idol. I tested all the settings, switches, clean/dirty, different amps/tubes/eq's, etc. I tested it all and all this pedal really is...an enhancement to an amazing Mesa Boogie stack. That's it...an ENHANCEMENT. It's not the sound or tone but, rather, simply an enhancement if you are working a killer stack with Celestion G12-65's and the "Boogie" or "Mesa" logos. There is hope though...for those of you that are as heartbroken as I am...fear not as you have options! For the Mustang GTX100 owners, I've already put together some remarkably "close" presets for you that you can download for free. Don't have a Mustang GTX100 laying around? Check out some amazing options with Positive Grid....they have amps AND software that WILL help you achieve the Metallica sound for under $500. Of course, you always have the option to drop $7-$10k on a Mesa stack. The choice is yours...for those with a budget, like me, our hope lies in presets and software for affordable amps like Fender or Positive Grids new products. I've heard them all and they will bring the satisfaction that we have craved so desperately for so long. If you are just getting started, let me save you some time...it's all about the tone...start there and start with lower overdrive/distortion than you'd expect and just keep working the tones. In general you want those lows at 7, mids at 2 (thought for some profiles you'll want to turn the mids up much higher), and bass start at 7. Again, this is just a baseline and to reiterate the importance of getting the tone right first. If you snag Positive Grid software, they'll solve all of these problems for you (and no I don't work for and don't even have any Positive Grid gear...just seen and tested a lot of demos). Good luck...there is hope for us all! :) Hope this helps...see you in the Fender cloud and download my presets to get a head start...don't forget to thumbs up if you like them, this feeds my ego! Happy hunting!

Being a long time fan of Kirk Hammett.. I was ecstatic when I discovered the KHDK line of effects, because they are relatively new and not widely advertised like some of the other manufacturers. I ordered this pedal right away in my desperate search to get a better sounding hi-gain distortion, which has been an uphill battle since I play a single coil Strat. I read a lot of positive reviews and viewed a lot of demos that featured this pedal and it sounded amazing. However it was not the case for me. Most of the reviews boasted the fact that the pedal features an on-board noise gate.. which I will say was not a bonus feature, but a necessity for this pedal to have. This was the fifth fairly high-end distortion pedal I have tried, and the most expensive. The noise that it produced was horrendous.. none of the other pedals I tried even came close to being as noisy as this. I will say that the built-in gate is very effective. I really made an honest effort, and spent several hours with the pedal, isolated from the rest of the signal chain, just tinkering and trying to dial in a workable tone.. It just didn't happen. I am not trying to say this is not a good product, it just didn't work with my gear, which I can understand. I truly believe this pedal would work well with hi-output humbuckers and was probably designed with that consideration. I am going to hang on to the pedal since I will be getting another guitar with hi-output pickups fairly soon and I do have faith in KHDK products.FYI, I am using an American Standard Strat (all single coil) and a Bassbreaker 15 combo.. so if you have gear similar to mine, you might want to consider a different pedal. I have achieved really good hard rock / metal distortion tones using a Wampler Dracarys and a Friedman BE-OD.Just my 2 cents.. hope it helps!

This is one of the best pedals I’ve owned. It’s a high gain pedal, so be prepared to melt your face. The gate works really well to control unwanted noise. The first tendency is to keep cranking up the various controls, but if you keep the knobs closer to 12 noon, you won’t need as much gate to control noise and you still get an amazing high gain metal sound. The tone is evil, the chugs are thick, and leads are super juicy.

So far, this is the best OD pedal used, and that's a lot of them. The Dark Blood has a wide range of tones and the controls are very sensitive. It's actually different than most other OD pedals. It's not just making it louder and more distorted. I can make the clean channel on my JVM410HJS sound like the OD2 channels if desired. The Dark Blood is used as if another channel to the amp with a slightly different tone. I am anxious to try the Ibanez NuTube Screamer and the Revv G3 has already been pre-ordered. It'll be interesting to see how they stack up to the Dark Blood.

I'm not a picky tone chaser. If it sounds good I'll use it. The noise gate kills any sustain. Gain goes from nothing to screaming buzz with nothing in between. Doom knob just turns everything muddy. I had huge hopes for this pedal but I just cant see how or when I'd use this sound. Norwegian black metal guitarists might say this pedal is too analog for then.

You Don’t need a new guitar (or maybe you do who cares). This pedal has solved the issue of how will I ever sound like....Play around with the dialsIt’s Perfect.

Worth every cent. A rockin' pedal.