Lovepedal 5E3 Deluxe mini-review

I bought my Deluxe 2-knob back in March 2019 but it wasn't until this weekend that I had a chance to use it in a band situation. It sounds good at home but out of a band context I couldn't have done any real sort of review.

I had an audition Sunday with a local cover band. Not being critical of them, but this is nothing special. Just some folks who learn typical rock and a few country covers to play small winery, brewery, bar and private gigs. I brought my Hamer Special P90 (the Tele is undergoing electronic surgery at the moment) and a VHT Special 6 (based on BF Champs) through a 15" Weber. The other dirt pedal is a SubDecay Flying Tomato fuzz with knobs set up to act more like a distortion pedal. AutoFilter, Comp, Delay & Reverb rounded out the board.

Short story: I was really happy with the Deluxe. I had it set for unity with the straight clean tone. Volume around 11 o'clock and drive around 9. With guitar volume on 10, that's a lot of dirt going on but just pull back to 8 and it starts to clean up nicely.

The Deluxe has a 3-way toggle to set headroom. This was the biggest revelation playing with another guitar, bass and drums. At home that switch feels like it creates real inconsistent volume so that if I go from the least headroom to the most headroom I also have tweak the Volume and Drive knobs. But in the band setting that was never an issue. So for harder edge stuff or slide I'd have it in the least headroom position, but for a slightly cleaner sound like on some country tunes I'd go to the most headroom position but wouldn't have to make any other adjustments. I never used the middle position, but that might be just the right setting for other players.

The Deluxe also worked great for adding some grit to short riffs behind or in between vocal lines. I'd strum with the pedal off, then turn on the Deluxe for a riff, then back off. The way I had it set changed the tone enough to stand out without jumping on top of the vocals.

Finally, the Deluxe played nicely with the other pedals. I used a Comp after it for either a clean boost or country-style compression. More fun were the Auto Filter and Fuzz in front of it. The Fuzz + Deluxe for a heavier lead tone or end-of-song outros when the drummer was going to town or the other guitarist was playing a bit too loud (in my opinion, of course). And the Deluxe reacted well to the Auto Filter which I've found is not true of all overdrive or distortion pedals.

Does the Lovepedal Deluxe sound like an actual cranked 5E3 Deluxe? Heck if I know. I used to own a Marsh 5E3 clone but that was so long ago I can't remember. But now that I've gotten a chance to use it for two and a half hours with another guitar, bass and drums I'm real happy I picked it up last year.

Finally, I bought the Lovepedal Deluxe for $75 shipped on one of their Saturday sales. But now that Lovepedal is on hiatus at the least or out of business at the worst, these are being list for $130 and higher. I've no intention of selling but somehow that's still nice to see.

 

Ha ha ha ha.
I forgot how mostly cool and laid back TDPRI still has few trigger topics.
Had I remembered about the Lovepedal issues I may not have posted.

My review was only about the sound and my usage of the pedal. I'll get back to you in several years regarding build quality, but I see nor feel no problems compared to lots of other things I use. Not sure what the supposed issue with the toggle switch is. It's solidly mounted and switches between the three settings -- what else do you need?

Re: going the DIY route - that's cool, but for those of us who aren't set up for that either skills-wise or with the equipment/parts on hand, it's not as easy or cheap as some make it out to be. If you want to DIY five or ten pedals, it works out. If you want to DIY just one pedal I found it is less expensive to buy something already built. Just my little bit of research into it.

Sure, Sean tweaked, updated and remarketed old circuits. But isn't that what a whole lot of pedal (and amp) makers do? Didn't Leo base his first amps on circuits provided by tube manufacturers? Didn't Jim Marshall take off from a Bassman circuit? And most people don't seem to have a problem buying the latest greatest Klone instead of an actual Klon. A lot of these great new digital reverb and delay pedals are based on the same underlying chips and it's the programming that makes them different. So are they all copying and tweaking the same thing or are they making something entirely new? And do you think they are writing all their code from scratch or did they start with some basic code for simple reverb or delay and then start adding to and modifying it?

Also, love-love-love my Lovepedal Rubber Chicken. So much fun and much more versatile than I had realized auto filter pedals could be.

The Lovepedal Hermidia EPH-3 is an always-on pedal for my acoustic guitar. The pre-amp sim in that just does "something" that I really like.

I will say that the list price on Lovepedals seemed quite high to me. If you google up the LP Deluxe 5E3 and click on the Add To Cart button, it shows $225. Ummm, no....not paying that kind of money. But, again, I only paid $75 on the sales that LP did on a fairly regular basis.