My Wampler Pinnacle: I try so hard to make it sound good...

I don't know, the Pinnacle clips I've heard sound great.
I agree the EVH 5150 sounds great in person, I have one and don't use it enough

 

If the gear do not suit you...get rid of it!
Sounds like the EVH works....what else is there to it?

 

I had the v1 Pinnacle and found there was no sweet spot on the tone knob. Like none. It went from mud to overly harsh in a millimeter of travel. Thankfully I got it stupid cheap and was able to sell it for around the same price.

Incidentally, you mention the ds-1, I have a ds-1 that we did the outlaw mod for and it slayed the Pinnacle no contest. Several dirt buys and sells later and the outlaw mod remains!

Wampler makes other cool stuff but the Pinnacle wasn’t for me at all.

 

+1 for the outlaw mod.

 

please forgive the thread interruption ... can I assume that braveheart is a Michael Landau (... and Bob Bradshaw) fan

... one night in the 80s, I was lucky enough to see Dog Cheese at The Baked Potato ...

 

sell it...life goes on

 

Pinnacle has been my main distortion for a while, no problems getting good tones out if it.

 

Are you using the Pinnacle standard or Deluxe? What are your settings?
Also, what amp are you going through?

 

I love my pinnacle deluxe. Hard to get a bad sound out of it for me.

I ran it into a Cab sim of my Helix Native today and wow, it sounded fantastic!

 

I've used it with a Fender Deluxe reverb, fender bassman ri, Vox AC30 currently, and thru the clean channel of my jvm410 and it sounded good thru them all. I did like it least thru the DRRI, which I liked least overall of all the amps and sold off first.


For guitars, I mainly use gretsches, but my tele sounds great with it as does my les paul and prs.

It has enough gain it doesn't need to be boosted, though I do like the tone it gets with a treble booster in front (from my wampler thirty something)

I use several overdrive and drive pedals, but I would have no problem using only the pinnacle if I could have only one. It does well low gain thru high for me.

 

Pinnacle Deluxe V1, replaced by a Fat Sandwich, which is more flexible and does low gain.

YMMV

 

Could it be other factors making it sound bad? User error, lack of technique, deaf in both ears, etc?



Nah, it is probably the Wampler.

 

Hi,
Interesting OP topic - I have a wampler pinnacle on my gig pedal board for about 3-4 years now and what I thought was amazing at first, but now hardly gets used, and starting to look for alternatives. I guess our tastes evolve or we just get use to the tone.

I use the pedal for that "MIAB" lead tones and find it sounds great with my single coils guitars, not so much with the Les Paul. The sag is real and had to stop using it with the Les Paul and Wah at same time, which caused massive volume drops.

My pinnacle apparently also adds a touch too much bottom end that I can't dial out, which unfortunately makes it a bit mushy for playing chords. Interesting that I have found others that have commented the same thing elsewhere, as my amp settings are not very "bassy" at all.
I still highly rate the pedal as when it sits in its "zone" it sounds really good. I'm finding I need something a bit more versatile at moment. For my Les Paul I use an OCD which is a great all rounder, but still not quite what I want.
The search continues.....
Best of luck with yours

 

Never tried one but Andy Wood gets a great tone using a Pinnacle boosted with a Tumnus.
I have a V2 MI Audio Crunch Box for brown sounds and dig it for the most part.