Peavey Session/LTD 400 pedal vs Sarno Steel Guitar Black Box Pedal?

[Dave Falk]

? for the forum. if using a Quilter 101 reverb and a 12inch dockblock cabinet how do these 2 pedals compare? Why choose one pedal over the other?

Thank you

Dave

[Dennis Detweiler]

The Peavey pedal is an original Session 400 preamp with all of the original transistors and tone controls. The Black Box is a tube tone enrichment. You can't actually compare the two because they are for different purposes.

[Dave Campbell]

i think you're meaning to compare the new peavey session/ltd 400 pedal to the brad sarno sesh 400 pedals, which is a comparison that i've pondered as well.

[Dennis Detweiler]

TC Furlong makes the Sesh 400 pedal. I guess we need clarification and more details with the original question?

[Dave Falk]

The Peavey pedal is an original Session 400 preamp with all of the original transistors and tone controls. The Black Box is a tube tone enrichment. You can't actually compare the two because they are for different purposes.

Dennis, you say they are used for different purposes, what are the different purposes for changing or altering tone?
Example, if I am using a Quilter 101 w/reverb would I use the Session 400 Pedal to alter/change tone? Or if I use a Milkman the amp 100 I would instead use the Blackbox to alter/change tone?

Thank you kindly,

Dave

[Tucker Jackson]

I think it would more accurate to say they are different animals -- rather than used for different purposes, since they both shape your tone.

The Black Box has a tube in it, and that's the main selling point. Ideally, you plug your guitar directly into the unit and then route to the rest of your rig. This is mostly useful for those that use a solid state amp (like a Quilter or Peavey NV 112), as it adds some creamy tube goodness to the signal chain. It's a very subtle effect, but it's there, especially after the unit warms up. It taks about 45 minutes for mine to really kick in, but sounds good cold too. It does have one knob, a tone control, but that's obviously a pretty rudimentary thing in the realm of "tone shaping." I used a black box back when I was playing a solid state amp, but the tube is not needed with something like a Milkman amp, since it already has that preamp tube.

The Peavey Session 400/LTD pedal does not have a tube in it. It was created to try to emulate, in pedal format, the tone shaping of the legendary Peavey Session 400 amplifier from 1974 or it's sibling, the LTD. Neither amp are in production. Those amps are very heavy too, so if you want that sound, the pedal is one way to try to get closer.

TC Furlong also has a similar pedal with a similar name: the Sesh 400. It appears to do the same thing as the Peavey pedal, but it's handmade in the USA of the best components, so it costs more.

These pedals have 5 knobs for the EQ section and that's a lot tone-shaping options. So... if you didn't like the sound of the tone stack on your Quilter amp, you could bypass its preamp section by plugging the pedal into the "Effects Return" jack and then use the Session 400's knobs to dial in your tone. Note that on the Quilter, you would also need to put a dummy plug (a 1/4" jack with no cable) into the "Effects Send" jack to keep it from automatically combining it's preamp with the external one, at a 50/50 mix.

You can get a wide variety of sounds out of a Session pedal (just as you can the Quilter amp) -- versus the Black Box which is mostly just adding whatever subtle effect you get from routing through a hot preamp tube, along with the one tone knob that can tamp down the highs.

[Dave Grafe]

Besides the obvious tube component the primary feature of Brad Sarno's Steel Guitar Black Box is the Vari-Z impedance matching, i.e. adjusting the input impedance fot optimum response from the pickup. Many pedals now available - and the Quilter itself - emulate "tube" tone but I am not aware of any others with variable input impedance.