SEYMOUR
DUNCAN
PALLADIUM
GAIN STAGE
REVIEW BY DAVID A. EVANS
STREET PRICE $299.00
Seymour Duncan’s
Palladium Gain Stage
overdrive aims to please
even the most jaded of
tone hounds. The company
claims that the Palladium is
the first pedal to capture
the tone and behavior of
an overdriven tube amp.
Based on my tests, I’d say
that the Palladium succeeds
admirably in capturing the
sound and feel of a genuine
amplifier. It’s a pedal with
tones that run the gamut
from soft blues to Van
Halen’s famous “brown
sound,” and it offers a
superior level of tonesculpting control.
The Palladium offers a
curious two-knob setup for
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control of the distortion.
The Gain knob adjusts the
level of distortion in the
lower frequencies while
the Resonance knob adds
or removes distortion from
higher frequencies. I can’t
recall a similar arrangemen t
on other pedals that I’ve
reviewed, which leads me to
believe that the Palladium’s
two-knob distortion circuit
is uncommon. In fact, during
testing, I was surprised to
discover that the Resonance
knob had any connection
to the distortion circuit.
First time users who tend
to overlook instruction
manuals could easily miss
this fact, which shows that
it’s always important to
Seymour Duncan Palladium Gain Stage
review the instructions.
Speaking of overdrive,
the Palladium provides
more than enough, but
it also responds just as a
genuine amplifier would.
As I mentioned earlier, the
Palladium provides more
than enough distortion
and sustain for those allimportant finger-tapped
solos. Rolling back my
guitar’s volume to its lowest
settings cleaned up the
signal but still maintained a
bit of edge. In this respect,
the Palladium felt very much
like a tube amplifier.
Additional overall level
control comes in the
form of the Boost switch.
Depending upon the