Had to return because the XLR output didn't work

I need to start this review with a couple of disclaimers. First, I am primarily a bass player who also plays guitar. I’ve been playing both for over 50 years, but now I just noodle around with my bass and guitar at home for my own enjoyment. Second, I have never done pedals. No special reason, I just never had any bass or guitar pedals. But I have acquired a few and am having fun with them.Having said all that, this seemed pretty cool, so I ordered it from Amazon. I have a couple of other pedals from Joyo and they have impressed me with their quality and sound at a reasonable price. It seems to be well made with a sturdy aluminum case. The knobs work smoothly and the jacks give a nice secure feel when the cords are plugged in. The footswitch seemed to take a little extra effort, but I was using my hand to press it because I had it sitting on top of my amp while testing. It has a jack for the standard 9v DC power supply that most pedals seem to use.As typical with these devices, the instructions that came with the pedal really don’t have any information on how to use it. The control knobs are Low, High, Drive, Harmonics, Volume, and Mix. Plus, there is a Ground Lift switch that is for when you are using the XLR Out jack. Speaking of knobs, the pictures of this unit in the Amazon description show the “Mix” label, but no knob. The pedal I received actually has a Mix knob to go with the label.The Amazon description states that this pedal “captures all the sound of a mic'd classic tube bass amp”. I tried this pedal out through my Peavey Bandit 112, which is a solid-state amp with no tubes. I’m not sure that the pedal exactly gave me the same tone as my old Sunn 200S, but it did seem to have a nice bit of overdrive and a more powerful sound.When I get a new pedal like this, I generally start with all of the controls at 12 o’clock and see how it sounds. I then turn the knobs, one at a time from their lowest to highest to see how each affects the tone. Finally, I just noodle around with different settings to get some sounds that I like.I didn’t have the opportunity to test this out as a DI box, but I believe that it would work pretty good in that application. I had fun with this pedal and the price seems reasonable for what you get

I didn't use the DI function, nor will I. I have other DI solutions. I'm sure it's fine in a pinch, but with the features on other DI's this one doesn't bring a lot to the table on that feature set. By default this will be fairly limited, but the advantage is that you can plug it into a PA via xlr and get a decent direct sound.I used this pedal as a pre-amp. The EQ is fairly powerful. The distortion goes from light crunch at about noon to a low end growl that doesn't cover a large harmonic spectrum, which is good from a mixing perspective. It kind of stays in its lane. You can get the pedal to take up some mid-range space by boosting the top end. I like the EQ functionality more than the gain/distortion, which is generally true with most pedals I use. The mix control is nice to allow some of the natural bass tone through. Form factor is on the smaller side, pedal itself is fairly light. The LED isn't eye piercingly bright, which is a positive.Nice inexpensive pedal that definitely has function as a pre-amp. I personally wouldn't use it as a DI, but the functionality is there, and the XLR output is a nice touch.

I really like a lot of things about this pedal. In terms of an Amp sim, it’s pretty basic but has a nice vintage tone to it that doesn’t get in the way. The DI is fantastic as it means you can use this at the end of a pedal chain and then run it straight into a mixer so you don’t have to mess with hauling an amp around for small gigs. For some reason there’s a rattling noise when I shake it, not sure what’s loose inside but it doesn’t seem to be hurting anything.This pedal does have one issue that will probably only hit you if, like me, you don’t yet have a dedicated pedal power supply: the AC filter on the power input is not great. Right now I’m using a switching power supply and while I have another pedal that it works alright with, this one puts out an obnoxious squealing sound on all of the outputs if you turn up the “Harmonics” knob at all. Really this is the power supply’s fault, but since my other cheapie pedal doesn’t seem to be bothered by this, I’m docking it a star because they should probably put a larger filter cap on their DC input,

You might say "without an amp" or you might say "sans amp" if you know what I mean.To get the basics out of the way - this pedal is well built, with thick Zinc alloy encolsure, clean soldering on decent quality PCB, HQ components including solid caps, battery isolation, barrell type XLR connector, etc.This is a..... Homage? to the mighty SansAmp Bass DI from the wayback 1980s. It acts and sounds very much like that OG DI, with a distinctive slap and spank that transcends the Bass realm and also does wonders for 6-strings, particularly acoustics and acs sims, and here I'll let you in on a protip - this can make vocals pop in a way that no compressor will, it's an old school secret weapon of sorts.It retains the classic control taper as well - 90% of the sweep of a given control is in the last 10% of the travel, which means extremely granular control of parameters.Also much like the OG Sans, the Overdrive character is a very acquired taste. I am not fond of it in excess, and I use it as more of a pure dynamics control, staying well below the 9 o'clock mark most of the time.The DI portion is excellent, doing the essential job of providing a clean, balanced signal at appropriate levels and impedence for connection to "pro" level live Reinforcement/Recording gear. The Ground Lift actually works, and this is a feature that is mostly long forgotten in the digital age but still potentially applies as long as you are connecting different gear together, which means pretty much always.It should be noted that while this is aimed at Bass players, the I/O is full range, and can also act as a recording DI for a guitar rig, floor modeller, etc. The Mix control lets you put this at the end of such a chain, with mix at 0, and essentially it then acts as a pure, full range DI.I have also found that using this in conjunction with one of the many XLR based wireless transceiver systems makes it into a perfect wireless you can put at the end of the chain. Running this with a guitar wireless and a battery powered BOSS modeller/TS, I have a completely cable-free guitar and pedal board.Also of note, as this is a disctinction that some find hard to really internalise due to lack of relevent experience - the effect of the "preamp" portion of this pedal/DI is MUCH more apparent at HIGH in-the-room volume, where the granularity of the controls makes much more sense since you CAN produce some very nasty tones with this thing when it is feeding a cranked amp and you get silly with the parameters. The OG Sans was aimed at gigging, semi-pro to pro level users, it expected to be used at rehearsal/stage levels most of the time.Overall this is a very well made and accurate homage to a classic, will probably be overlooked by most but is a hidden gem for those who vibe with it.