I first came across Stephen Reid of SJ Effects when he helped repair and mod my vintage Jen wah/volume pedal. He made it sound incredible. Then he helped with an urgent repair on my Mooer mini-pedalboard when a bandmate tripped over my cable and it fell to th floor, breaking three mini-switches.
Our conversation turned to his making me this pedal, and during that process I also acquired this boost and one of his medium-gain drive pedals.
The Goldcrest is a preamp and EQ offers a significant amount of clean boost for hitting an amp’s front end hard, and a single control which simultaneoulsy boosts top and cuts bottom, and vice versa. This feature is called ’tilt’ on hold Quad whiff amps, and is very effectively in a clean boost, because it can morph from bass to midrange to treble booster simply. The sweet spot for me is around 1 o’clock – some mid and some high-end boost.