Selah Scarlett Love V3

[mcook217]

Hey guys,

so I've been undergoing this massive pedalboard project over the last couple of months since I finally started playing electric at a new church that my wife and I started going to about a year ago and part of that project was getting some new pedals that worked better for what we would be playing and fitting better with my style of playing. This week I picked up a Selah Scarlett Love V3 off of Reverb to try in place of my EH Soul Food. The Scarlett Love is a signature pedal for Nigel Hendroff of Hillsong United. It is a drive pedal that has three different overdrive options, three band eq, drive and volume controls and the different overdrives can be controlled via midi or from the footswitch. The different overdrives all share the same eq, drive and volume settings and can be cycled through by pressing the bypass switch until the LED color changes. Blue LED = Klon-ish, Red = TS-ish, and Green = Plexi-ish. So far I'm impressed with this thing and think the couple of video demos I was able to find on youtube didn't do it justice. The Klon setting is what you would expect. It's pretty transparent and gives you more of your amp but with more gain. The TS setting is thicker and should work really nicely with whatever amp you match it with since you have the three band eq to tame the mids or boost them or whatever you need. And the Plexi is pretty interesting. There seems to be a slight volume increase when switching to this setting but i think it is due to the more open amp-like tone that it achieves. The eqing of each overdrive mode changes slightly altering the tonal characteristics of each overdrive mode in addition to the level of saturation while still staying true to your settings in the three band eq. I used it this weekend at church and was really happy with it. I loved the ability to change the tonal characteristics of the drive while not taking up any more space on my board than the soulfood, and having it in a true bypass looper made it really nice, keeping the bypass switch on the pedal functioning just for changing modes. I stacked it a few times with my JHS Superbolt when it was in the TS mode and got some really amazing grinding heavy sustaining drive. The kind where you hit a chord and it just makes you smile. I'm still in that honeymoon period with it but i honestly can't see any reason this pedal won't be a permanent feature on my board. The size, the ability to switch the different drive modes with your foot, 3 band eq, more than enough gain and headroom available, and plays really well with others. I'm digging it.

here is demo of it going through the different modes:

[zpilot]

Please explain. When not using MIDI how do you switch modes? By pressing the switch for each change or by holding it down as the modes change until you have the one you want?

[mcook217]

Yea, the bypass switch makes the changes between modes. An immediate tap turns the pedal on and off, and if you press and hold for a second or two it will switch to the next mode. I could see this as a potential downside to the pedal if you don't use it within a looper or within a midi type setup where you can leave the pedal on all the time and just use the bypass switch to change modes or allow the midi controlling to do all the changes for you. The midi control can be used to change the modes or to turn the effect on or off. For instance if you wanted a midi preset for a lead tone using the plexi mode, a rhythm tone using the TS mode, etc. I'm not too up on that side of the pedal since I don't have those sorts of capabilities with my rig. But I do know that Hendroff does and has the pedal set up in a shelf or something where the midi does all of the tap dancing for him.

[zpilot]

Thanks. For that to work for most players I think they would need to have it on one of the three presets and (as you noted) use a true-bypass loop switch to engage the pedal. I'm surprised they didn't build it with that switch. Very few players use a MIDI controlled pedalboard and that would really expand their market.  All it would require is a slightly larger enclosure and a switch which wouldn't cost that much more.   Maybe we will see a Selah V4 with that added.

[mcook217]

Yea I can see that being added in the future because of the people requesting for it. Honestly though, I was just trying it out as if I didn't have a looper and it wasn't too bad. Click it and it's on, press and hold and it changes. It really takes a purposeful click and hold to make them change and I tried holding it after the mode changed to see if it would cycle and it stops after the one change. Holding it for an even longer time takes it into a mode for choosing midi actions. I wouldn't say the single switch should be a deal breaker though, since the v2 just had a toggle switch for only two modes (TS and Plexi). So this does make it easier to change on the fly since it is by foot adds an extra overdrive mode, and like I said, the enclosure is a standard sized MXR size case or the same size as a soulfood, timmy, etc. so it is really pedalboard friendly. I think it was definitely a compromise between the needs of the player it was made for and the needs of the company trying to make it friendly to everyone. If you have midi or a looper, great! If not it is definitely still manageable.