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Ibanez Jemini Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal

The Ibanez Jemini unleashes Steve Vai's first Signature Distortion pedal. The unique, multicolored Jemini stompbox combines overdrive and distortion in one rigid aluminum case. Magnificent LED lights surrround the knobs, and a unique multicolor case with Vai logo rubber foot pedals dress this awesome pedal. The Jemini is meant to be seen as well as it is heard. Each...

Price: $179 to $199

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Mixed feelings

Ease Of Use	This pedal originally caught my eye when surfing through YouTube videos, where I had come across Steve Vai's fancy advertisement that he recorded for his new signature pedal. (If you've not seen it, it is pretty entertaining.) I liked what I saw and heard and decided to try one. It actually behaves like two independent pedals: Overdrive, and distortion. Each half of the pedal has its own independent Drive/Tone/Level control knobs. You'll see green glow around controls on the overdrive side if that is the active channel, or a red glow around the controls on the distortion side respectively. Activating either side is done by stomping on its respective pedal switch. I'd say the operation is pretty intuitive. There's a battery save switch which cuts the brightness of the channel illumination by about half. I keep it at full power since I use this in my pedal board where I have a 9V DC power supply. The pedal itself has storage for an extra battery. Yes, extra! Have you ever seen that in a pedal?
Sound	I've used this pedal within the effects loop of my Boss GT-10, as well as plugged directly into my Blackheart Little Giant stack. I've used it with both my JS1200 and JEM7V guitars as well. As for my impressions on the overall sound, first I'll start with the Overdrive (left) side. I wanted to mention that I like the tone control; the tapering a bit more to my liking than on a Vox Satchurator, as I find the sound being sweet to my ears across the full range from minimum to maximum tone setting. (As opposed to the Satchurator, where anything past about the 1:00PM position gets way too screechy.) In fact, I found it almost impossible to get a screechy tone no matter what I did, and that was a surprise. I would describe the overdrive side as being mild and smooth and by itself it is able to give some nice rhythm tones. What I found is that I really liked the way the overdrive side adds extra gain to my Blackheart Little Giant stack which has already been pushed into tube saturation. It really thickens up an already saturated tone. The same holds true when connected into my Boss GT-10's effects loop -- this pedal is a great gain booster for the extra crunch or punch I was looking for on lead tones. I don't particularly care for the sound I'm getting on a completely clean channel and just using the pedal to color the sound, however as a gain boost it seems to my liking. However, when it came to the distortion (right) side, I became disappointed. It seems just a bit thin, and I'm not able to get a good bass boost when pushing the drive way up. I can't seem successfully marry the red side to any of my GT-10 patches. When I pipe it through my Little Giant stack, the distortion side still doesn't grab me. Perhaps it might take being hooked up to a Carvin Legacy stack and some further EQ processing for it to sound anywhere close to Steve Vai's video? I've tried the distortion side at all drive & tone settings and it still just sounds thin and artificial. I can get much richer fully distorted tones from my Vox Satchurator, both through my amp as well as through the GT-10. So for me, only the overdrive side is usable in my particular setup, and for that it is really hard to justify the $200 expense. I'd really hoped this pedal would truly live up to the hype of being the perfect overdrive/distortion combo for obtaining the classic "Steve Vai" sound. And perhaps it does, if you have Steve's EXACT setup with the G-system and his specific patches & EQ modeling. For me, it doesn't quite cut it.
Reliability	I love its physical attributes -- it seems really well built, and the extra battery storage was nice of them to provide.

Liked about it	It provides a nice gain boost from the overdrive side * It seems well built * The tone knob's sound tapering gives a good useful range
Didn't like	The distortion side just isn't my cup of tea