JPTR FX Jive

When I got to test it, I put it in front of my pedal board, so I could A/B it with the Saturn VI that sits right next to it. In that position, I would have liked a bit more dirt on tap, without having to resort to the clipping diodes.

With the gain dimed, I was getting some hair, but that felt more like a hair on the upper lip of a 14 year old trying to pass for 16 and not like a hair on 1965’s Sean Connery’s chest.
I moved it to the hotter section of my pedal board, after the comp, and there it was!

First, I need to get this off my chest: The clipping diodes did not, in any way tickle my fancy. The mids get quite compressed and stand out a lot, and I could not tell if there is bass loss of if the mids are so much in the foreground that you dial back on the master and only perceive a bass loss – also the clipping felt a bit crude and artificial, but not in a good way. YMMV.

But that is all the ‘bad’ I could find so far. Gregor from the BassTheWorld YT channel was raving about this pedal, and he did not care about the diodes, either. So proceed with all the switches to the left:
With more signal pushing into the Jive, the point of breakup moves to a comfortable position on the gain knob.
Since I was in A/B comparing mode, I did try and capture my favorite settings from the Saturn VI yet again and play both pedals against each other. I tried to have them sit in a spot where soft playing gives me lows so clear that you can’t really hear any dirt when playing with a drum backing track, but digging in pushes it past breakup.
Both pedals can do that exceptionally well, but they feel differently.
The Saturn VI is able to add a bit more treble, giving the harmonics more sparkle. It feels a bit sleeker and a lot more sophisticated. It is the overdrive you want to use in a library or in an expensive book store.
The Jive has a very different attitude. I don’t know the English term for the leisure activity where you take a can of cold malt&hops ambrosia, pierce the lower part of the sidewall with a sharp object, raise it to your lips, crack it open and try to survive the next two seconds, but when the Saturn VI is sipping fine wine, the Jive is that activity.
Both will eventually get you to the same result (they chase away the sobriety), but there are differences.
I noticed that the Jive feels like it compresses or even pushes the mids a bit. I had to carefully balance gain and volume to the spot where there is no jump in volume, but the lows stay intact. I don’t think it siphons off your low end, but it certainly makes your midrange stick out a bit more once you get some drive going, and that squeezes you through the mix.

Playing the Saturn VI into the Jive left me grinning from ear to ear and maybe even salivating a little on the floor. Take a very touch sensitive boost that doubles as a very low gain overdrive and play it into another such device – I don’t know if the result strictly has to be that you go from touch sensitive to touch sensitive², but this pair certainly did it. I got from clean sounds when playing softly to massive grind when digging in and everything between that at the tips of my fingers. The Saturn feeds the Jive more treble, which alters the texture of the Jive’s breakup and the result is something I could very well live with.

I set the gain on the Jive a bit higher, so I don’t have two different flavors of the same thing and this left me with a slight harmonic enrichment drive so sophisticated it spreads the pinky away from the glass, a more down to business dirtier dirt tone with some attitude, and solid drive with both pedals active.

I really like what I’m getting here.

And I understand how people claim that everyone should have a Jive.
It really is one of those pedals like the Hudson Broadcast or the Fairfield Barbershop or of course the Saturn VI, where you want to dial in a low gain setting and leave it on all the time because it just makes things better.

You can set the Jive to a point past clean but still mostly pre breakup, where you can feel the notes bloom behind the initial attack, but they don’t really fully do it. Use it to place yourself a little differently in a mix, or play any kind of dirty boost into it to get a completely different result.
Experiment – there’s more than one useful thing here.
Especially for the relatively low price, this is a terrific addition to the pedal board of tone hunters and people that look for a very mild gain pedal to spice things up.