Spaceman Effects Redstone

This felt a bit like a crowbar to the teeth.
I had this pedal all figured out in my mind, and then it did not do as I thought.
Having pieced together that the company that made the Saturn VI, the dirty boost / light drive that made it onto my pedalboard after spiraling my way upwards (and occasionally downwards) through so many dirt pedals, the one I cant praise high enough has made another pedal that uses a tonestack I really love. But they did change that tonestack a bit, the dip it usually has around 600Hz that is the one weak spot IMHO, has been bumped up by 6dB. So it surely must be the most stellar thing out there for my kind of application.
Well, I plugged it in, set the dials in a way that I estimated to be close to perfection and I got .. . nothing that pleased my ear. In a word, the drive sounded totally artificial. Like a lump of alien interference attached to my beautiful dry signal. I twisted knobs some more, but could not make it good. I took out the trusty ol’ HWUA for a direct comparison, maybe the early spot in the chain was wrong for that kind of pedal – but the results were even more sobering: The HWUA delivered as expected. A rich and organic texture of dynamic drive, beautifully shaped by the Alembic/Fender tonestack, full of tube warmth and goodness.
What I notice when I compare Redstone and Saturn, is that the Saturn makes the notes bloom with that organic flavor, and using my worn flats, it brings in those harmonics that create some natural feeling treble content in my signal. The attack is as it should be and the low gain drive sounds are among the best I ever experienced in my personal setup.
The Redstone reminds me of an old Carlsbro combo amp I owned for a while. When I bought it, I got it for five bucks because it was listed as “broken” without further explanation. I hoped that either speaker or amp was dead and that I could scavenge the half that was still working. Plugging it in at home revealed that the amp did fine, but the speaker added a lot of noise at higher levels. It turned out that the tolex that was folded inside the vent had come loose and whenever there was air being pushed around, the flap of tolex in the vent would vibrate in the breeze.
A single cut with a sharp knife repaired that amp – but before that, it sounded a bit like the Redstone.

With the gain cranked and everything else at zero, I get a sound that is not unpleasant, but it’s clean. When I raise the mids to about noon, I start getting dirt, and around one o’clock, it drastically changes flavor from just a hint of dirt to full-on slurry pump. However, my ear perceives this not as a part of the tone, but rather like that tolex flap inside the cabinet’s vent. I can’t help it. It sounds a bit muffled – but there is a treble knob sitting at zero, so I raise that a bit, but it seems to amplify all the wrong stuff and the sound gets more unpleasant.

This simply was not meant for me. The Saturn VI is one of those pedals that I bought without hesitation after trying one out for a bit, and where my current mental horizon is not capable of encompassing the event of ever letting go of it.
The Redstone surely can do useful, maybe even beautiful sounds – on other people’s pedalboards.