Kasleder Jellyfish

Kasleder FX from Hungary is a small company. Every pedal is hand made by Albert Kasleder himself, even though you get these from major retailers (I got mine from Thomann). The circuits are designed by Albert Kasleder, and the designs are done by his partner Eszter. I’ve had this on my shortlist for at least a couple of years, but never really looked into it very closely. At some point I began searching for one, only to realize that these seem to sell from retailers, but are very hard to find in the second hand market; When they are, they go quickly and very close to retail price. That’s bad for the bargain hunter, but a good sign for the tone hunter. Apparently, people buy these and never part with them. Fed up with the waiting game, I scooped one up, brand new, full price.
I can’t tell you why, but the pedal feels very high quality when I hold it in my hands. The print is done really well and the knobs have a satisfying feel to them. Unboxing it, the pedal comes inside a cotton bag and there is a bit of case candy plus a manual. Taking a peek inside, the high quality impression continues. The PCB is laid out beautifully and soldered by someone who really knows their way around a hot iron. The components I can identify are top notch, including the jacks and pots.
Also, the powder coating of the aluminum enclosure is done thoroughly – the inside of the box is also orange; The quality of the job is outstanding.
The manual keeps quiet about the nature of the EQ, but it holds some useful information:
The volume knob is at unity around noon with the gain at minimum, and it is strong enough to drive a power amp. The EQ is active, capable of boost and cut, flat at noon.
The gain knob passes signal at minimum. When you turn it up, you not only increase the drive, it will also increase the amount of dry signal that is bleeding into the driven signal to retain the low end.
There are also some sample settings listed. With the powerful output, it’s possible to achieve a mid boosted signal by turning down bass and treble and compensating by running the volume a little higher.

With all that out of the way, how does it play?
The day the pedal arrived, I was strapped for time and had to attend …. stuff. So all I could manage was a short test drive, by dropping the Jellyfish into what was already rigged and play a bit in that setup.
The two other pedals I had in the signal chain were the Audio Kitchen Fake Plastic Trees and the Effectrode Tube Drive.
At first look, that this is somewhat of an illustrious company, but with the reputation that precedes the Jellyfish, I felt it should absolutely be able to attend a formal dinner with the upper crust.
The first thing I noticed was that the forced dry blend sucks. I cannot help it, but it feels like I am trying to get in a little more edge and the pedal eludes the fulfillment of that wish no matter what I try. I raise the gain – the dry amount raises, too and overwhelms, blunting the edge. The honing stone in form of the treble knob somehow is no real help in that scenario, either. I feel like I’m constantly gunning for more edge and it’s simply not coming.
Not a big help was that both FPT and Tube Drive were able to deliver that seemingly without effort.
But here is the defense for the Jellyfish: I did have no time for proper testing and only dropped it into an existing signal chain that happened to work really well with the FPT and Tube Drive because all the pedals downstream were properly set to work with them. It’s okay to not thrive in an eco system that is not built for you.
So the proper thing to do is to completely forget the first impression and re-start the testing, this time in a manner that befits a new pedal – by hooking it up to a setup that is as neutral as I’m willing to go (I WILL boost lows, no matter what) and carefully listening to what it does there, with no additional gain stages interfering (or possibly interfering) down the line.

I made myself forget the first impression and restarted from a neutral position and with a neutral mindset. This time, I had the Xotic BB Bass Preamp in the chain, along with the Tube Drive.
The Xotic and the Effectrode are running with their tonal controls set to give off a fair bit of top end. On the Effectrode, the tone knob is about 3/4 up and on the Xotic, the treble knob is also about 3/4 up. On both devices, this gives off more of an airy room for the sparkle, and the finger noise and plucking attack is emphasized. It certainly would be too much with fresh rounds, I’m sure, but I am a flats player.
Both the Xotic and the Tube Drive kind of breathe in a bit of life and freshness into my sound. What I found is that in this context, the Jellyfish sounds a bit muffled in an A/B/C comparison, even with the treble knob running at max.

Out of curiosity, I switched off my cabinet simulation (which is, essentially, a resonant low pass) and listened to the devices again. Both the BB and the Tube Drive gave off that ghastly sizzle that you all know and dread – the stuff that happens when you play an overdrive directly into a PA system.
The Jellyfish also sounded a little different here – but it was still fine, no ugly sizzle.
My spontaneous assumption was that there is some kind of low pass working in the Jellyfish and that it is set a little bit lower than I personally like, hence the muffled feeling.
Looking closer at the EQ section of the Pedal, I’m pretty sure the boost and cut happen after the clipping stage. Neither bass nor treble influence the nature of the clipping, only emphasize their respective frequency areas. I do admit that I feel unable to determine how the EQ is tuned exactly.
Apart from that, I have one major gripe with the Jellyfish. Again, I felt like the dry blend did just a little too much for my taste. I would want to reduce the ratio by a small increment. In this setting, playing through headphones and cabinet, I constantly have the feeling that there is a thin piece of vellum inserted between the dry signal and the dirt signal, and that this piece is messing with the connection between fingertip and eardrum. What my fingers do feels a touch disconnected from what my ears receive.
The sad bit, for me personally, is, that this thing sounds fantastic otherwise, and it’s not far off. If the wet/dry ratio was tilted only a little bit further towards wet and whatever limits the top end let through just a few Hz more, I’m pretty sure that I’d be all over this. The grind is organic and has a great texture to it. It’s raspy and feels very powerful. It sounds like it was done right – and it does not immediately remind me of any of the classics. If this was based on a popular circuit, it’s not immediately evident. The pedal is touch sensitive and played in front of a comp set to limiting, you get a wide range of dirt just through your playing dynamics. The tone you get from the drive is, in one word, great.
I’m fairly sure that when you’re mainly playing rounds and want something that is relatively easy to set without too much fuzz (pun intended), then the Jellyfish must be a great choice.

Here are two sound snippets.
First is the Jellyfish with the bass slightly raised, the treble 3/4 up and the gain around 1 o’clock.

Second ist the Jellyfish with bass and treble slightly raised and the gain around 3/4 up.