I was going to blather on about a bunch of stuff, mainly history and search for overdrives and EQs, but I will try and jump straight to the point.
Basically it came down to I wanted to add an Echoplex type boost, a clean boost, parametric EQ and still keep room for other pedals like signal splitter, noise gate, etc. When the Source Audio ZIO came out, I decided to take a closer look at that and their EQ2 and give them a try.
First EQ. I really considered the Boss EQ-200. Slick, sliders, nice stuff going on. But, the Source Audio EQ2 is *also* Parametric, and I really prefer parametric. Add in the fact it has a built in noise gate, very cool. My only real complaint is that to get the most out of the EQ2 it needs to be hooked up to a computer to program (something I would like to avoid) but, with 4 patches available on the pedal (and 128 via MIDI) I can live with that, once I have the couple set, I am usually pretty good there. I should go more in to this one.
The ZIO. I quickly ran through a couple of things with that one, and gravitated pretty hard to the low cut setting. And *wow* that is *nice*. It seems to do all the right things in all the right places and leaves the amp shining through. The nuances, aggression, dynamics and feel of my SLO come through a lot more, not only in the room, but on the recording. This is definitely going to be a keeper.