TBH I haven't tried the pedal so I was only commenting on the original lunchbox units. I am open to the opinion that the pedals are good. The reviews seem to be mixed though. At any rate, I recall that the originals had no 1/4" in/out jacks and resultingly, required custom 500 series lunchbox enclosure interface units in order to be connected with amplifier FX loops. And IIRC, since these were originally meant to be studio only tools, didn't even operate at typical +4 db line levels. I think it was much higher so I wonder if the interface padding down the signal influenced the tone.