PRS Horsemeat Review
Our Verdict and Review Summary
The Horsemeat is very mellow, enough to tame a brighter EQ while simultaneously promoting warmth, even as a clean boost. It's very similar to a tube amp with a moderate gain level, somewhere between a Fender tube combo and Mesa. I kept the treble high since my testing rig already trends low, and found it to be very satisfying with gain turned a bit lower. It goes right up to the line of modern, heavy distortion as a standalone pedal - and more if you use it as an amp boost.
BEST FOR: Smooth tube-esque distorted tones, clean boost, and rhythm/lead hybrids.
TONE
93
CONTROL
87
VERSATILITY
93
PRICE/VALUE
85
- Very warm and smooth
- Great for taming brighter amps
- Sounds great as a clean boost
- Lots of application for lead and rhythm styles
- We're always happy to see Germanium diodes
- Hard to get a ton of variety out of the Voice control.
- Can get a little too muffled if your rig already leans on a lower EQ profile.
Germanium diodes give you a smooth and warm overdrive sound that's also known to be very versatile in an overdrive pedal. These tone qualities are prominent in the PRS Horsemeat and give it the vibe of a moderately aggressive tube amp. It's not a gain monster, but it can get fairly heavy, and definitely excels in the low to mid saturation levels. We'll get into the full PRS Horsemeat review down below.
Also, you can read more about clipping diodes here.
The PRS Horsemeat transparent overdrive ready for testing.
Sound and Tone of the PRS Horsemeat
Brightness is not the Horsemeat's wheelhouse at all. It's very warm and inviting, but still somehow gives you really nice lead tones, which you can hear in the demo video below. To test, I wanted to see if it could take a solid state amp and give it more of a tube amp profile. In this case, I used a Boss Katana 50.
The Horsemeat did the job, and held its own as the sole provider of gain, without anything aside from a base clean tone coming from the amp.
With gain lower, it becomes a little more Klon-like, with a lot of subtle breakup and cleans easily detectable in the mix. All the versatility is on-brand for Germanium diodes, so we had nothing to complain about as far as the pedal's sound.
Lots of tube amp smoothness and room to experiment.
The Horsemeat Controls and Resulting Flexibility
Depending on the EQ lean of your amp, you'll likely need to keep the Treble knob on the Horsemeat pretty high. In fact, I had it almost cranked for most of my demo, and could turn bass down a lot before the distortion got even slightly thin. With the Voice knob, either I didn't know what I was doing or couldn't get as much variety out of it as I expected, which was a small disappointment.
But even with just the gain, treble, and bass controls, I didn't feel as though I lacked flexibility.
Again, it's the "from scratch" circuit that does most of the work here, especially at lower gain levels.
Control options are fairly standard, but effective.
Price and Value Considerations
Comparisons to the Horsemeat should be other overdrives with Germanium diodes.
The Fulltone Custom Shop Obsessive Compulsive Drive and Catalinabread Karma Suture are two good comps, and they both cost about $200 (at least at the time of writing this review). So I'd like to see the Horsemeat at $199, but there are still comparisons coming in at $250 or higher, like the Keeley, Walrus Audio, and Chandler Limited Germanium overdrive pedals.
Obviously your goals and current rig will determine how much value you get out of the PRS Horsemeat, but I would still consider it a generally high-value overdrive, in the middle tier of pricing levels.
There are plenty of boutique overdrive pedals that go well beyond $300.
The Horsemeat is middle-of-the-road in terms of pricing, on par with several other boutique overdrive pedals.
Wrapping up my Horsemeat Review
I hope PRS continues to make pedals, because their early foray into this market is very promising. The Wind Through the Trees flanger, in particular, is a fantastic pedal. Likewise, my experience with the Horsemeat overdrive has been great, and I'd recommend it for a wide range of styles, and anyone look for tube-like middle gain level distortion. If you have questions about my review, hit me up in the comments section below.
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Written by Bobby Kittleberger on Effects & Roundups
Written by Bobby Kittleberger on Effects & Reviews
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