Guitar Gear Forum

The Friedman IR-J arrived on Friday and I got to spend the weekend with it and I think I like it the best of the 3 "IR" pedals. It sits pretty similarly with the IR-X in terms of how much gain it has but maybe a tad cleaner/tighter. Not really a monster high gain metal unit but I gave it a good college try for science.

Channel 1 is kind of a plexi-ish rhythm sound. Not squeaky clean but has a nice edge of breakup sound at it's cleanest and with the gain pushed a bit more has a nice fat low gain crunch that you can clean up with the volume knob but also take into much higher gain with the built in boost or a boost pedal in front.

Channel 2 has a low and high gain mode and I prefer using the low gain mode for more of a traditional JCM800 style gain structure/saturation amount and then using a drive pedal in front of the pedal for more gain.

The built in boost is ok but I don't love it. It's adequate in a pinch. Supposedly it's a TS circuit with the gain control at 0 and tiny potenitiometers on the side of the pedal for tone and level control.

My unit had one or both preamp tubes failing though. The output was low, lots of noise and the sound was really dull. I swapped in two good 12AX7's and it was a night and day difference.


I paid for this unit so I have it as long as I want. Our band has a break right now from shows (football season basically shuts down the bars in town) and if I had gotten the unit from Zzounds affiliate program, I probably wouldn't have had enough time with it to take it on stage, which I like doing for all my demo products.

Anyways, here's a couple videos.



And a video with no talking, heavier playing, drop tuning, etc using the Explorer

sounds good man. I liked mine but I still prefer the IR-D so I already returned the J

On your comment about the boost, there's a boost lock function in the software that allows you to retain the boost if you switch channels, so you don't need MIDI for that. But I also prefer a boost pedal for extra gain. I use the boost on the IR-D with the gain turned down to zero for a volume boost only.

Interesting. Yeah I need to poke at the software also to hear what the other IR's sound like.

Just poking around through the vids, sounds pretty good to me. Granted, I'm only able to listen through the VSX headphones right now, but it sounds pretty crunchy and thick to me. Pretty cool, man.

I am interested in trying the IR-J when the opportunity presents itself. I was in DC for a conference last week and took part of my day to travel home to go by Atomic Music and Chuck Levins where I finally got to try out the IR-D. I liked the IR-D better than the IR-X but would definitely need a TS-9 or BB Preamp to get it where I really want it to sit from a gain perspective. Maybe next time they will have the IR-J in stock.

Bill, If I had Chuck Levins and Atomic in my close proximity I would be broke, and possibly divorced due to gear purchases.

heath wrote: ↑Tue Oct 22, 2024 4:18 pm I am interested in trying the IR-J when the opportunity presents itself. I was in DC for a conference last week and took part of my day to travel home to go by Atomic Music and Chuck Levins where I finally got to try out the IR-D. I liked the IR-D better than the IR-X but would definitely need a TS-9 or BB Preamp to get it where I really want it to sit from a gain perspective. Maybe next time they will have the IR-J in stock.

Bill, If I had Chuck Levins and Atomic in my close proximity I would be broke, and possibly divorced due to gear purchases.

Yeah I use a SD1 with the IR-D for leads. For rhythm the preamp gain is enough.

And I'm definitely broke from all my Atomic Music purchases
Thankfully my wife is in the band so there's no risk of divorce lol

Guitarbilly wrote: ↑Tue Oct 22, 2024 4:37 pm Yeah I use a SD1 with the IR-D for leads. For rhythm the preamp gain is enough.

That is exactly what I would be doing as well with an IR-D. For now it is just not THAT much better sounding than my Tonex rig to justify the purchase. Once that soldano version drops though...

Guitarbilly wrote: ↑Tue Oct 22, 2024 4:37 pm And I'm definitely broke from all my Atomic Music purchases
Thankfully my wife is in the band so there's no risk of divorce lol

That helps with the potential marital issues if she is just as GAS prone as you.
Atomic is nearly overwhelming and the prices in person are better than they are on their Reverb store. My son came out of there with nearly two complete Alesis electric drum kits for $100 last week. I came home with a few pedals.