Joyo American Sound, British Sound, AC Tone and California Sound: How Good Are They? 

Nice job on the comparisons! Thanks.

Thoroughly impressed with the American pedal. I brought it to try making a silent stage rig as my Mesa amp is not exactly quiet. Really impressed with it, my amp developed an issue a while ago and Im having to wait to afford getting it fixed. In the meantime I've been relying on this pedal along with a Amplitube X-Time (which features a cab sim function too). Together they have enabled me to create a really useable set up. I'm now even questioning returning to using a real amp on stage again.

Excellent work. Thank you

Great demo and review. Nicely done kid.

I really like your demos.

Thank you, good comparison. I am leaning toward the American as well, and I want to put it in as the preamp stage for my Powerstage 170.

Best video about these gems on youtube

Plenty of various clean to dirt sounds with that "American", and the knobs make notable differences even with slight adjustments. I'm really glad I bought one.

Starting a pedal board build with all 5 (AC / British / California / American and Oxford) with a Taichi (Dumeble-esque) to be able to switch between amp sounds in as home recording setting - feeding into a cab box. A Tauren overdrive on the front end. Almost a pure JOYO board, with a keeley compressor, and a few other things. I'll leave modulation and verbs / delays to the DAW. Wish me luck, should be done in a week.

These are the best pedals at this price point. I've had my American sound for years and have used it in several gigs. An amazing value.

I just bought an 80s Fender Sidekick 30 solid-state amp. Nice amp but a bit sterile. Just ordered a new speaker but in the meantime I tried a Joyo American in front and it was A HUGE improvement. Pretty darn great for $30 bucks!

Agree, the American is fantastic, great for Jam sessions, I've taken mine as a backup, but my Katana twin never failed yet, the others, not convinced, they have one now that is meant to emulate an Orange Amp, I add a simple Reverb on the output and the Caline Blue Sky works great as a drive for these, but as you say the American has some great drive anyway.

I bought the American and have ordered the British...for freinds jamming, stereo guitar jamming and for mire of an ACDC Van Halen type tones. Voice control is everything with these...tweaking between voice, gain and level is the key.

Another great video! I own the Ac Tone and the American Joyo pedals as I've used them live countless times to good effect. I felt slightly bad that they'd ripped off the Tech 21, so I forked out the best part of £200 and bought the Blond. The Blond circuit developed an intermittent fault within a couple of years and after sales support was non-existent in the UK and it never got fixed sadly. Tech21 stopped selling the pedals a couple of years ago and so Joyo have won out rightly or wrongly. It was good to see your review and you made me want to track down a British as the overdrive sound was great.

Good review though I think you may have underrated the ACTONE, I have tried them all and the AMERICAN SOUND and the AC TONE are IMHO the 2 best.

I've got the Classic Flanger which sounds a lot like the mxr which I love & the price was amazing. I think something like $30/$35 & also got the AC tone & it's good but I haven't messed with it much.

I just bought the British sound it amazing

I have the british, and even having less output than the others, it's already fucking loud, i love it

I use the American as a clean platform as well. I use the Blue Crab for my OD. You helped me with both of those choices.

I always appreciate your insight. The American is so great but I must admit that I wish the enclosure was smaller or all inputs and outputs on the top.

They're awesome pedals. I use an American Sound for all guitar parts on my channel backing tracks. DI into an audio interface, effects applied in the DAW. I've even A/B compared it with a friend's Strymon Iridium, which is obviously a more versatile, featured pedal. For the actual recorded sounds though, there is really not much in it. Amazing considering the price difference!

There's a guy that goes under "Jo bass" here on RU-vid and he did the American as a bass preamp and that thing I actually sounds really good

Use the acetone for my Red Special as a treble boost

Currently gigging with a Boss GP-10 into a full range speaker. It's great but I miss having a global preamp with accessible 3 band eq. The American Sound would fill that spot perfectly.

Nice video I actually use the ac tone pedal to boost my ac15 I agree with you as a mimic pedal it doesn’t do a great job. However I find boosting your existing vox platform it works quite well. I’m not debating there are far better things for that but I recently got an ac15 and already had the pedal so after trying all my other pedals with the new amp I thought why not plug the ac tone in? I was pleasantly surprised it can as you say boost your clean or you can set it up to come in over the top with some drive and break up more than the ac 15 would otherwise so I can work in a few roles if you’re trying ti save space on the board and you’re on a budget. I’ll buy the american at your advice as I don’t currently have a fender amp so why not.

Cool to hear all these in one video, thanks! Have you tried the Oxford one?

The AC TONE 🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

I like the British and American. I might buy one of them.

Using on a bass guitar the American is a standout amongst, not just the others in this Joyo line, but also others under $50. Magic with Voice @10/Drive @9-11. Set like this for classic vintage tube bass tone.

You need to try the Oxford Sound Orange tone amp

I think they were going more for the Mesa MKIIc than the Dual Rectifier with the California Sound pedal.

Thanks Jason, really informative.

who is the win pedal after this? i prefer the joyo American sound?

Good video, by the way I want to add it to my pedalboard, where should I put it? I have in this order: equalizer, compressor, overdrive, dist, noise Gate, chorus, tremolo, flanger, and delay. Where should I put it? Thanks

Vox's don't have a lot of bass? The way I heard it was that they don't have treble hence all the treble boosting and whatnot. What's California? Is that supposed to be like a Mesa Boogie or something? If these are meh, is there a better pedal?

impressed by the one emulating the american sound the most

Do you know they have the Oxford sound now ?

California does not have a recto tone but a mark ii or iii tone. And it does a really good job.

man, I kinda wanna know your opinion mate, like im currently in the pickle between California and British ones since I love the sound of Fender Amps especially clean, buy I also love the Gain and Drive of the Marshalls as well, which one should I pick bro?

I've got all four (call me a member of the Joyo Sound "cult", I guess). Joyo has now introduced the "Oxford" Sound Pedal, which is supposed to be a simulation of the Orange amp family.

I've owned all four of these at some point. I found the California and British to be the least impressive. The American and AC Tone were excellent and easily the best of them.

My two pence on these. I have the original foursome. American and AC Tone both ace, British very good, California not good at all. As DI boxes all of them sound better through a decent cab sim and all of them would be better if their internal cab sims were switchable. Just ordered an Oxford ... oooh.

I used the Cal, Amer n the acetone live for 3 years through a rack reverb n 1500 watt power amp. The only problem was voice knob over like 3/4 up made a lot of noise. N noise gate didn’t help much.

When you connect this pedal to an amp, do you connect it as a regular pedal? Or do you use the fx loop? And, if you are using a pedal chain, do you use it at the beginig? I mean, before the overdrive?

16:00 I would not reccomend to use any of the knobs on this pedal turned to the extreme positions. I now own Joyo California sound and must say that it really does resemble of Mesa amp sound. I also own Mesa Boogie Lone Star 1x12 and clean settings on the pedal are pretty close. Drive sound is different but pedal was meant to imitate Mark II. Not sure where you found the info about the Mesa Rectifier sounds coming out of this pedal. It does not say anything on the box or included manuals about Mesa Rectifier sounds. 16:44 Anyway I am now intrigued to know what are the pedals that do the Rectifier sounds great so I'd be glad if you could share :)

Fun fact, I am using the British joyo to record my bass (I play picked and palm muted), there is a nice and dynamic transient-rich compression and I can easily dial the dirtiness of the tone to fit nicely in the mix.

So good mine plays the radio 😂

Hello, have you tried plugging in direct to PA?

I had a new Line6 pod go, and I sold it because I like the American sound better with my at home rig. The American sound is by far the best. You can get a nice plucky deluxe sound and a decent tweedy baseman sound. On my board the American sound is my last pedal before modulation. I run all my overdrives into it. It sounds great. The British is good too but I like it more for breakup tones. Not as big of a fan of its clean side. AC is ok if you need that sound but it’s not my jam. The California sound really good if you ask me. It’s just not my tone. I plug it in every now and then if I want to play some NFG or Blink.

Hi... Is that Cort M600? Looks great. Does it got split coil?

What power supply are you using? Which kind would you recommend for a beginner player.

Do you find that the pedal adds compression? Does it raise the noise floor?

You mentioned that there are better pedals for the rectifier sound out there, can you please specify which ones?

Worship qual é melhor? Para tocar com uma les paul

which one has better and more powerful distortion?? and would it serve better as a pre amp for bass??

Try it with a sonicake ir loader after it. It is the missing piece.

Sold on the Fender in a box. Impressive. The others are ok but not as useful. Good demo thanks

On the cheap side of things, the American Sound with the Mosky Spring Reverb will do nicely.

What would be the closest to the Hi-Watt?

Is it possible to plug headphones into this little box?

Interested in the AC Tone, were you able to get that dialed in closer to a Vox amp ? I heard that running these style pedals in the effects make a big difference instead of hitting the front. Thoughts on that ?

The american sound very good with an Overdrive/Rat/TS in front. I wonder about the other ones. I think you would get a better distorted sound without the muddiness.

I have a Joyo American somewhere around here, but upgraded to a Shiftline Twin some years ago. Real tube preamp with two outputs, aux loop and switchable cabsimulation. Way pricier though.

Fender gets a pass, but my 2 favourites are the actone and the Oxford sound

Are you recording this through a tube amp or a digital recording set up? Whichever one it is, It sounds great. This is definitely the point where I gotta decide between tube or digital.

the california is not supposed to sound like a rectifier, it's a model of a IIC+

Gedei!

I use the AC tone in conjunction with two notes wall of sound software as a preamp. Then choose a push pull EL84 power amp and a Vox blue speaker and two different mics in the software. Adding a bit of reverb. Happy days. Played with a ES335 i hear minimal difference with a recorded track of my real AC30. The thing with these pedals is not to use them in front of your amp. It sucks. Use it with a decent cab loader and they begin to shine. It never will replace a real vox but if you know how to use this pedals how they meant to be then it gets you in the Vox ballpark with ease. When using this pedal with a real amp put them in the return of your effectsloop of your amp so you're not using the amps pre amp. Two pre-amps after each other is overkill. For €30 these pedals are a no-brainer.

In the long run its probably better to invest in the Tech21 pedals that these Joyo is based upon instead.

Cual suena mas a overdrive?

Is built with cabsim?

Jason, you missed the Oxford sound

Echo d menos probarlo con singles

Can I combine California sound (use it as a preamp ) and Mooer Radar as cab simulator ? I'm in process of putting together an ampless rig.

AC Tone is a bit different. Set it clean to clean-ish and then drive it with a boost or OD pedal.

I thought the American Sound was great when I used a Blues Junior, but when I git a Princeton it didn’t sound that good. It sounds good through an interface.

I find these are better with a strat single coil . The American sound is best

and they are Seymour Duncan pickups - hmmm

I find that, for a direct tone, adding a decent IR after one of these pedals helps a lot. The inbuilt cab sim can be defeated with a mod, but I don't bother. It's just a fancy EQ so you can adjust for having analog cab sim>IR. They are usable on their own, as long as you have some reverb, delay and an EQ.

American the Best!!!

If you know, Joyo california better use for bass than guitar.. search youtuber that use joyo california for bass

I was digging the American until the gain was turned up and you stopped playing. Not only is it super noisy, but the noise it makes sounds odd. Then I heard the same grinding high whine and noise on the AC tone. Is this the Joyo signature crappy noisy circuit or is it your rig? Either way, sounds terrible.

No attempt to get a clean sound out of the AC Tone?

These aren't floating my boat. Thanks for a decent video but small bucks is small bang and large bucks is huge hole in the budget. The acid test is how prone these gain boxes are to flying into strings feeding back - not the p/ups, the strings - at even modest volumes. If it's "taking off" like a jazz box every time you let go of the strings, it's telling you that your overtones are full-fat present and correct. If not, it's hard work because it's sterile. Another way to check a gain box is to unplug and roll the tip of the jack around in your hand. Buzzing is no good, it should howl like a recorder (the wind instrument you were forced to play at school) with fingers doing random on the holes. This is good too for figuring out where to put it in your effects chain but - never after a wah wah. The rest of it is the "no-buzz-saws-please" balance of square wave and third harmonic. Any box that does that - dustbin. Effects loop or front-of-amp? Either - to preference. F. of A. goes into the tone stack and pre-amp, effects loop by passes those. Cleaner, less control "in your hand". Either. TBH, the best is an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder and the massive background noise just adds to the excitement. Gain without that is....wet lettuce. Live, just switching that on before you play a note wakes the audience up no end. You need to be blowing airports up, don't you? Strange, really. With all this said, a lot of it is in the fingers. RIP Jeff Beck who used a lot, lot, lot less gain than you'd think. Your fingers need to control the strings and it takes practice every bit as much as rapid playing. Nice video, thanks. Good value for money, that's for sure.

To my ears, the AC sounded horrible. Then again I'm not a Vox fan. The others sounded pretty good.

What the heck are all these supposed to be mimicking? I get the ac tone. Is vox but what's American and California.

The interaction between the voice, drive and mids requires far more tweaking than you offered - everything you did started with the drive at 12 o'clock...you missed a lot of what these boxes offer.

You bought the best one first. Naturally, the others will be a let down.

Honestly no. But people will say yes.

Your clean guitar sounds terribly wooly already, hence it affects all the pedals

They all sound awfull. Like a blanket over sound...