A while back I wrote a full review on The Church Collective for the JHS Colour Box. You can find it HERE.
In the time since I’ve made a few observations to add to what I’ve previously written.
GAIN
This thing is a really, really great gain pedal. Fuzz, Distortion, Overdrive. All great. Specifically the fuzz. I think it’s better or more valuable as an EQ/Tone shaper, but the fuzz sounds really, really great and it’s tempting switch roles.
VOCALS
I experimented with using the Colour Box on vocals. I think it would require a lot of tweaking and dialing in to really work with live use. We found it was hard to get it to not distort. It’s possible that we weren’t using compression like we should, but still if you want to try using it with vocals, it needs to be thought out and not a last minute thing.
ACOUSTIC GUITAR
I still can’t really get it to work for my rig. I’m pretty sure it’s because of my pick up and I don’t hold it against JHS. I’ve gotten some great sounds out of acoustic guitars with standard piezo pickups, but I’m good not using the Colour Box with mine.
FINAL TAKE
The Colour Box is fantastic for bass and electric guitar. You really should check it out. It’s pricey, but it’ll make your tone stellar! Also, if you need to play with no amp, it provides a very cool DI possibility.
Churches should buy one for their Sound Ministry with bass guitar specifically in mind. Individual players should think about it if they want to beef up their tone, especially your cleans or they are looking for a way to shape their tone that’s not digital or low grade.
Real World Worship 
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Hi Adam,
Based on your reviews I decided to get one of these and I’m glad I did. It does add a certain something to my electric guitar tone that I like. Haven’t used it for anything other than electric so far but that will hopefully happen at some point. I appreciate all the time you put into your blog. I find it to be a great blessing.
Hey Bob, that’s awesome. the main trick with the colour box for vocals/acoustic guitar is to keep the gain setting low.
Hi Adam, did you mean “can’t” when you wrote “can” in the following sentence?
“I still can really get it to work for my rig.”
I found your site after looking for some reviews on Colour Box use with acoustic, great site and thanks!
great eye Steve! thanks 🙂
i did eventually figure out what i was doing wrong, but i still found for my specific set up it wasn’t the best choice. i did however take the colour box to Mexico for a few weeks last summer as the only part of my rig. i used it for bass, electric and acoustic to great results. highly recommend it!
i talked about it a little in my recent post about using effects with acoustic guitar Check it out here…