though, I was simply looking for a pedal that would give me a great clean, overdriven, and distorted amp tone, and this pedal nailed it, regardless if it truly does sound like a Mesa Boogie amp or not

I have not used it with a pa just my crat gx212 120 watt solid state amp

I've never owned one of these, because of their cost in the thousands of dollars, but I can get a satisfying Santana sustain with the Joyo at 1% of the price (plus the cost of a modest Fender amp).I put the joyo in the effects loop and have a celestion 12" with a flat response curve

I really like amp modelling because I have a cheap solid state amp

On a clean channel'd amp - by itself - this pedal has enough smooth gain and sustain to be the only dist

The "California Sound" is Joyo's tone stack design to replicate the sound of MESA Engineering's classic amps

It does not have quite as much vol., but plenty for recording or into a clean amp.

The specific pedal "cloned" by the Joyo California (from what I'm told) is the Tech 21 NYC "Character" series, which was a pedal series (apparently now discontinued) that modeled popular amps, such as Marshall, Fender, VOX, and Mesa Boogie.

I actually found that since I already have the MKII sound, this pedal didn't help me make another amp sound like what I have.

I have friends of mine who own expensive tube amps who are impressed with the tone I can get out of this thing

I really like amp modelling because I have a cheap solid state amp

That brought on a real nice sustain much like turning up those Deluxe amps for a natural tube overdrive

This is a good little amp pedal

If you're looking for sloppy loose break up that makes your amp sound like junk than this is the pedal for you.

Finally, there are Level and Gain knobs that work as if they were the corresponding knobs on your amp.

I've found some nice guitar tones with this, but for me it has not been as useful as, for example, Joyo's American Sound, which is more versatile and effective