I won't bore you with my opinion on the matter. We guitarists are all individuals and like what we like. Sometimes you don't know what you like until you hear it and then it's all or nothing
The phase pedal or phase sifter has been use by many a guitar player. Eddie Van Halen notoriously used one to enhance his solos. The sweeping shift of frequencies in and out of phase with each other seems other worldly.
But where do you put it in the signal chain? Only you know for sure.
Check out my demo of phase pedals before and after distortion.
Mini pedals seem to be all the rage these days. With the prevalence of pedal board power supplies and the all the pedal board wiring kits available these little gems are great for packing more punch into your rig without taking up too much real estate.
If you're a gigging guitarist or just a bedroom jammer a Marshall would be an awesome piece of gear to have. Unfortunately we can't always haul around a large 4x12 cabinet and head. This is where the Plexion comes in.
This little giant has an enormous sound. Everything from lower gain JTM 45, to Mid gain JCM800 to the highest gain offerings,this little pedal does it all for very little money.
It has a volume,tone, and gain knob. It also has a bright switch which
alters the voicing giving way to even more tonal options. I couldn't be happier with this little monster. I've used it in a band setting and it turned my very clean Fender Blues Jr. into a fire breathing dragon.
Check out the below demo of the Tomsline Plexion pedal
Dumble amps are the things of legend. Handcrafted and owned by only the elite of the guitar world these elusive amps are extremely desirable.
For the common man the unobtainable nature puts these amplifiers well out of our reach. There have been many clones as well as pedals that claim to capture that elusive sound.
The Dumbler Overdrive Pedal does not make any claims although the name alone would suggest m this pedal is inspired by the rare and expensive Dumble amps.
Since I've never played a Dumble amp I can't speak to whether or not this pedal sounds like a Dumble so you tell me, what do you think.
The Ibanez Tube Screamer is undoubtedly the most ubiquitous and famous overdrive pedal ever. It has been used by countless guitar hero's as well as being in the arsenal of a huge number of working musicians.
A number of years ago I decided to take a stab at building my own pedals. The Tube Screamer type circuit has so many iterations and variations that it is almost mandatory that one tweak the circuit and put their own twist on it.
Below is a video demoing my take on a TS type circuit with plenty of mods to satisfy my own needs.
As you may know I've dabbled in the DIY pedal scene for a while. I love the smell of melting solder and the fly by the seat of your pants "will it work?" feeling when making a pedal.
A number of years ago I started trying my hand at creating something different by mashing different pedal designs together. Some of these were non starters and others were OK. This particular experiment came out quite well.
Scott's Superdrive took the Tube Screamer type circuit and married it to a Big Muff type tone stack. Of course each of these parts of the pedal received their own tweaking and modifications. At the end of it all was a Mosfet output stage to recover some of the signal loss from the tone stack.
The result was an overdrive with more drive than a Tube Screamer, less buzz than a Big Muff, and an overall interesting characteristic all it's own.
Mesa Engineering is famous for the Boogie branded Mark series amps as well as the massive sound of the Rectifier series. The company has also recently released several pedals to compliment the various amplifiers they produce.
This is not Mesa's first foray into the pedal market. In the 1990's and early 2000's Mesa released two tube driven pedals. The well known V-twin preamp pedal and the little brother and lesser known Bottle Rocket overdrive.
The V-1 Bottle Rocket is driven by two 12AX7 preamp tubes that create a wide range of overdrive and distortion tones. This pedal is quite different than the high gain tones of the Mark series amps and crushing distortion of the Rectifier series. This pedal thrives in the low to medium gain blues, rock, and classic heavy rock tones.
Below is a quick demo of the Bottle Rocket being run through a Fender Blues Jr.
I have a friend who had a Big Muff pedal that was intermittently cutting out. Knowing that I'm a tinkerer and build pedals I was asked if I could look at it. Of course my response was yes.
Since I don't own one of these glorious distortion devices I though tit would be a great opportunity to play around with this "Made In Russia" monster of sonic madness.
I initially thought it might be a faulty switch. Once I opened it up and tested it with the circuit board exposed I came to the conclusion that the switch was fine but there was a loose connection somewhere.
Since EH uses a ribbon wire that is split off to the various connections on the pots, switches, and circuit board I basically started re-soldering all the connections on the pedal.
Fortunately, after I did the switch the tone control and the volume control the pedal came back to life and the sound was loud and proud with no cutting out.
Check out the demo of the revived and revitalized pedal.
