This is an intimidating looking pedal. Adam at Satellite Amps had this beast sitting on one of his heads at the Austin Amp Show this past weekend and we had to ask about it. Turns out this is the prototype to an actual pedal he produces called The Eradicator. The pedal is the preamp of the company’s popular Atom amplifier in foot pedal form. Adam told WTDP? that it is ‘extremely over the top’ and was originally produced as a joke, but it turned out pretty damn cool. The production model is currently out-of-stock, but Adam plans on doing another run in the next month or so. Stay tuned!
Sean over at Lovepedal chimes in with a sneak peak of an upcoming addition to his 2010 pedal line – the Kalamazoo four-knob overdrive. We don’t know much about this one yet. Obviously, it has four knobs – Level, Drive, Tone and Glass. The Glass knob is the real intrigue here… something to do with adding high-end sparkle to the drive tone perhaps? Sean said the first 100 of these will be done in the cool chrome finish. Availability and pricing information is coming soon. He also promises that clips from the new creation are right around the corner. Stay tuned!
John at Tomaszewicz Amps had a pair of pedal on display at the Austin Amp Show this past weekend – the T-Drive and an unnamed, black-box prototype overdrive. The T-Drive is loosely based around the tone stack of the original BK Butler Tube Driver. The pedal sports five knobs – Drive, Level, Treble, Middle and Bass. The second pedal was a prototype aimed at supplying Dumble-style tones. John was kind enough to give us a quick demo of the pair. While the T-Drive offered up a more biting, cutting tone, the D-style pedal created a more ‘expansive’ sound. Check out the pedal pics after the jump!
Here is a little something extra from the John Mayer show in Houston last weekend. What? Didn’t we mention we taped it? Hey, the ticket said ‘Audio Ok’ so we took them up on the offer! From the depths of our road weary Zoom H2, we tapped into the two-hour show to mine this little nugget of a cover tune – John adding his blues sensibilities to Bill Withers’ classic ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’. He has mixed it into the set list over the first dozen or so dates on his Battle Studies tour and we thought it was worth sharing with the masses. If memory serves, he is playing a red Gibson E-335 on this track. Enjoy!
Michael with Swart Amplifiers had his range of amps on display this past weekend at the Austin Amp Show… including the stalwart Atomic Space Tone and his new 5-watt reverb combo. Also along for the ride was the company’s newest pedal – the Night Light attenuator and drive stomp. All of those fineries were sweet to sample, but we were more interested in the unpainted, raw metal pedal he had to one side. It is a fuzz prototype that uses Mil-spec Mullard OC44s to create some sweet, but raunchy fuzz tones. No word on if or when the pedal will make it into the Swart line, but gauging by the reaction it was getting from us and others it could be soon! Stay tuned!
Handwired-Effects has debuted another new stomp – the VTR-1 Vintage Tremolo. The VTR-1 was designed to re-create the natural smooth swing of the tremolo-equipped tube amps from the ’50s and ’60s. The pedal is sine wave based and offers slow pulse-like throbs to deep hypnotic vibrato without producing distortion even when hitting the strings hard. The VTR-1 sports three knobs – Depth sets the intensity of the effect while the two Speed knobs work independently and provide the ability to have great contrast between two different speed settings. An additional footswitch lets the user switch back and forth between settings. The VTR-1 cost around $350.
Yes. He can be a real douchebag. Even he admits it, so lets get that out the way right at the top here. But for all of his gum-flappin’, media-whorin’, ego-driven hijinks, the one inescapable remains that John Mayer can flat out play guitar. As the last part of her Christmas present, Mrs. WTDP? got a pair of tickets to see Mayer when he rolled through town this weekend on his Battle Studies tour. Both of us were treated to a two-hour show that was much more about music than talking or ego stroking or anything else. Mayer mixed in plenty of old and new tunes – opening with ‘Heartbreak Warfare’ and ending with ‘Gravity’.
We journeyed up Highway 290 to Austin, Texas this past weekend for an all-too-brief stop into Loni Specter’s Amp Show. We got their fairly early on Saturday (read: before the crowd) and were able to visit with a few builders prior to having to cut and run back to Houston for the John Mayer concert. We spoke with Ozzie at 3 Monkeys about their new high gainer, the BW 119. We talked to Adam with Satellite Amps about his distain for digital processing and FX loops. We also had a brief lesson in C&D letters from Joe Kelemen of Kelemen Amps/JoMama Music. Oh yeah… there were swans there too! Pics or it didn’t happen? Ok, check ‘em out after the jump!
Jackson Ampworks has a new hand-wired tube amp available – the Britain 2.0. The new amp features two separate channels that can be blended together to create an infinite number of new tones. The Britain 2.0 also offers switchable 18W Class A or 50W Class A/B operation that allows the user to adjust the power and feel of the amplifier to suit any musical setting. Channel 1 sports a EF86 preamp with footswitchable boost mode and independent Volume, Treble and Bass controls. Channel 2 offers a 12AX7 preamp with independent Volume, Treble and Bass controls. The amp also boasts series FX loop for each channel. The Britain 2.0 is available now for $1995.
Corby at OceanEFX chimed in this week with news that his latest redesign of his company’s popular Pearl Drive stomp will be available soon. The new version of the Pearl Drive retains the same great circuit, but will now come housed in a much smaller enclosure. After some minor issues with the redesigned Pearl Drive circuit boards, Corby said the new, smaller Pearl Drives will be ready in the next two to four weeks. The smaller stomp will boast all of the same controls – Volume, Drive, Mids and Treble knobs… and the bass response toggle. You can check out a prototype of the redesigned Pearl Drive (in purple) after the jump!
Any gearheads in the vicinity of Austin, Texas on 6-7 March should make the effort to check out Loni Specter’s Amp Show. The show is a must for boutique amp lovers. Rarely would you get hands-on time with one or two units from the scheduled participants, much less 50-plus! Slated to exhibit are the likes of 3 Monkeys, Budda, Egnater, Goodsell, Hermida, Swart, Tonic, Trace Elliot, Xits and more! There are also door prizes from Celestion, Fargen, Egnater, Fender, Swart, Wishbone, ZT and others. Just $20 gets you in tube amp heaven for a day. For more info on the show, go here.
Fuzz is a subjective thing, really. Some folks dig it while others don’t. We’ve always been partial to fuzz around these parts… so many different pedals, tonal options via build style: original… versus clone… versus clone with upgrades, etc… We first took notice of the Earthquaker Devices Tone Reaper when it was a limited edition (30+ pcs) pedal. The Reaper is a vintage style fuzz based on the three-knob Tone Bender. It is a silicon/germanium hybrid capable of producing a wide range of tones with careful tweaking of the tone and fuzz controls, according to builder Jamie Stillman. Once the Reaper entered the regular production line, we jumped to land one.
You know… sometimes things go exactly the way you would hope. Other times, you get thrown a wicked googly! Sad to say the latter is what we’re dealing with at the moment. February was supposed to feature four fuzz pedal reviews. So far, we’ve delivered one. A couple of different factors are at work here. We’ve had illness (currently ongoing), schedule conflicts, pedal malfunction, and tour box timing all play a role in keeping the fuzz reviews at bay. We’re hoping to get one more done this weekend. We’ll keep the others for later. The tour box pedals are getting reviews as well… so there will be no shortage, just a bit of a wait. Stay tuned…
Montgomery Appliances has unveiled two new fuzz stomps for 2010 – The Badlands and the No. 219. The Badlands is a thick fuzz with origins in the Big Muff circuit. The pedal is loaded with four NOS germanium transistors. The pedal’s Sustain control swings tones from lower-gain vintage fuzz to full-on devastation. The No. 219 is a Tonebender MKII-influenced silicon fuzz loaded with NOS Motorola transistors. It has controls for Volume and Sustain, as well as a Midrange control that allows users to dial in a scooped midrange or a fat boosted midrange as desired. The No. 219 cleans up well with the guitar’s volume knob. Check out some video demos after the jump!
Mike Piera over at AnalogMan has introduced his first new pedal of 2010 – the AstroTone fuzz. The AstroTone is somewhere between a fuzz and distortion, it acts differently into different amps. The pedal is based on the old mid-60s Astro Amp Astro Tone fuzz and uses the original 1966 Fairchild Silicon transistors, which are not affected by heat like a Germanium-based fuzz. According to Mike, the pedal’s sound is not as compressed as a Fuzz Face, not super thick and saturated, but it is closer to a fuzz than a pure distortion. The new stomp sports three knob controls – Volume, Fuzz and Tone. The AnalogMan AstroTone is available now for $185.
This is an intimidating looking pedal. Adam at Satellite Amps had this beast sitting on one of his heads at the Austin Amp Show this past weekend and we had to ask about it. Turns out this is the prototype to an actual pedal he produces called The Eradicator. The pedal is the preamp of the company’s popular Atom amplifier in foot pedal form. Adam told WTDP? that it is ‘extremely over the top’ and was originally produced as a joke, but it turned out pretty damn cool. The production model is currently out-of-stock, but Adam plans on doing another run in the next month or so. Stay tuned!
