RatingsPros:A characterful overdrive with great touch sensitivity, excellent clarity, and versatile EQ. An able recreation of a hard-to-find classic. Cons: No major negatives, but it's worth knowing whether a MOSFET overdrive is your cup of tea before spending the cash on this one. Street: $175 Cascade Pedals Hosstortion cascadepedals.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value:  |
Cascade, a creative pedal maker based in the western North Carolina town of Asheville, builds a lot of custom stomps. The Hosstortion, however, is a new entry into its growing production lineup. The circuit, as Cascade main-man Charlie Mostoller tells us, is a “modern reimagining" of the rare and sought-after Ibanez MT10 Mostortion pedal of the early '90s, a MOSFET-based distortion-overdrive beloved for its thick, warm mids, biting clarity, and walloping low end.
Although the CMOS op-amps used in the original Ibanez were discontinued 15 years ago, the creation of powerful new BiMOS chips enables Cascade to re-cast the Ibanez formula with more gain, while retaining the versatile EQ and basic voice of the MT10. Further nods to modern performance include a bipolar charge pump for added headroom and lower noise, and premium true-bypass switching.
Hossenpfeffer Stew
Cascade's custom enclosures can be pretty creative. The company's Scooby-Doo Fuzz, for example, is housed in a repurposed toy Mystery Machine. The Hosstortion, however, is built in a standard enclosure and finished in striking sour-apple-green metallic with graphics that echo the MT10's original design motif. (Sadly, Cascade didn't use the Pac-Man-style knobs that distinguished the MT10.) Controls include dirt (gain), level, high, mid, and low. The bypass switch is held tight by an anodized lug nut. Cascade warns that the Hosstortion should only be used with a 9V center-negative power supply, and there's no 9V battery option.
Giddy-Up, Hoss
It's worth noting that although the pedal has “distortion" in its name, it's not meant to be a screaming high-gain metal machine, but more of a medium-gain overdrive, or a vintage-style low-gain distortion. Starting at low gain settings reminds you that good MOSFET overdrives possess many distinct, individual characteristics. (Marshall famously used MOSFET overdrive to get as close to possible to tube-style distortion in their '80s solid-state amps, which have fans to this day.)
Even at conservative settings on the gain knob (around 9 to 10 o'clock), the Mosstortion is thick, rich, and juicy, and it's great for goosing a Tele-style bridge pickup into slightly gnarlier twang zones. And in this way, it's a fantastic pedal for switching on and forgetting—adding depth and personality to an amp when you can't crank it up into its sweet spot.
Throughout its gain and EQ ranges, the Hosstortion consistently delivers a very enjoyable blend of articulation, girth, and, at times, a raw edge that lends texture without getting harsh or blocky. Higher gain settings elicit smooth complex-but-saturated overdrive that tends more toward singing solos or chunky power chords, while retaining an edgy bark that is signature MOSFET. Even with the gain up to 3 o'clock, it's still extremely transparent. It's also very responsive to guitar volume attenuation, leaving you with a beefy but characterful near-clean tone when you turn down.
I don't have an original Ibanez MT10 on hand to A/B with the Hosstortion (and acquiring one on the vintage market would probably cost $400 to $600), but to the extent that memory serves me, the Hosstortion sounds and feels much like the Mostortion that I occasionally played in the late '90s, and it's an impressive encapsulation of the natural, warm-to-mildly-aggressive tones and response that made MOSFET overdrives appealing in the first place.
The Verdict
The Hosstortion isn't just a ruggedly built and cleverly conceived reimagining of the iconic Ibanez Mostortion of the early '90s. It's a characterful and dynamic overdrive by any measure. It maintains surprising transparency amid the thick, rich textured voicing, and it's an excellent alternative to the more ubiquitous TS-style template.
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Vox’s Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
I spent a day workshopping ideas in my studio using just the Vox Valvenergy Smooth Impact compressor and Tone Sculptor EQ, and a dash of amp tremolo and reverb to taste. In the process, I produced more arresting sounds than I had heard from my guitars in many days. There were radical direct-to-desk-style Jimmy Page/Beatles distortion tones, sun-sized, cosmic electric 12-string, Bakersfield twang that could burn through crude, and many other sweet and nasty colors. Most decent EQ and compressor combinations can achieve variations on all those themes. But the Smooth Impact and Tone Sculptor also reveal interesting personalities in unexpected places.
The individuality and energy in the Vox Valvenergy pedals is attributable, in part, to the Nutube vacuum tube used in the circuit. Though it looks little like a vacuum tube as most guitarists know them, the thin, wafer-like Nutube is, in fact, a real vacuum tube like those used in fluorescent displays. Fluorescent display tubes have limitations. A maximum operating voltage of around 40 volts means they aren’t useful for bigger power tube applications like a 6L6, which has an operating voltage of about 400 volts. But it can work quite well as a preamp tube in concert with an op amp power section, which is how the Nutube is used in the new Valvenergy pedals, as well as older Vox products like the Vox MV50 and Superbeetle amps.
Valvenergy Tone Sculptor
When you think about “cinematic” effects, you likely imagine big reverb or modulation sounds that create a vivid picture and feeling of space or motion. But narrow, hyper-focused EQ profiles can evoke very different and equally powerful images. Radical EQ settings can add aggression, claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts more evocative of Hitchcock’s Psycho than Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.
Any of these moods can be summoned from the Valvenergy Tone Sculptor. Six sliders cut or boost 10 dB frequency bands spanning 100 Hz to 5.6 kHz. A seventh slider cuts or boosts the master output by 12 dB. This platter of options might not sound like much. But you can use these seven controls together to very specific ends.
“Radical EQ settings can add aggression, near-claustrophobic intimacy, and stark, explosive dark-and-light contrasts.”
For example, bumping the high-midrange and the master output produces narrow cocked-wah-like filter sounds with enough push to produce extra amp overdrive—effectively turning the Tone Sculptor into a buzzy, almost fuzz-like filter effect. But unlike a wah, you can carefully scoop high end or add a spoonful of bass to blunt harsh frequencies or give the tone a bit more weight. You can also broaden the palette of an amp/guitar pairing. I matched a particularly trebly Jazzmaster bridge pickup with a very hot and toppy Vox AC15-flavored amp for this test—a recipe that can be spiky on the best days. But with the Tone Sculptor in the line, I could utilize the same sharp, fuzzy, and filtered Mick Ronson wah tones while shaving some of the most piercing frequencies.
EQ pedals exist on many points along the cost spectrum. And at $219, the Tone Sculptor lives on the high side of the affordable range. Does it offer something less expensive models can’t deliver? Well, for one thing, I found it relatively quiet, which is nice whether you’re shaping toppy high-contrast effects or performing more surgical adjustments. And the sliders feel nuanced and nicely tapered rather than like a dull axe with a few basic frequency notches. But in many situations I also liked the color imparted by the circuit—generated, presumably, by the Nutube. “Color,” in audio terms, is a broad and subjective thing, and one should not necessarily expect the warm, tube-y glow of a vintage tube Pultec. Still, the Tone Sculptor has many forgiving, flattering qualities—typical of studio EQs—that enable fine tuning and experimentation with more radical and creative applications of the effect.
Valvenergy Smooth Impact
As with the Tone Sculptor, the Smooth Impact’s use of Nutube engenders certain expectations. It’s easy to surmise that because Smooth Impact has a vacuum tube in the circuit that it will behave like a little Teletronix LA-2A leveling amplifier. That’s a big ask for a $219 stompbox. On the other hand, the Smooth Impact exhibits some appealing characteristics of studio tube compression. At lower compression levels, it works well as a thickening agent—adding mass without much additional noise. And at higher compression levels it can sound snappy, crisp, and tight without feeling like you’ve bled every trace of overtone from your signal.
The Smooth Impact’s controls aren’t totally atypical. But because it lacks some familiar features like variable attack and release, yet is more complicated than a 1-knob DynaComp, you have to trust your ear to navigate interactions among the controls. The most unfamiliar of these is the 3-way vintage/natural/sag toggle. The first two are defined by preset attack and release settings: Vintage is slow attack and long release, and natural is the opposite. The sag mode’s compression is more like what you get from tube saturation, and it’s useful for adding thickness and complexity to a thin amp tone at modest compression levels.
Though the vintage and natural modes certainly have a different feel, they don’t always sound worlds apart. And like the sag mode, the thing they have in common is the way they enrich lifeless amp output at low to medium compression, with a bit of grind from the tube gain and a little extra makeup gain from the output. At the most aggressive settings, the tube gain can get a little crispy. And really crushing the compression can flatline your tone without adding much in the way of extra sustain. These are limitations common to many compressors with similar features. But unless I was chasing very ultra-snappy Prince and Nile Rodgers fast-funk caricatures, I enjoyed the Smooth Impact most in its in-between ranges, where mass, mild, harmonious drive, and low noise showcase the pedal’s sometimes studio-like personality.
