I’m a boost addict. A gig rarely goes by without some sort of clean-signal enhancer near my toes. The Lighthouse is designed around an op-amp circuit, which gives its non-clean boost settings a bit of Tube Screamer flair. Along with the central volume knob, there are two 3-way toggle switches: one selects the type of boost and the other changes which frequencies are boosted. In total, there are nine different flavors to play with. And it was challenging to find a dud in the bunch.
The type toggle moves between a clean boost, dirty boost, and nasty boost. (The latter is the clean boost fed into the dirty boost.) In clean mode, it was exactly as advertised—no real surprise there. In the dirty and nasty modes, it held up to any other low-to-mid-gain overdrive in my collection, with an impressive amount of sensitivity and attack. Bonus: 50 percent of your original sound is blended with the affected tone in the dirty and nasty settings.
On each position of the tone toggle, you can get a full boost (no frequencies are cut), mid boost, or treble boost. The mid boost setting paired best with my Lollar single-coils, but if you have an especially dark or bright setup, the full and treble settings would likely balance things out. The Filter’Tron pickups in a Gretsch White Falcon were especially lively in a dirty/treble setup. Every note had presence, attack, and plenty of hair. Designing a travel rig or need to save space on your board for an oversized stomp? The Lighthouse will likely prove in short order that it’s more than a one-knob wonder.
Test gear: Schroeder Chopper TL, Gretsch White Falcon, Fender Deluxe Reverb
Ratings
Pros:Way more tone options than a typical one-knob boost. Rather easy to tweak on the fly.
Cons:
Treble boost can be spiky at times.
Street:
$150
Seafoam Pedals Lighthouse Boost
seafoampedals.com
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
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Peterson StroboStomp Mini Pedal Tuner
| The StroboStomp Mini delivers the unmatched 0.1 cent tuning accuracy of all authentic Peterson Strobe Tuners in a mini pedal tuner format. We designed StroboStomp Mini around the most requested features from our customers: a mini form factor, and top mounted jacks. |
But by gosh, if delay—and its sister effect, reverb—haven’t always been perfect for the music I like to write and play. Which brings us to the Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay. The EchoBack, along with the standard delay controls of level, time, and repeats—as well as a tap tempo—has a toggle to alternate between analog, tape, and digital-delay voices.
I hooked up my Washburn Bella Tono Elegante to my Blues Junior to give the EchoBack a test run. We love a medium delay—my usual preference for delay settings is to have both level and repeats at 1 o’clock, and time at 11 o’clock. With the analog voice switched on, I heard some pillowy warmth in the processed signal, as well as a familiar degradation with each repeat—until their wake gave way to a gentle, distant, crinkly ticking. Staying on analog and adjusting delay time down to 8 o’clock and repeats to about 11:30, some cozy slapback enveloped my rendition of Johnny Marr’s part to “Back to the Old House,” conjuring up thoughts of Elvis trapped in a small chamber, but in a good way. It sounded indubitably authentic. The one drawback of analog delay for me, generally, is that its roundness can feel a bit under water at times.
Switching over to tape, that pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top. With the settings at the medium-length mode listed above, I could see the empty, glass hall the pedal sent my sound bouncing down. I heard several pronounced pings of repeats before the signal fully faded out. On slapback settings (time at 8 o’clock, repeats at 11:30), rather than Elvis, I heard something more along the lines of a honky-tonk mic in a glass bottle. Still relatively crystalline, which actually was not my favorite. I like a bit more crinkle—so maybe analog is my bag....“That pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear, pristine replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top.”
Next up, digital. Here we have the brightest voice, and as expected, the most faithful repeats. They ping just a few times before shifting to a smooth, single undulating wave. When putting its slapback hat on, I found that the effect was a bit less alluring than I’d observed for the analog and tape voices. This is where the digital delay felt a little too sterile, with the cleanly preserved signal feeling a bit unnatural.
All in all, I dig the EchoBack for its replications of analog and tape voices, and ultimately, lean towards tape. While it’s nice having the digital delay there as an option, it feels a bit too clean when meddling with time of any given length. Nonetheless, this is surely a handy stomp for any acoustic player looking to venture into the land of live effects, or for those who are already there.
