Premier Guitar features affiliate links to help support our content. We may earn a commission on any affiliated purchases.

Catalinbread Introduces the Airstrip

Catalinbread Introduces the Airstrip

A full-featured console preamp based on the Trident A-Range desk designed to give you everything from rich cleans to amp-melting fuzz.


The Trident A-Range console dominated the UK recording scene in the late ā€˜60s to early ā€˜80s. The heart of the beast consists of a discrete germanium-and-transformer-equipped preamp that can be adjusted to suit all tastes, from the tones of Lou Reed to the fuzzy freakouts of Frank Zappa.

Catalinbread's Airstrip intends to distill these legendary tones into a stompbox-sized console preamp with a handful of extras on offer. A discrete op-amp based on a vintage UREI design pushes the front end of the console into blissful gain if you want it. On the back end, a tasteful treble filter sets the luminosity of the pre to suit your rig and a specially-selected transformer adds a touch of iron to the signal. Capable of every gain sound imaginable from warm, ā€œmasteredā€-style cleans to gnarly collapsing fuzz, the Airstrip puts the mixing desk on your pedalboard in a much more manageable package.

$179.99.

With flexible voltage adjustments, precise control, customizable protection, compact design, and affordable pricing at $299, the Brownie is the ultimate solution for optimizing tone and safeguarding your gear.

Read MoreShow less

The latest multi-effect from Wampler is a dreamy if sometimes difficult-to-master delay/reverb combo.

Great, instantly useable reverb and delay tones. Impressive breadth of sounds in one box. Solid construction. Good value.

Controls and operation can feel confusing.

$299

Wampler Catacombs
wamplerpedals.com

4.5
3.5
3
4.5

ā€œModeling versus tubeā€ might be the gear world title fight of the 2020s, but ā€œLED menu versus none on multieffectsā€ is a pretty riveting undercard. I have sympathies in both corners. The ocean-deep onscreen interface of theMeris Mercury X, for instance, was a bear to navigate, but it also yielded some of the most exciting and tweakable reverb Iā€™ve ever heard. At the same time, Iā€™ll always be partial to having every control I need at my fingertips, and every parameter a knob twirl away from just-right.In theory, the digitalWampler Catacombs fits into the second category, the one I prefer. Itā€™s a super-loaded reverb and delay combo pedal, with seven delay algorithms and five reverb options that sound great. Though in practice, Catacombs sometimes turned out to be a bit more complicated to navigate than I expected.

Read MoreShow less

Celestion introduces a low-sensitivity, dual voice coil, attenuating speaker.

Read MoreShow less

Across Frank Zappaā€™s monumental body of work, he injected rock-based music with compositional techniques straight out of the modern classical handbook, as well as groundbreaking studio trickery and a teenagerā€™s wit. To match his untamable creativity, he famously demanded an unmatched level of musical dedication from his players, and his own guitar playing balanced that discipline with off-the-rails experimentation.

Read MoreShow less