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Electro-Harmonix Pico Deep Freeze Sound Retainer
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I Love Pedals 2024 - Win Pedals All Month Long!Fast track your way to Jimmy Page drive sounds.
A compact, convenient means of gain staging. Thick, characterful, Page-style overdrive sounds.
The controls are simple enough, but the cryptic labels may frustrate some.
$229
Imperial Electrical Zeppelin
imperialelectricalpedals.com
The new Zeppelin preamp and overdrive by Imperial Electrical is an enthusiastically executed and thoughtful attempt at achieving Jimmy Page’s tones in an effects pedal—no mean feat if you can pull it off. In general, it does its Pagey magick by approximating the function of an Echoplex-style preamp and amp-style overdrive in a single box. Simple as that may sound, it gives the player a bundle of gain-staging capabilities.
Lead Balloon Takes Flight
The Zeppelin—like much about the band that inspired it—isn’t immediately easy to decipher. Two-letter acronyms beneath each knob are rendered in Zep’-inspired Art nouveau fonts. The knob to the far right labeled PL controls the gain of the Echoplex preamp, which is essentially a pre-overdrive boost. The right-side footswitch engages this circuit independently of the overdrive. The next three knobs from right to left are PO (plexi output), TO (tone), and PR (preamp, or plexi drive/gain control). The left footswitch engages this section. The status LED at the top-center glows red when the plexi side alone is on, green when the Echoplex alone is on, and orange when they’re running together. Coded control legends aside, it is a practical, streamlined array. And though the compact dimensions might be the cause of an occasional stomp on the wrong switch, most will find that risk a small price to pay to get this much effective gain staging into so little space.
Interestingly, though, it doesnail the throaty, thick, midrange overdrive tone achieved by pushing a Valco-made Supro amp into distortion.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the printed circuit board fills the whole of the enclosure, with nary enough room to squeeze a gnat in around the edges. That also means there’s no space for a 9V battery, so it’s adaptors only for the Zeppelin.
Hammer Falls
The Zeppelin’s big, ’70s-inspired, arena-rock-grade rhythm and lead tones are heavy, gutsy stuff. The overdrive side arguably sounds best with its PR (gain) control in the 11 o’clock to 1 o’clock range, where it generates low-to medium-gain overdrive sounds with a lot of body and clarity. Turning up the gain from there makes the tone denser and more saturated. But it can also sound a little bit raspy and guttural, and some note separation goes missing when this control is maxed out. This sound can be a lot of fun, but it’s a gnarly, heavy voice, for sure.
Although billed as a plexi-style overdrive, the Marshall-inspired side of the pedal doesn’t sound especially Marshall-y to my ears. Interestingly, though, it does nail the throaty, thick, midrange overdrive tone achieved by pushing a Valco-made Supro amp into distortion, which is, of course, the type of amp Jimmy Page used to create the sounds of Led Zeppelin I. Regardless of my perceptions, the result is substantial and grittily Page-like.
The Echoplex side of the pedal works really well, and the pedal often sounds best with a little of this pre-OD boost added to the overdrive. Modest-to-judicious overdrive levels respond highly to a bit of kick from the boost. And they rarely yield mud. Instead, the combination tends to add sweet saturation to the overall tone.
In classic Page style, I experimented with a Les Paul and Telecaster as drivers for the Zeppelin. The Telecaster’s single-coils were the best pairing when I wanted to highlight the eviscerating clarity in the Zeppelin’s overdrive tones. But, as you’d expect, there’s still a sharp edge to the tones you get from a Les Paul, and the Zeppelin is more than articulate enough to keep the fatter guitar distinct at reasonable gain settings.
The Verdict
The Zeppelin takes a creative approach to replicating Jimmy Page’s early Led Zeppelin tone recipes. It packs both a thick '70s arena-rock-inspired overdrive and a very agreeable preamp boost into one compact, well-made box. And though my ears hear the overdrive as more Supro than Marshall-plexi-like, the Zeppelin’s voice is no less enjoyable, practical, or Page-like.
Week #2 is here! You could win one of SIX Pedals! This giveaway ends September 26, 2022.
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Catalinbread Soft Focus Shoegaze Reverb Pedal with Chorus, Modulation, and Octave-up
The Soft Focus patch on the Yamaha FX500 was widely used in the ‘90s by early shoegaze bands, most notably Slowdive on Souvlaki. With its roots in that patch, the Catalinbread Soft Focus is intended to be an instant shoegaze button, while addressing the most glaring issues of the original unit. The original unit had a very plug-and-play approach, offering no mix control, a sub-par preamp and a ghastly tone-sucking bypass signal. At its heart, the Soft Focus is a heavily modified plate reverb with adjustable time, which is subsequently split into three. One path contains a “symphonic” chorus modulator, another features a well-appointed octave-up mixed in with the reverb, and the third path leaves the reverb untouched. The Mod knob controls the rate of the chorus on path one, and the Symphony knob controls the level of the octave on path two. All controls are "coupled" to the tone of the reverb to give users an expansive playing field of sounds to discover and fine tune. Our Soft Focus is not an exact recreation but was exhaustively compared with our own FX500; the difference is that a fairly generic fixed-time digital delay is present on the Soft Focus patch. We found that leaving this feature intact ate into the patch’s memory just a little too much for such little payoff, so we leave that addition to you and your favorite delay.
EARTHBOARD EBII-SR Pedalboard System
NEED A SMALL RIG FOR STUDIO WORK, PRACTICE OR CRAMPED GIG SPACES?
The EARTHBOARD EBII-SR is a junior version of the EBII! It has all the innovative features that came with the original EARTHBOARD as well as new built-ins designed to simplify the process of building and using your rig! The world's only magnetically designed and powered complete Effects Pedal System comes with everything you need so you can Focus on the Music, Not the Set-Up. Just add your pedals and patch cables - in under 30 minutes - and you're on your way...
EARTHBOARD EBII-SR System holds up to 5 standard size pedals plus 1 battery and comes with:
5 Gravity Boots (for 4 pedals and the battery)
Gravity Boots come with "fuzzy" hook-side Velcro to easily transfer your pedals from your current board
4 Gravity Boot Tethers and 1 Battery Tether (connecting cables) to provide power from the Gravity Boots to your pedals
Standard 9v, 10,000mA long-lasting, rechargeable battery (includes USB charging cable and mesh carry pouch)
PLUS these unique built-in features:
- undermount Blue LED lights for the cool factor
- 2 Battery Port Input Jacks (side-mounted) for the option to place the battery on the floor next to the board to make room for one more pedal!
- 2 Power Port Input/Output Jacks - 1 on each side for maximum flexibility to: convert to wall power if desired (AC adapter sold separately), power a pedal on the floor next to the board rather than on the board (Requires the Lifeline Tether, sold separately) or connect additional EARTHBOARDs because one battery can power multiple connected EARTHBOARDs (Requires the Lifeline Tether, sold separately)
Compare this complete Effects Pedal Platform to plain ol' pedalboards. It comes with everything you need to get playing - just add your pedals and patch cables! And it's the cleanest, uncluttered rig available because we've eliminated the messy cobweb of daisy chains and power cords! The flexible, modular design allows you to build upon, move and re-arrange pedals and change your rig on the fly. No need to schedule half a day to modify your board…So you can Focus on the Music, not the Set-Up!
Revv Shawn Tubbs Tilt Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedal
The Shawn Tubbs Tilt Overdrive is the tonal culmination of a lifetime in music. Shawn not only needed a practical tone tool to give him the right sound quickly in any musical context - he aimed to combine the greatest vintage amp tones & recorded guitar sounds of all time into one ideal sound. Now that tone is available to you in a compact 9v double pedal with a unique Tilt Boost.
The Expanse
**A harmonic tremolo pedal you can keep on Earth, or get lost in space**
This harmonic tremolo gives you a huge range of tonal possibilities. It can be used as a standalone tremolo, optionally with with some layered on reverb, or you can dial in some complex textured delays and feedback to create dreamy soundscapes. And of course you have everything inbetween.
Darkglass Microtubes Infinity Preamp/Distortion/Audio Interface
If we get to choose only one piece of gear to take on tour: how would we want it to be? The Microtubes Infinity shares the footmark of the Darkglass programmable line, packed with our three legendary Microtubes distortions: B3K, Vintage, and X. It allows multiband compression on every mode and blending Impulse responses between distortions: an infinity of possibilities.
My Evil Twin
Up to one second delay with pitch-shifting modulation. And that modulation! Pitch shifting modulation on the repeats which makes those delays sound MASSIVE! And the modulation is foot-switchable: leave it on for those big clean chords, and turn it off when you kick in the overdrive for that crushing solo.
- Repeats controllable from one to infinite.
- Mix control to perfectly dial in the amount of effect.
- Tone control to adjust the tone of the delayed signal from a hard bright room to a soft dark room.
- Foot-switchable pitch shifting modulation with Speed and Intensity controls.
- Full bypass wth fail-safe relay control; the effect is automatically bypassed if the pedalboard looses power.
- 9V DC input.