With both feet squarely in the rodent realm, the Bat spreads its wings to range outward to fuzz, lo-fi, and creamy OD zones.
A thousand shades of RAT, spanning lo-fi, fuzz, and creamy OD. Gets along with every kind of amp and guitar—as long as you like things a bit filthy and mysterious.
Not many, really. Maybe a little extra bass range is asking too much?
$199
Supercool Barstow Bat
supercoolpedals.com
One of the most visceral, thrilling sound baths I ever experienced came courtesy of a Turbo RAT. This roar was an amalgam of trashy punk spittle, string detail, Black Sabbath mass, and an imploding Fender tweed. I might have been even happier if the Supercool Barstow Bat was onstage that night instead.
The Bat, resplendent in Ralph Steadman-style acid-nightmare graphics, is unmistakably a RAT at its core. But with the inclusion of a “Turbo” button and a low/mid/high EQ stack in place of a RAT’s filter control, the Bat enables you to explore very specific tone spectra the original could only hint at. And when you factor in the Bat’s ability to work with virtually any guitar tone-and-volume combo, you’re sorta looking at a pedal that’s as different as a real rat is from real bat.
Okay, maybe the difference isn’t that extreme. As I said, RAT genetics are easy to hear here. But the very effective tone controls mean you can transform the RAT vocabulary—which spans low-gain overdrive and lacerating distortion—into 1960s buzz-fuzz realms, exploding lo-fi student-amp zones, and other extremes ranging from fat and blurry to laser-beam trebly. You’ll have to know this pedal well to cover all this ground on a stage—a path well worth pursuing. (It’s just five knobs for cryin’ out loud). And because it finds copious goodness as easily in a 6L6 Fender as an EL84 Vox, it’s the kind of pedal that you should try with any amp, in any musical situation—but especially in the studio, where its unique, rangeful RAT-related voice could be the best kind of chameleon.
How do you add scores of effects to your pedalboard with a single stompbox?
Big library of effects. Great sounding delays and reverbs. Mature TonePrint library and interface is easy to use.
Can only use one effect at a time. An IR loader and a looper would be welcome additions
$129
TC Electronic Plethora X1
tcelectronic.com
I’m often seduced by convenient solutions when it comes to planning a pedalboard. Time spent arranging a select group of stomps can be a distraction, which is why I tend to stick to pedals that do one or two things well and keep the tinkering to a minimum. After spending time with TC Electronic’s new multi-effects unit, the Plethora X1, I’ve had to rethink how much a single pedal can bring to a pedal board, because the X1 can be many things.
Save for the creation of gain sounds, the Plethora X1 can fill almost any sonic need on any gig. It can play the role of just one effect at a time—this isn’t like the Plethora X3, Plethora X5, or a modeler within which you can create chains of virtual stomps. But with very little effort, I can access TC’s entire TonePrint line, including factory- and artist-created TonePrints from the Hall of Fame 2 Reverb, Flashback 2 Delay, Helix Phaser, Viscous Vibe, Sub ‘N’ Up Octaver, Brainwaves Pitch Shifter, Corona Chorus, Hypergravity Compressor, Mimiq Doubler, Vortex Flanger, Pipeline Tap Tremolo, Quintessence Harmony, Sentry Noise Gate, and Shaker Vibrato. At $129, the Plethora X1’s sounds-per-dollar value is extremely hard to beat.
Making Space
Full-sized Hall of Fame 2 and Flashback 2 pedals are already mainstays on my board, but, curiously, I hadn’t really explored the full capacity of those effects until using them within the X1. One reason, perhaps, is the X1’s handy readout. When you move any one of the three assignable knobs on the unit, the values for the assigned parameter appear on the screen, providing valuable visual feedback and precision. The parameters adjusted via those three knobs aren’t the only things you can tweak. The fourth knob is a rotary control with seven different slots that each store two different effects (when in A/B mode). That means 14 different presets that you can access quickly without having to dive into the deep editing mode.
Scratching the Surface
My favorite TC Electronic effects are the company’s detail-rich reverbs and delays. They did not disappoint here, and right out of the box, the room and shimmer reverbs were very inspiring. The shimmer verb didn’t have the way-too-glossy feel that can make many of these effects sound cheesy. A subtle, tight room reverb, meanwhile, allowed me to sense the effect as much as hear it—a nuance that, to me, is a hallmark of a well-designed algorithm.
Each effect is pre-loaded with a handful of presets that you can cycle through without firing up the app, offering many surprises in effects you may not have encountered before. The Sub ’N’ Up Octaver, for instance, is a real standout. It tracks incredibly well, offers plenty of customization, and sounds thick. Another highlight is the Helix Phaser, which is bubbly and liquid with an analog-like voice that would have appealed to Eddie Van Halen and Bob Marley alike.
There’s an App for That
Though the visual feedback from the X1’s screen is valuable, you have the most control and programming power within the TonePrint app. You can connect with the app three different ways: Bluetooth, USB-C, or using your phone to beam a preset via the pickups on your guitar. Although all three worked, I found Bluetooth and USB-C to be the most reliable and responsive.
As you can imagine, TC has built up a huge library of presets for all the various pedals represented in the X1. (The Tone Print Library has grown continuously since the technology was introduced in late 2010). But as sizable as the library is—and in spite of how many effects are on hand in the X1—the process of switching between them and trying new TonePrints out is still easy and fun. Once the pedal is connected, you scroll through a menu within the app of artist and factory presets. After you find one you like, you can either save it directly to your X1 or pull up the editor to adjust control parameters and other effect-specific functions. It’s an in-depth editor that doesn’t overload you with endless menus. TC deserves kudos for such an accessible design.
The Verdict
As you might guess, I don’t have the space to go in-depth on every effect in the X1. And at $129, the X1’s performance-to-price ratio is off the charts. Although you can only use one effect at a time, the ability to bring in any one of 14 great-sounding effects in a pinch is invaluable. I’ve often wrestled with whether or not to fork out money for a chorus, tremolo, or harmonizer that I might only use one or twice during a gig. That’s a decision the Plethora X1 all but eliminates. Although there’s a minimal learning curve, the X1 doesn’t have the paralyzing effect that other multi-effects units can have. If you’re into streamlining your board but still yearn to try new effects and applications as top artists hear and envision them, the X1 is hard to beat. PG
The range of clean, dirty, and complex tones available from this high-quality, carefully crafted Dumble modeler make it a formidable studio and performance device.
Fantastic variation in many delicious sounds makes it a bargain. High-quality. Easy to use and customize. Killer studio path to lively, responsive guitar sounds.
Price may be hard for some to swallow if they don’t leverage the whole of its potential.
$399
UAFX Enigmatic ’82 Overdrive Special
uaudio.com
I’ve never played a realDumble. I’d venture most of us haven’t. But given my experiences with James Santiago’s UAFX modeling pedals, most recently theUAFX Lion, I plugged in the new Dumble-inspired UAFX Enigmatic confident I’d taste at least the essence of that very rare elixir. You could argue there is no definitive Dumble sound. Each was customized to some extent for the customer, and they are renowned nearly as much for dynamic responsiveness and flexibility as their singing, complex, clean-to-dirty palettes.
The Enigmatic nails the flexibility, for sure. To my ears, its tone foundation lives somewhere on a sliver of Venn diagram where a black-panel Fender and a 50-watt Hiwatt intersect. It’s alive, dimensional, snappy, sparkly, massive, and, at the right EQ settings, hot and excitable. But the Enigmatic’s powerful EQ and gain controls, multiple virtual cab and mic pairings, rock, jazz, and custom voices, plus additional deep, bright, and presence controls enable you to travel many leagues from that fundamental tone. The customization work you can do in the app enables significant changes in the Enigmatic’s tone profile and responsiveness, too. All these observations are made tracking the Enigmatic straight to a DAW—making the breadth of its personality even more impressive. But the Enigmatic sounds every bit as lively at the front end of an amp, and black-panel Fenders are a primo pairing for its saturation and sparkly attributes. The Enigmatic is nearly $400, which is an investment. But considering the ground I covered in just a few days with it, and the quality and variety of sounds I could conjure with the unit just sitting on my desk, the performance-to-price ratio struck me as very favorable indeed.
