OD & Dist: a gain story

[Dowi]

Not a long time ago, on a pedalboard not so far away..



So, as it has now been stated multiple times, 2021 is the year of the dirt.
Call it research, GAS, lack of band practice and gigs caused by COVID-19, or your favorite insta#pedalbored hashtags, but i found myself messing with the entire gain-related part of my board, which has been mostly the same for at least 6 or 7 years now, with just a few occasional extra fuzzes that came and went.
I thought it was a good chance to bother y'all with a longass post about all of those pedals. I'm gonna leave fuzzes and muffs out of this list as they are their own thing, and just stick to the ones that can somehow be located in the overdrive and distortion area.

I created a new thread because I saw many ILFriends swapping a lot fo dirt pedals this year, so it would be cool if anyone else wanted to chime in with some reviews.


Death By Audio - Interstellar Overdrive

This one has been my main distortion since forever.
It's extremely dependent on what amp you use it with. In my experience It sounds awful with transistor amps and "digital" ones (Boss Katana), but when placed in front of a good preamp, or paired with a valve amp (i use it with a Hiwatt DR503) it's glorious. The sound is uncompressed and fat, it doesn't mess up chords, and I usually throw into it a heavy low octave with the POG and riff on the lower strings without losing anything on the bottom-end. Its blown-out character surely makes it not great for classic metal stuff, but if you want crunchy dirt this is an (im)perfect machine.
Works well with all kinds of pickups - particularly good with the little-buckers i have on the Guild Starfire - and behaves surprisingly well with a light OD or boost placed before it. My favorite settings are with the gain from 12 to 3 o clock, so not totally cranked but almost, i find it not very performing at lower gain levels.
It's not nearly perfect, it just does exactly what I need for the band I play in, which in the end is what it's all about (or at least, it was before 'rona).


GigaheartsFX - Mecha Feta (Lovetone Big Cheese clone)

Technically a fuzz, but can do a lot of overdrive sounds. It's a tricky one.
I say tricky because it reacts in dramatically different ways depending on what is placed before it, the type of pickups makes a big difference here.
Of the four modes (no tone control / mid-boost / mid-scoop / gated) the Mid scooped one is my favorite, and that's because I'm a Muff aficionado. I found it to be really good with single coils and the gain maxed out, but if the signal coming in is too hot (humbuckers or a powerful boost) it tends to compress a bit too much for my taste, so I generally use it at the beginning of the chain.
The no-tone control setting has more output volume, but the mid boost and scoop modes are more particular sounding to me, and they're both very good for rhythm guitars, big chord progressions, power chords and stuff. Mid-boost with the gain set quite low is instant 70s-classic-rock if that's your thing.
The gated mode is pure fuzz territory, and the gate can close to total silence so in this case it's cool to place some dirt before it and mess with the knob to get a lot of variations from sputtering fuzz to total clipping mayhem.
It's a useful addition to my small collection: I might not use it all the time but it has a character of its own that's useful in a number of cases.


Stomping Stones - Virus

Another one that crosses the line between fuzz and overdrive, already made a review and video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kyuwF33JoY so, now that i've been playing it for a few months, i'm going to copy/paste some things I've previously written and elaborate a bit more on other ones.
For a two-knobber It has A LOT of different tricks up his sleeve, as different combinations of volume and gain led to big changes in its reactivity and in what the Bias footswitch emphasizes. It can deliver from blown out drive toanz, to broken speaker, octave-up-ish overtones, and so on: this thing has some character, so do not expect it to be some transparent od because it's now what it is.
Mode 1 and 2 (up and middle position) are similar but different, one a bit more compressed and with a less linear gain, and the secondary footswitch behaves in totally different ways, getting green ringer-esque harmonics in mode 2, and more of a slightly-sort-of-gated character in mode 1. They both have a huge low end and have some hi-cut, which I really like - anyway, If needed, it's easy to brighten up by placing a bright eq/boost/od before it.
Mode 3 calls for hot signals coming in: compared to the other 2, it has more gain and less volume - it can still be very loud, just not devastatingly loud as the other two modes - and it's an amazing wild and unruly distortion, with the bias footswitch that simultaneously cuts lows and boosts highs: perfect for leads etc.
I've tried to place it in different parts of the chain and found that it is super versatile, to get the most out of it I use the Virus with a boost in front to smash it properly.


Stomping Stones - Haxan

Nothing less than an effective and straightforward dirt machine. The no frills approach of this one is what caught me, but in fact the two switches that change the distortion and tone footswitch behaviour make all the difference.
Can be a distortion+ style distortion, a useful tool to reach huge gain levels with quieter pedals, or a dark and gritty overdrive with a hi-cut filter feeling.
It's a no-excuses pedal: forget all the audiophile fussiness about tone color micro-adjustments, just push that distortion and riff away.
I am enjoying coupling it with a subsequent overdrive like the Virus or the Elements in low gain mode, set the Haxan on the darker setting with gain at 2 o'clock, the tone switch on the "brighter" setting to let harmonics pop out like popcorns, and the following pedal as a simple low gain drive. This way I have 5 different possible gain combinations out of two pedals, all equally usable and performance-friendly.
Haxan cuts through the mix in a very pleasant way, last week I managed to record a handful of riffs that have been laying there for weeks and Haxan was perfect to overdub some phrases and licks above a wall of distortion.
There's nothing much to be said when something is so simple but useful - or most likely there is a lot but I have no ability to articulate further. I am planning on shooting some clips but summer's still here, so I prefer to go out when I have the chance, october is around the corner anyway so expect something sooner or later..
Overall solid pedal, Jero's work never disappoints. The only downside is that i hate to have the two footswitches so close to one another, especially on a dirt pedal that I constantly turn on and off.. I would have preferred to have it on a 1590BB like the Virus, I could consider rehousing it in the future.


Dr. Scientist - The Elements

Yeah it came out like 10 years ago but I only managed to grab it this year.
It's easily the jack of all trades, and an instant favorite.
Goes from clean boost to transparent od to high gain and does everything right, it reacts very well to most dirt pedals placed in front of it too. The tone controls are highly independent one from another, and the mid freq switch is key, this makes It also super easy to set up on the fly.
Another thing that i like about it is that it can be less "educate" compared to the Longsword: i mean, it can deliver really nasty sounds when boosting the freq knobs to their maximum (i found that one of my favorite "wild" settings is -> asymmetrical clipping, freq shift set to 1200Hz, and everything maxed out), and some settings go right in fuzz territory. I'm not going on here because there are plenty of comments in the dedicated thread, plus i'm quite sure our Swedish dinosaur is the living bible of infos about the Elements.


Electronic Audio Experiments - Longsword (rev. 2021)

Another Jack of all trades? almost, although it's quite different from the aforementioned Dr.Sci pedal: it does not go full crystal clean nor as high gain as it - unless with both the gain and the boost knobs set at 3 o'clock or more. The high, mid and low freq controls seem to be interconnected in some nuances, and the overall distortion character is very mid-focused, especially in the harder clipping modes. The amount of volume and bass available is so big you have to be careful to tweak it right along with the other high and mids knobs, or in some settings it can overload everything and result in freq loss on the high end - obviously it depends also on how hard you're hitting your amp.
Its versatility makes it suitable for a number of different uses and setup, but humbuckers are definitely my favorite match, as this pair easily solves almost all of my light/mid/hard distortion needs without stepping over the line and going into the highest gain territory. Let's say it's not a cranked HM2 in a high gain amp, but it can definitely chug if you want it to.
Without doubt the part where it shines the most is for mid-gain sounds, it's clear that it has been voiced to work well in that range and in fact it's really precise and tweakable. It's also very good used to boost the low-end of the signal or add just a slight dirt to it.
At the same time the signal-to-noise ratio really surprised me, it's a lot quieter than expected even with the gain cranked.
I find one of the key features of the Longsword is that it works amazingly by itself (or with subsequent dirt): having the boost on a dedicated footswitch makes it perfect to be the single dirt pedal on a small board. On the other hand, as its voicing is very present - especially when raising the gain level, there may be some difficulties if you want to retain all the tonal character of previous pedals, depending on the kind of thing you throw into it.
The boost knob can add a lot of gain but adds a low cut at 300Hz too, and because of this, it's awesome for tight riffs and leads, but maybe it's not ideal if you want to retain the ultra-low end of a bass-loaded signal and just add more gain. Again, it depends on your purpose: last week at band rehearsals i've used it as the main distortion in front of the Clang- always on- to balance eventual freq losses, and had no problems at all (i need that low end cause we're a two-piece).
I've got to admit it took me a while to truly appreciate it, the wide range of settings makes it super tweakable but it's not as immediate as the Elements, so that's the reason I had to really work on it initially to understand how each knob/switch reacted to the others and find out how to set it to get what i wanted from it.
Ironically now that I learned my way through it, it's easier for me to find new settings with the Longsword compared to the Elements, probably also because of the more "limited" but precise range of the first one.
I think those points I tried to put down are aspects that can be decisional factors depending on one's needs, but just to be clear: I absolutely love it, it's perfect for what I need and is in fact stable in my small board.


Earthbound Audio - Throat Locust

My experience with HM2-related circuits is really limited to a clone i had when i started playing decades ago (the Arion metal-whatever) and more recent occasional tryouts on friends boards so, while i knew what to expect sound-wise, i was EXTREMELY curious to finally put my hands on this one and have some time to explore it - honestly reading the write-ups and discussions between Vidret and Joel, and the demos from him and Ghost Hip just hyped me more and more and more... and it was worth every day week month spent waiting for it.
Obviously it does the Swedish thing, but it does so many other things that the chainsaw becomes a minor aspect compared to the rest.
The tweakability of the controls is very wide, goes from enormous lowfreq earthquakes to throaty distortion, to simple freq booster and so on.
To me, the knob to sweep the frequency of the mids is a lot more useful than having pre-set mid range focus points as in the Elements or the Longsword, plus it gives space to make some wah/filter-like sounds with real-time manipulation if that's your thing.
Compared to the Longsword it has a higher noise floor, but it's more open-voiced with the gain set low, so if needed it's easier to stack it with previous dirt pedals without losing the character of those ones; i don't know if this is valid also for HM2s in general, as i said, i am ignorant in this realm.
It is loud, I could probably push the Hiwatt low input to the breaking point if I wanted to.


Turnipfarmfx - Clang (INFANEM The Driving Notion clone)

Everything about this has already been said in the dedicated thread, so I can't add much. Once you turn it on you can never turn it off..
It has been involved in almost every setup I assembled since i put my hands on it. Tried it in combination with everything i got: humbuckers, single coils, before dirt, after dirt, at the beginning and at the end of the chain, with the input cranked or dimed, used it as low pass, used it as high pass, crystal clear arpeggio-friendly machine, ultra high output annihilator...everything.
It made me fall back in love with an almost "pedal-less" setup, with actually just this pedal involved, but always on.
Fuck i recorded a hudred new riffs and even ran out of memory on the phone when i got it because it inspired my playing that much.


Aaaaaand, that's a wrap!

[goroth]

Amazing write ups!

I'm going to jump in here when I get a spare moment or two!

[Chankgeez]

[gila_crisis]

Great idea Dowi!
I have just got an EA Iron Pig in the mail box today, so I'll report about my selection of OD & Distortion devices as soon I've spent a bit of time with the Iron Pig!

[coldbrightsunlight]

Heck yeah! Funny your experience with the mecha feta, my experience with big cheese (including that one) is that the mid scoop mode is way cooler than most big muffs BUT my heart is with the mid boost mode.

[D.o.S.]

lack of band practice and gigs caused by COVID-19

the Mid scooped one is my favorite

Painfully relate to this content.

Mid Scoop is best when no one else can hear you, because no one else can hear you anyway.

[manymanyhaha]

Very cool story brother, can I be the wookie?

You got me thinking I need to get my Interstellar OD repaired. Have had an early one since really early on, battery only. It stopped working not long after I got it, put it in a drawer and there it has stayed. It is on a very long to-do list, like decades long

I had a Driving Notion for awhile, really liked it for some things. Is the Clang an exact replica or does it have some additional stuff going on? I saw that Clang thread but didn't really dive in because, well, I have a to-do list. It is decades long. I'm attempting with every bit of weak willpower I can muster to not add to it anymore. Don't ask me how that is going unless you enjoy stories of failure which you don't because we are reading about a different story, a success story, in which I play the wookie, right?

But seriously, awesome write-up. You have my curiosity on quite a few of those pedals. Well, all of them actually

[gila_crisis]

Here my contribution to this topic, maybe not as deep and detailed as Dowi, but when available with my demo vids.

Earthbound Audio Throat Locust
This is the King my distortion pedals, I love it so much that I got a second one at some point!
As you already know this one is EA take on the HM2 topic. I used to have few other HM2s iterations over the years (BYOC Swede kit, KMA Wurm, Fuzzlord HM6, Arion Metal Master), but to me the TL has few features that set it apart from the original and all the other clones/derivates: the parametric mid control and the clipping switch (which I though few times to replace with an on-off-on to have also no-diodes option, but so far I’m really happy with the stock pedal).
With these controls you can achieve a huge array of textures and sounds, as already well pointed out by Dowi.
I love the Low control on this one, I have the feeling is tuned way lower than a standard HM2, so you get a tons of subbass frequencies being pushed. And in general, I always felt EA pedals are tuned to allow all the low frequencies to pass thru untouched. Simply put it’s HUGE sounding device at any gain setting.
I have 2 of these: a 2018 made and a 2020 one. The 2018 inside has a trim pot to set the full gain available, which I eventually set to achieve higher gain possible. I rarely use it with maxed out gain, but it's nice to have and this way it has a bit more gain available than the 2020. Also (but it can be due to component tollerancies) the 2020 has a slightly wider mid frequencies sweep range.


DOD FX86b Death Metal
I think this pedal doesn't need a big introduction on this forum... got this one for cheap from a local seller (whom I think he didn’t have a clue about how sadly and madly hyped these got nowadays). Before this one I used to have the Digitech DDM, which is the same pedal, but this DOD allowed me to fine tune some components as you can see from the family picture below. I added a clipping switch (silicon or LED), a gain control and a mid freq knob (yes… the concept is loosely based on the Throat Locust), and fine-tuned few components to allow more low-end.
This is the perfect distortion for synths and noise machines. The 3 band EQ is very effective and powerful, plus with the added gain knob you can go from a slight clean boost/overdrive up to a brutal wall of harshness (I used a pot value way higher than advised, so the pedal can easily self-oscillate, if needed).

Earthbound Audio Iron Pig
Another EA pedal: I love this brand (I also have a Supercollider, but being a fuzz I didn't include it in this list). This IP arrived yesterday so it’s still fresh to me, but so far I love it. It's EA take on the RAT, and a very well made one indeed!
IP covers all those classic RAT tones, and more, thanks to the Attack knob and the clipping selector. Of course, being an Earthbound pedal, so you get the EA’s low freq tuning. The gain range is very wide, and goes from slight overdrives/clean-boost up to sludge-doom mayhems.
It has a clean blend, which can be very handy in many situations. Actually, I grew quite fond of distortion devices with clean blend lately, it's very useful feature indeed, not only with bass and synths but also on guitar (especially when stacking more gain stages together).


BSRI Audio SFG
If the Iron Pig is a vintage RAT, the SFG is a very modern one. It has a 2 bands active EQ, a tightness switch (it's a bit like the Attack knob on the IP, with 3 fixed settings) and a very cool clean blend with a switchable lowpass filter (3 positions: off, high-cut 1kHz, high-cut 100kHz).
The clean blend is amazing as it lets you decide which part of the spectrum is blended and unlike most blends, Dist Volume and Clean Volume are 2 totally independent controls, so you can also use the SFG as a clean booster!
The distortion is very focused and on the bright side, but the 2 bands EQ can tailor the sound quite easily, going from nasty and acid (high knob fully open) to wooly and smooth. When I first got it I was amazed how this distorts bass/low/subbass so well (thru the years and experience I learned how many guitar pedals are not designed to handle line levels and full frequencies ranges, and most tend to cut frequencies, especially in the lower range, or will "implode" if feeded with line levels). This SFG was designed with bass in mind, so it retains very well all those low frequencies.
I mostly use this pedal when I track bass: I fake it by using my baritone guitar into a Digitech Drop (1 octave down setting) then into the SFG, set with the 100Hz LP cut on the blend and a mild distortion setting: very effective!


Altero Kaede Overdrive
I wasn’t so much into overdrives until I got this one. Kaede is the signature OD pedal by Kida Motifour, the lead guitar player of Japanese post-math-rock-pop band Tricot… That was my first reason why I got it, as I’m a huge fan this band. But after getting the pedal, I discovered that I love the Kaede so much!
It is a low-gain OD, that can be set to be very transparent and clean or can be pushed into light distortion as well. In the middle there’s a 3 ways headroom switch (low-mid-high), which set the compression/clipping/brightness of the OD (I mostly use it in the Mid position, low is more compressed and dark, while high is less compressed, open-sounding and has a bit more output volume, perfect for clean boost duties). It basically covers all this kind of tube screamer/boss SD1 tones, but I love that Kaede has a very smoky flavor: it is actually a dark-sounding overdrive, to really make it bright you have to set the high knob higher than 3 o’clock, as I think it was designed mostly to be used with single coil pickups, but I like a lot also on baritone guitar, neck pickup and there's a bluesy mojo going.
Another positive discovery with low-tunings and synths: it retains very well all the low-end frequncies, also with the bass control set to zero, so this is another those huge sounding drive pedals!


Vemuran Galea
After the Kaede I got a Galea. It’s basically a mid-gain overdrive, with 3 bands EQ (designed to sound like a pushed fender amp… whatever, it sounds good to my ears), and 2 trim pots in the back to set overall gain available and EQ saturation. I use it when I need a bit more gain and mid grind/presence than the Kaede. It doesn't get so much use lately, but t’s a quite flexible device, sound/gain-wise a good link between the Kaede and the Iron Pig.

[ibarakishi]

Here to throw some love for the RMA Tetanus Booster, especially the most current one with high gain switch and treble switch. other than clang, the RMA Tetanus Booster is my only 'never going to sell or get rid of it' pedal that ive owned. It takes whatever you put into it and adds so much lows end weight and does things with the highs that are great too. I use it on both bowed instruments and guitar. for bowed instruments especially, it just completely opens up the low end and gives incredible presence to the resonance of your playing instrument sound. It has been used on every album i have recorded for since i bought it.

I also use it with the gain and treble switched engaged with the gain knob ramped up as a guerrilla radio signal antenna to pick up radio signals that come from across the border from China and also from way down in BKK and locally too. i spread my instrument cable all across my room and walk around my room with it plugged into anything with pickups in it plugged into my amp and once i find a station i like, then i stop and lay on the ground for hours listening to military propaganda in Thai, Chinese government broadcasts, language lessons in japanese or english, and whatever else overlaps or wanders through the signals that floods over my house in the middle of nowhere. I know this was most likely not the intended use that RMA set out to have these used for, but i use it for this often and sometimes just listen to the soft noise roaring waves of shortwave static evolving when i need to slow my mind a bit.

not trying to shill or stan here, but honestly its one of the only pedals i love fully.

[Never]

Damn, I didn't know there was a Tricot pedal!

100% seconding the TB love, and what a wonderful description of stray radio frequencies. I used to love picking up radio in post-industrial Western Pennsylvania (no TB at the time), but it wasn't as cool as that.

I don't even really get what kind of EQ magic the TB adds, but I need a second one, because (a) I've found too many uses for it, and (b) it sounds so great on drum machines I want to do stereo. Having two inverted outputs is just genius for noise, too, but I don't want to give my secrets away

[JTurbide]

Oh yes, I had an interstellar overdrive for not too long a few years back but it was good!

[Eivind August]

I also use it with the gain and treble switched engaged with the gain knob ramped up as a guerrilla radio signal antenna to pick up radio signals that come from across the border from China and also from way down in BKK and locally too. i spread my instrument cable all across my room and walk around my room with it plugged into anything with pickups in it plugged into my amp and once i find a station i like, then i stop and lay on the ground for hours listening to military propaganda in Thai, Chinese government broadcasts, language lessons in japanese or english, and whatever else overlaps or wanders through the signals that floods over my house in the middle of nowhere. I know this was most likely not the intended use that RMA set out to have these used for, but i use it for this often and sometimes just listen to the soft noise roaring waves of shortwave static evolving when i need to slow my mind a bit.

This is amazing.

[goroth]

OD and Dist - A Gain Story part II, or how I loved to learn buying dirt again

This is going to be a mammoth post. But to give it some context: I never play clean. I don't really like the sound of a clean electric guitar, at least not when I'm playing it. So I always want to have something going on in my "clean" sound. I like to joke about myself being a dumb metal head, but it's pretty close to the truth. I love a lot of music, but I love metal more. I love playing with other sounds, but I like palm muting, pig squealing and riffing more. So 90, maybe 95% of my guitar sound is going to be a flat out metal distortion. I very rarely use medium drives either - never really worked out what I'm going to do with them, and I very rarely use fuzz except for when I'm noodling. Because in the end I'm only going to noodle so long before I want to palm mute some people and shred some faces.

So I've had two parallel... drives... in my distortion quest - a nice low gain thinger, and the ultimate metal crank crank chunk chunk. And this has to be achieved with pedals. The reason being that I've never played in a band big enough to consistently be able to use our own gear. Most of my gigs have been played on borrowed gear, or house gear. So I want to be able to get any old piece of shit amp, set it pretty flat, and be able to come close enough to the sounds I want. Another reason I've always been drawn to pedals is that if I'm happy with 90% of something, I don't have to get rid of my entire head and buy a new one to work on that other 10% - so it seemed (and still seems) a sensible way for me to find my own sound. I've never really had guitar heroes, and I don't really want to cop anyone's sound. But I do have a clear definition of what the ultimate metal distortion is. And strangely enough it's not the recorded sound. Check out Ozzy's No More Tears. The little drop D riff at the end of each line in the verse. In particular the one at 2:22. The guitar tone isn't all that flash. I mean it's good, but there's too much swirly stuff and it's over produced. But when I play that riff, with the palm mutes, and the last note with the bent artificial harmonic, I want to hit that perfect balance between saturation and clarity. I want each palm mute to smash me. And I want that last harmonic to make me grin like a lunatic.

NSFW: show

I tested a lot of different gear and almost got there with the Emma Pisdiyauwot. I watched Dennis Kayzer's channel religiously and always marveled at how he made most pedals sound sick. I remember looking at the Okko Dominator and the Wampler Triple Wreck and the Pisdi and being blown away. These were nothing like Metal Zones and what not, these were fucking massive. So I grabbed the Pisdi and was pretty happy. But not quite. It was just a wee bit too loose. It flubbed a bit when I wanted it to crank. So I bought an MXR 6 band eq and cut the bass and boosted the mids a bit going into the Pisdi. And it was great! Except now I lost a bit of the chunk and crunk. And I couldn't quite get it back. So I bought another 6 band EQ and put it after the Pisdi. I bumped the bass a bit, scooped the mids a bit, probably jiggered with the highs a bit. And it was sick. Except I now had three pedals to get one sound, and I now had to make sure that three pedals were set up just right when I gigged.
Fuck.
Finally I found the Elements. It was exactly my set up, except in a 125B pedal, and it had sick graphics, and was run by a dude who was on ILF. I'd fucked around on ILF during the Devi days but it was so goddamned internal, and it was always exploding or imploding, so I never joined. But shit, the dude who designed the pedal that was sent from satan to be in my rig was on ILF... so I threw myself in here. And that was good fun.

But in any case, to finish the write up about the Pisdi. It is a bloody good pedal. It sounds great as a low gain drive. It sounds great as a marshally sort of hard rock sound. And it is a real good metal pedal. Noise floor is pretty decent too. The other guitarist in my band uses it into his JCM800 and it sounds brilliant. So I'd still put it right at the top of the heap in terms of pedals I've owned, and if I was forced to just use it into a clean amp (no extra MXR EQs) I would be happy with my sound.

But anyways, The Elements.
You've just gotta understand what you want, and you've got to understand how the pedal is designed. With those two things in mind, you can get it to sound killer. I've posted previously about how to think about it and can do so again if anyone is interested. The low gain sounds on their own are ok. I'm not sure why I don't think they are great tbh. At the risk of sounding far more negative than I actually am, the low gain sounds are serviceable. That is, until you start to fuck with the clean mix. If you keep the gain real low, and start to get a bit judicious with the clean blend, then you can get these fantastic klon like low gain tones. It's really good. But run flat out on the mix I prefer a DOD 250 or a Klon, or a Fuck. Medium gain, I got no idea. I guess it sounds good? Never used even tried. And high gain it's just there you know. So I've not used another distortion pedal for high gain sounds since 2012. Recorded twice with it. It's awesome. My favourite sound in the rehearsal room is LED clipping, but recorded I think it sounds better with just the op amp clipping. Don't be put off by the number of controls. It all makes sense. You can basically map out tones schematically when you're at work, come home and twist some knobs, and it will sound exactly how you think it would. Amazing.

That is all history. I was done with dirt by 2012. So how did I get on The Year of the Dirt? Why did I jump back down the rabbit hole? I found my forever pedal. What's the go? I had two Elements, one set up for high gain, one low gain.

It's all MAE Alec's fault. I think. He posted a 0 knob rat. In all black. And it just looked so goddamned cool. I think a few of these have been built and Skully was calling them maybe... Believe in Yourself? I dunno. Anyways, it's a Mask Audio Electronics 4 knob rat, where the knobs are internal trims. I'd actually never played a rat (having played with bands where the Rat was on bass that was my only real experience). So I bought it theoretically to try out a rat, but mostly because it looked sick in that black Gørva design enclosure. I realised, without even playing it, that it wasn't going to unseat the Elements as my high gain sound. Because well... why would it? So I started to think about whether it could maybe work as a low gain drive. It arrived in the mail and I checked it out, put it beside my black Elements and I was like woah. I've gotta get an all black board. That's another stupid ass story, but it lead me to starting to think about my entire set up and kinda change up everything. I tried it at low gain, and it sounded great, but it was really mids-forward and I just couldn't deal with it. Eventually I messed around enough that I landed in kinda a zz-top sound and I reckon that's right where a Rat sounds best. That's when those forward mids start to sound brilliant. When you've got enough gain to play pinch harmonics all day, but you can still play double stops with your fingers and sound kinda bluesy. So that's my rat sound. And that's how the MAE is set up. But it wasn't my sound. And instead of being fine with this and going back to my old set up I had to continue. See needing an all black pedal board.

Somewhere along the line I'd started to get a bit obsessed about the Jesus Lizard tone. I mean, it's the best. But I'd never had any means to get anywhere near it. Electronic Audio Experiments had come out with the Surveyor and it'd been on my radar for a while. But I couldn't justify getting it when I was really happy with my sound, and I couldn't be bothered going all F5 all day long once the hype train hit. So I just kinda did nothing with that idea. Until I'd got the black pedal bug. All of a sudden I had to swap out the Elements (low gain). And I had to scam a Surveyor. With a bit of help from Worra and Dirge I picked a V1 up for a sane price and Worra sent it my way. Firstly, it's an IVP circuit, so some of the comments for the Isotope below are also relevant. I'd say the gain range is broader than the Isotope, and that the eq is a little wider. The treble is really impressive in how brutal it can get without sounding shit. I'd say it also sounds a wee bit nicer higher in the gain ranges - a bit less transistors dying and a bit more... overdrivey. But it's still very much it's own thing. Lots of character. I've found it hard to get a bass heavy sound out of this. I mean, there are dumb amounts of bass in this pedal. But it is pre-gain so you end up changing the character of the gain a lot, and you can really hit the transformer hard and make it flub out. It's a cool sound, but it's not my sound. So I tend to leave the bass pretty chill, not go bananas on the treble, and leave the gain in a low zingy sort of level. Totally slays. At bedroom volume it's like "yeah, this is decent". But when you really give it a work out with some volume it's killer. Being based on a preamp I figured everything should be stacked into it. I've tried a fair few pedals, but I've found it to be finicky with stacking. You can easily end up in the bad ice pick zone. Or accidentally push it too hard and change the gain to a flubbier blown out sound. Which I won't say is bad, but it's not what I'm after. So I recently have taken to stacking it into other pedals. And there it is just incredible. My favourite combo is into a DOD 250. The bass cut tightens it up nicely and that added treble makes the additional gain really sound more modern and cut through. It doesn't lose any of it's character either. So I've now swapped up my board and put it before my main OD, for when I want a wee bit more hair.

While that was going on I'd been watching Laowiz do awesome stuff with the Cystech Overdrive. Jesus, that thing is awesome. IN particular that dude mysqrl or whatever his username is. That demo blew my socks off. And after not really being on a fuzz binge for the longest time I got obsessed with that pedal. So I eventually hit up Laowiz and got him to send a Cystech my way. And he just happend to have an IVP circuit ready to wire up and well, at this stage I still hadn't picked up a Surveyor. I don't think anyway. So those two were sent my way. The Cystech arrived and if anything I'd say it was better than I thought. Of course, I can't play as nicely as the mysqrl demo, but man. There are so many really fun and different sounds in this box. And it's easy to find your way around. It's not as simple as just a resonant filter plus a fuzz. It all interacts in this alchemical (that's so not a word) way and you can get these resonant sounds that crumble and swell and with the intermodulation. Complex chords can sound great or they can sound terrible. Or you can start off with them sounding terrible and lower your volume a bit until they sound good. Or you can make em sound good and bend a note until it sounds terrible. Then you choose another mode on the big dial and you start doing all sorts of other stuff. Previously the Fuzzhugger Suneater was my go to fuzz for "I want to just zone out and noodle", but now the Cystech is the undisputed champion. It can do a whole bunch of other sounds too. It may very well be my desert island pedal. Maybe. hehe. Anyways, anyone who missed out on this needs to get on Laowiz' case to make some more. I know he was thinking about a new version with some upgrades but he can shut up. it doesn't need upgrades. It cannot be improved. He just needs to make more of them and we need to buy them. Laowiz is not a wizard of marketing or promoting his own stuff, but he made like 10 of these and they sat around for waaaaay to long. Best pedal.

The Aion FX Isotope I can't really remember, but I think this dude arrived before the Surveyor did. I ended up swapping out two of the transistors from the funky BC whatevers Laowiz digs to I think 2N3904. I think. I was just messing around and found it sounded best this way. So this is a review for a slightly modded Isotope. Anyways, I found it stayed clean for quite a lot of the travel of the gain range, and that the bass and treble were surprisingly easy to dial in. The transformer limits the bandwidth a lot, so you can really go hard on the treble without getting ice picks. There are quite a lot of nice sounds in this pedal, up to medium gain. It gets that blown out transistor amp sound which isn't really my bag, so I use it in the slightly dirty range. It's a bit cleaner and "nicer" than the surveyor. If you're after the IVP sound then both are very very good, even though they are pretty different in a way.

Right. So now I'd swapped out an Elements for a Surveyor. But I needed one more dirt pedal to stack with the Surveyor for the slightly chunkier low gain sound. I use this in like 30 seconds of a whole set but it is a good excuse to buy more pedals. Thanks to the wonders of Instagram I discovered Rare Buzz Effects. They make a bunch of cool stuff, but I particularly liked the Piccolo Falsetto. It's a boost/overdrive that on paper should be pretty simple, but I find it a bit tricky to find the sounds I want on it. Like, I've got one spot dialed in that is killer, but I'm sure there are other good spots. Anyways, it has a 4 way input cap thinger on a rotary switch, so you can run it as a rangemaster or a full range thing. Which is sick. All of the settings sound really, really good - the treble only setting is nice - not like a Screaming Bird which was designed purely for the canine hearing range. So even if I never figure out how to dial in another good sound I'll keep it for this, because it's so practical for boosting other pedals. Then there is a tone, which I also like - it's just a passive high end roll-off. So that's rad. I quite like treble, but every now and then I want to give it a bit of a shave. So that's sick. Then there are only two more knobs that if I understand should be approximately input gain and output gain. Plus a trimmer on the input buffer that can go from unity to boost. The thing that frustrates me a bit is many of the combos of input and output that I dial in end up sounding woolly. I've got pretty high output humbuckers, so maybe it's on me. I dunno. I should probably email Rare Duder and ask. The breakup on it is quite ragged, which is awesome. The build is beautiful, and the design quite thoughtful, with the transformer and the input and output buffers you can really get nice germanium sounds anywhere in your chain. So I'm gonna say this pedal is sick but I'm a bit of a dumbass Collector Dude has a really good demo of it. He gets it to sound the way way I want to get mine to sound

What else happened? Oh yeah, so while I was messing with my low gain sound I was just kinda... going all in on the year of the dirt. Listening to Ola's Will it Chug. So based on that I bought a Satanist by Transmutation Devices (who have now had some sort of bust up and morphed into This Heavy . Despite it having side jacks. And it is a real weird pedal tbh. It's labelled as a black metal pedal and I kinda thought that was a crock of shit. And especially from Ola's demo - it is just crushing. Anyways, I saw a few reviews that said it didn't have huge gain. Which I just did not hear in Ola's demo. But when I plugged it in I really didn't find it had that much gain. I mean, sure, it was a metal pedal. But like... Celtic Frost. Not Gojira. The interaction between the dark and cold (yeah shutup) knobs is kinda cool though. Dark seems to be simply treble rolloff, but the way I hear it the cold is a bit like the Reutz mod on a rat, in that it sounds like it changes the amount of bass/low mids and also the gain structure. So that's nifty and actually together with dark you can get a really good variety of tones out of the one gain setting. But back to it being black metal - on a big rig you really hear that the treble is piercing (not in a bad way, in a rad way) and it doesn't have a lot of bass. Running it flat out into a good clean amp really does sound like a fucking awesome black metal tone. This might be the only pedal I've ever played that I'd actually say does what it says. But surprisingly it also sounds really, really good on low gain. So much so that I could easily use it as a low gain pedal. Anyways, I tested boosting it with a Klon and it really got into that palm muted smash all the things tone that I dig. I compensated a bit on the amp and ran the bass higher than normal (I like to leave a lot of room for our bassist) but it sounded sick.

While this was in the post Dunn Effects put up an all black DE1984. Now it could be the fact that it was black, or that I was listening to a fuck load of At the Gates, but I decided to hit it. Mr Dunn is a sick builder, but not super rad at documenting everything, so there's not a lot of info about what it actually. But he makes a 5150-alike and this is kinda the slimmed down version of that, from what I understand. Also, as far as I understand, it's not a straight up "swap the tubes for fets and scale the tonestack" thing, but more "my interpretation of what a 5150 does". Pretty simple - bass, mids, treble, vol, gain, and a toggle for rhythm/lead (approximately equiv to the 5150 rhythm/lead). Pretty sure presence is on a trim internally, but I haven't messed with it. The first thing I did was run it on rhythm, turn all the tone controls to 6 (not only because 6 6 6 is clearly the best setting for metal, but also because that's roughly how Gojira run their 5150s for rhythms), and it sounds great. Recorded direct and ran it through Wall of Sound cab sim and it sounded pretty crushing. Not hype levels of gain, so plenty of clarity, but definitely brought the crunk crunk chunk. And the pinch harmonics. Then I decided to do something bat shit. I swapped out my other high gain Elements. Mind blown. But it was just fun playing with a completely different tone that I found equally good. So it sounds like a really good natural high gain sound. I can't really hear a lot of difference in what the bass knob does, it seems awfully subtle which seems unexpected. The lead channel is tricky for me. It seems to have a greater amount of bass coming in to the circuit, so even when I dial down the gain it feels looser, and it's hard to compensate with the bass knob. So I don't use it much, but still, you can get it to sound pretty close to sick. I'm just finicky about input bass, if that wasn't obvious by now. There is one really weird thing about this pedal though, and that is the treble knob. If you turn it to zero all of a sudden the output goes waaaaaaay up, and the mid content changes a lot. And it still has plenty of treble. At a guess I'm going to say that it is working a bit like how Steve Vai used to dial his amps in with DLR - presence on 10 and treble on 0. I've tried this on my amp and quite like it too. So with the treble on almost 0 on the rhythm channel you get stupid high output and this real (sorry DoS) burly distortion. It is excellent. I swap back and forth between the 666 setting and the 660 setting, but I think I'll run it at 660. I could maybe wish it had a tad more saturation run like this, but really this is a boon to good sound because all metal guitarists use too much distortion. So the eq on this is odd as shit and kind of frustrating, but it's become my primary distortion sound and I couldn't recommend it enough. Unfortunately it seems that Dunn won't be making them any more but he's released the PCB so get a smart buddy to build you one.

But back to the Elements. Now that I shuffled it off the main board I dared to mess with my favourite settings and found my new favourite setting. Like I was saying about the Elements, you can cook up a setting just by knowing a bit about what you're after. HM-2 has silicone clipping diodes, so I chose them. It has a double mid-hump, but that main sound (for me) is that hump at 1200-ish hz, so flip the middle switch to 1200. Max the mids. I don't think it's a real tight pedal, but it does cut a bit going in and then in the maxed position boost the bass a fair bit. I found it to sound best cutting lööööts of bass on the way in and compensating with the bass knob accordingly. More modern than an HM-2, but rad. And judicious use of treble. That's it. So I dialed that in and hell, it sounds so sick. Kinda half way between Slayer and Entombed, but not sounding like straight up Entombed HM-2-core. I love it.

Oh yeah, I bought a Rare Buzz Snitch, which is their take on a Rat. And so I've arrived at the fact that I quite dig rats, but they are best at the high gain hard rock sound and not metal. I stacked it with both the Surveyor and the Piccolo, and definitely got the chugs going on, but I needed a noise gate, there was so much hiss. Anyways, this pedal has crazy output, lots of gain range, diode fun, insanely nice build, and priced to move. So if you're after a rat just snag one.

What else? I bought a klon. Bought a Mosky golden lady or whatever it is called, mostly because I was 100 kronor from free shipping and the pedal only cost like 270 so why not. I kind of bought it as a joke, both the fact that it was stupidly cheap, and that it was a klon. But I'll be damned. Klons are worth the hype. From what I understand these are fairly close to the original - close enough for a joker like me anyway. And it sounds great. Most of the settings sound really good, and the gain range is decently wide. It has a wee bass cut/mid hump which is good for goosing stuff, but it sounds awfully good on its own too. If it wasn't for the fact that I went silly on the all black pedal board this would potentially be my low gain overdrive, or hell, two of them. I think anyone who is interested in low gain sounds should check one of these out.

I also went on a bit of a DOD 250 bender, inspired by DoS and Coldbright. So I bought a 797 from Dirty Haggard Audio because it was cheap as chips, mostly black, and the description was pretty cool. With my Nelson it sounds like a DOD 250, but with my higher gain pickups in the V it is never really an overdrive - it's always more or less distortion. Two knobs, good build quality and gets pretty distorted. The basic tone of the 250/dist+ circuit is just really good in my ears - works good on low gain (a bit tweedy/small fender working too hard) and it sounds really rock n roll when you turn it up. If you're after a straight up 250 this isn't gonna do it, but if you want a really nicely voiced 250 style circuit that can get pretty heavy then do it! Goosed with a hotcake it gets really heavy too, but then you need a noise gate.

I built a DOD250 from Musikding - grey version. The low gain is much lower, even with my V. I like it so much it's now on my board. I breadboarded a version with some mods and I dug that as well, but I've gotta get some skills and make a pcb for it. I've got the handwritten schem above my computer right now, but I just don't know enough about electronics for this to be a task I'm going to look forward to. Maybe next summer and I'll do a few protos. Swapped the diodes endlessly until I found a shottky/LED combo that was fun. A good mix of tightness and hair. Bigger input and output caps, bumped up power supply filtering, and stole a thing or two from the dist+ and rat and put a smoothing resistor on the shottkys. Completely unoriginal and sounds very nice, so I really want to make a couple and test em loud.

And I told Max I wasn't going to buy his Revv G4.
So I bought his Revv G4.

It's not black which I'm very worried about. But I'm looking forward to it arriving in Sweden and shredding some shit with it.

I got in on the Clang as well. Which is kinda weird, because I borrowed CBS' DN many years ago and didn't think it was that flash. But I had that sound in my head, and in all the years since I haven't heard a pedal that does that thing. The reversed transistors make it sound really... clangy! Like an aluminium neck. Without the back breaking weight. Anyways, the Clang ended up being so much better than the DN. The toggle opens up a lot of tonal possibilities, and the gain range is broader, allowing it work kinda like the Surveyor. On paper and in practice they do the same thing. Massive low end, massive high end, stack well. But A/B'd they don't sound anything at all alike. When the gain goes up you get the weird intermodulation-ish sound of the reversed transistors, which is a lot of fun. Being able to control the gain for the lows and highs individually and then the mix between them allows you to use the pedal in ways that you can't really do with other pedals. My favourite is to give the treble a boot full, and keep the lows on low. Keep the input gain low. Then set the mix to almost all low - mix in the treble until you get a nice sharpness to your sound. I dunno how practical this sound is in a band context, but you know that relentlessly heavy clean sound that Cult of Luna gets? This pedal will get you that. So the Clang and a reverb or delay is just post-metal, all day long. A like all the pedals I've bought in the Year of the Dirt, but tbh I could flip all of them and still have a pretty cool tone. But the Clang gets it sounds in such a different way that I think it is worth keeping just for that alone. So if you see one get it immediately, because it is superior to the DN.

Somewhere in all this OD and distortion I also bought some fuzz. I got in on the Stomping Stones/Dirge Pest Tattern. Initially I only bought it because it was fun to do an internet thing. I have a Timebender because of Brandsmannen. DoD 250 because of DoS (and CBS, but sorry, it's really the DOS sig pedal). And I got on the Pest because of Rfurt. ILF has meant a lot to me over the years and doing stuff like this is for me completely reasonable. Anyways, long story short and this is one of the legit most fun oscillating fuzzes I've played. It has the playability of the Fuzzhugger Ab Synth, and the chaos of the most rowdy oscillating fuzzes. Non-oscillating mode isn't all that impressive. It's an ok fuzz. Maybe a bit more interesting after a buffer. But when you start flipping those switches you can get a world of silliness. Notes that sound like they are going to oscillate and collapse but don't. Gating. Squealing. Droning. It's all there. I'll probably get an Oscillofuzz at some point because of Eivind, but otherwise I see no reason to ever buy a fuzz again between this and the cystech.

With that said, I just bought another fuzz.

Jero (Stomping Stones) is someone who I dig a lot, and he happens to make some rad pedals. At first I was like "eh, Virus, whatever". Two knob fuzzes aren't really anything that gets me hot and bothered, because half the time there is one rad gain setting and then you put the loudness where it works and that's it. Then I read Dowi's review and I had to hit it. I'd been pestering Jero about making a Häxan with a baxandall and the crazy sonofabitch actually did it. And he had a virus just kinda loitering nearby. So what's a dino to do?

I think that's about it. It's an embarassing amount of gear. I did flip a fair bit of stuff, but I've also thrown dumb amounts of money down the sink. I've worked out that this is what happens when I don't get to make music. Each time a microraptor was born the same thing happened - I didn't get out and I just bought gear. Being able to go silly about gear has been for me a way of dealing with no gigs and no jams during covid. It's been good fun, but now I've landed in a bunch of new sounds and feel pretty content. Just in time for society to (maybe) open up again and start gigging and going to gigs.

Looking forward to buying the next irrational forum thing. I'm looking at you Wizard Fountain.

[Chankgeez]

[goroth]

Sorry. Grammar was a bit confusing here and there and I skipped some words. I might have to edit the post to make it a bit more readable. But atm I can’t be bothered