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GEARED: Australian Effect Pedals - Essential Guide
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Mindful of the current economic crisis, GEARED thinks global and acts local, finding a bunch of great effectors for the discerning guitarist in the process.
APHEK SUNDAY DRIVER
‘60s Overdrive
The Sunday Driver offers a classic rock style break-up reminiscent of the late ‘60s high-powered amps. At low gain settings, you get that fantastic, just past clean power tube sounding break up. At maximum gain settings it produces the complexity and richness of your own amp turned right up. The six position filter switch rolls off top end at varying degrees. The Sunday Driver delivers a flatter response and tighter feel, in comparison to the Model T.
The boost switch adds more gain, fattens up the mids, and boosts the overall level. The boost can be used as a solo switch, but it also can also be thought of as more gain. All this adds up to a pedal that sounds very organic and natural, that can move transparently from your clean amp sound, to light break up, and to high break up. The pedal features true bypass and has a heavy-duty powder coated finish, with clear/blue and clear/red status LEDs. It will run on either a 9-volt battery or a Boss style external adapter. It comes with a two year warranty and a 10 day money back trial period.
Aphek Guitar FX are a company from the NSW Central Coast, who also run a recording studio. They only have a couple of pedals available, but the Sunday Driver and Peanut Butter Model T may be the most transparent overdrives ever. They sound as if you’ve turned up the output (not pre-amp) of your amp. If love your guitar and amp, and you’ve found other overdrive devices colour your sound too much, and amp attenuators just don’t sound right, then chances are you’re after one of these puppies.
The Peanut Butter Model T offers a gritty, raw, vintage style breakup reminiscent of the low-powered amps from the fifties. It has a looser feel than the Sunday Driver, and a slightly warmer tone. The Model T retains the sound of the original Peanut Butter Overdrive, adding a six position top end filter, and a mean switch.
The mean foot switch increases the gain, giving you liquid sustain. All this adds up to a versatile pedal that sounds very organic and natural, that can move transparently from your clean amp sound, to light break up, and to high break up. The pedal features true bypass and has a heavy duty powder coated finish, with clear/green and clear/red status LEDs. It will run on either a 9 volt battery or a Boss style external adapter. It comes with a two year warranty and a 10 day money back trial period.
Broadcast Professional Audio are a South Australian company who specialise in audio utility and connectors. The Hard On is their simplest offering, though it is much more than your typical AB box. The Hard on is a multi-purpose switching box ideally suited for performing and recording guitar players. It can be used as a Hard bypass for effects pedals, so you can keep vintage units out of the signal chain when not in use, and thus stop tone loss or colouration. Alternatively you can flip between guitars or amps without all the usual fumbling around with leads between songs, or simply tune your guitar without the audience listening to the trouble your having getting that damn G string on the money.
In use as a re-amping device the unit converts a balanced line level source, such as the output from a tape recorder or DAW D-A converter into an unbalanced instrument level signal suitable for connection to a guitar amplifier or guitar effects pedals. This process allows you to record an instrument, such as a DI-ed guitar or bass and then when the heat is off the performance replay the recording back to a guitar amp and experiment with amp choice, settings, and microphone choice and placement to achieve the sound you require. It also allows for further sound production techniques such as using guitar effect pedals or older tape delay units whilst being able to match levels correctly and running unconventional instruments through guitar amps. Ever tried running a snare drum through a guitar amp?
A large volume range allows you to drive the front end of your amp harder, while the tone control can cut or boost treble. The unit has universal XLR inputs (both male and female connected in parallel) to eliminate gender changers. It also allows the source to loop through the unit to give you a signal split. Plus the dual outputs allow you to send your signal to two amps or two channels of one amp.
In DI mode the Missing Link offers a true high impedance input suitable for guitar and bass passive pickups, but is also suitable for use with effect pedal outputs, keyboards and other unbalanced instrument sources. As a Re-amp the unit converts a balanced line level source, such as the output from a tape recorder or DAW D-A converter into an unbalanced instrument level signal suitable for connection to a guitar amplifier or guitar effects pedals. It’s a sweet tracking and mixing tool.
Chunk Systems are a pedal manufacturer from Surry Hills in Sydney. We covered them pretty well in our bass effector coverage, and so are here for the sake of completeness. They do the Brown Dog gated bass fuzz, Agent 00Funk Mark II envelope filter, and the Octavius Squeezer analogue bass synth.
ClinchFX are based in Warner here in Brisbane. They do some really interesting things that fall loosely around the “boost” class of pedals. For instance, the EP-PRE is JFET preamplifier that is based on the preamp section of the Echoplex EP-3 tape echo unit. It will deliver a few db of boost, but shouldn’t really be considered as such. Head technician Peter Clinch uses words such as “Enhance, Fatten and Enrich” to describe what it does to your tone. It makes your guitar sound like it’s running through beautiful, warm old tape units ... but with the ability to turn the effect off at will.
The Blue Classic is a dual stage pedal. The first stage has a small amount of power supply sag and “warms” the sound. It also gives an adjustable mid-top boost. The second stage enables the Drive control and increases sag, allowing the amplifier in the pedal to be driven into distortion. The design of the Class AB push-pull amplifier prevents hard clipping from happening, sloping the waveform after a fast initial transient response. This approach makes for excellent dynamics.
In normal mode, the Blue Classic fattens or thickens the overall tone, with some break-up on loud notes and chords, like an amp being driven just past its limits. In Drive mode the Drive control – combined with increased power supply sag – allows the Class AB internal amplifier to be driven into a rock/blues overdrive distortion. As the Voice control is increased, sharpened transients and increased harmonics help to boost attack and sustain.
The Blue Classic is very responsive to playing dynamics. Even in drive mode, a clean sound can be achieved by playing softly or winding back the Guitar’s volume control.
Like the Blue Classic, the Mosfet Classic features a miniature transformer-coupled power amplifier. However, instead of using bipolar transistors in Class AB Push-Pull, the Mosfet Classic uses a single Mosfet operating in Class A.
The Mosfet Classic is also a two-stage pedal. The first stage is not as clean as the Blue Classic and gives that “just over the edge” sound that you get when you push a small amp a bit too far, but it cleans up nicely when you back off on the guitar. The second stage enables the drive control, giving considerably more available gain than the Blue Classic.
The Mosfet Classic is voiced to be less bright and to have less bottom end than the Blue Classic. It is stronger in the mids, making a nice Class A mid-range bark, without having the mid hump of a TS based pedal.
In normal mode, the Mosfet Classic fattens or thickens the overall tone, similar to the Blue Classic, but has earlier break-up. There is a very slight mid boost that gives good sustain, without losing the highs and lows. In Drive mode, the increased drive pushes the Class A Mosfet amplifier into asymmetric clipping. The intensity of clipping can be set with the drive control. As the Voice control is increased, sharpened transients and increased harmonics help to boost attack and sustain.
Like the Blue Classic, the Mosfet Classic is very responsive to playing dynamics. Even in drive mode, a clean sound can be achieved by playing softly or winding back the guitar’s volume control.
Next week we’ll look at some more Australian pedal manufacturers. If you know of any I haven’t covered here, shoot me an email at and let me know all about it.
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Mindful of the current economic crisis, GEARED thinks global and acts local, finding a bunch of great effectors for the discerning guitarist in the process.
APHEK PEANUT BUTTER MODEL T
BROADCAST HARD ON
BROADCAST PASSIVE LINK
BROADCAST MISSING LINK
CHUNK SYSTEMS
CLINCHFX EP-PRE
CLINCHFX BLUE CLASSIC
CLINCHFX MOSFET CLASSIC
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