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 ZVEX SUPER HARD-ON
Pre-amp Pedal
Most vintage guitars suffer from steadily deteriorating magnets in their pickups, since permanent magnets aren't really forever. The Super Hard-On's input impedance is so high (>5 Meg) that it refuses any current flow from your pickup, maintaining the most magnetic field around each string, so you can hear exactly what your pickup sounded like the day it came off the winder.
The ouput level can exceed 8 volts peak, and when it finally distorts, the wave is shaped like triode overload, not fuzz.
It's so transparent no one will be able to tell you're using a pedal. Perfect for making the most of a classic amp and guitar, because it simply makes your guitar bigger and pushes the amp harder, causing natural overload. This sound can be the solution to the 'disappearing guitar' effect you get sometimes on stage when you stomp on your distortion and sound weaker. When cranked, it sounds much louder than a fuzz or distortion under stage conditions.
Like all Z. Vex designs, current flow is low in this circuit (less than 2mA), enhancing battery life. The circuit board is hand-cut and soldered with the critical component, a BS-170 mosfet transistor, placed in a socket for easy user replacement should it be necessary. Tym Guitars can provide you with a free replacement transistor upon request. The box is hand-drilled using no petro lubricants, degreased with natural ethyl alcohol, and hand painted so that every box is unique. Knobs are Harry Davies, made with the same molds they've used since the fifties. Each effect is hand dated and signed by Zachary Vex.
MAP $300.
 ZVEX LO-FI LOOP JUNKY
Phrase Looper
The Lo-Fi Loop Junky is really low fidelity. The recording of your guitar is filled with hiss, moan, distortion and warped-record strangeness, but everyone will be able to tell the loop from your real guitar. Because the processing of your direct guitar is done with Zvex's bootstrap circuit. With the very highest impedance circuit Zvex has ever developed (even higher than the super hard-on circuit) your direct guitar will have detail incomparable with anything you’ve ever heard. The juxtaposition of your direct guitar against the smashed, distorted, shimmering/warbling recording of the loop mechanism will make it clear once and for all who is the guitarist and what is the machinery.
There are distinct advantages and disadvantages to this tiny, battery-saving device. You may only record one loop. There is no sound-on-sound available with this technology for now. But, if you unplug your cables, take out the battery, and bury it for a hundred years, the last loop you recorded will still be there when you drag yourself out of the grave and plug it in for the centennial resurrection gig. That’s because it uses really bizarre technology that literally crams analogue signals into static digital storage cells without a-to-d conversion. That’s right, there is no analogue-to-digital conversion. It’s pure analogue storage, just like the old bucket-brigade technology, for 20 seconds straight. It would take 25 800ms analogue delay pedals to hold the loop that this thing can play.
MAP $505. Visit www.zvexpedals.com or www.tymguitars.com.au for more information, or try them out at Tym Guitars Retail.
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