Officer Bukowski wrote:My pedal shelf has pedals stacked on top of each other on it and then the floor next to it has pedals stacked on top of each other To be fair it's not actually a shelf but a large stool
I really only use three pedals with my band. My MK1.5, my TU-3, and my DM-2. The rest are there because I seem to have a problem with buying pedals, and a bigger problem selling them.
I use most of them at least occasionally but there are a shameful few that I've literally only touched like twice
Warpsmasher wrote:What's that SAS pedal like? I've seen a couple on craigslist and been tempted, but the YouTube demos I've seen were all terrible...
Fucking awesome. The best kept secret since... forever.
I must admit, though, it's a rather wild beast. If you play Telecasters and have a bright amp, you might find it a bit too intense. It's really aggressive sounding. Think, small Tweed amp being played with all the controls maxed out and the speakers literally tearing as you play. It's gnarly, uncompromising, and blistering. I love this tone a lot, but I wish they added a tone knob for those times you don't want to rip your eardrums from your ears and piss on them as they burn in acid, but I can live without it. I just have to use a darker humbucker-equipped guitar and roll the tone knob on the guitar back a little when cranking the gain up. I spoke to Fryette about this harsh treble I speak of and they said that you can swap a part around to calm it down, but I don't want to go fucking around with an awesome pedal. I want them to get it right themselves.
As a comparison, it sounds a little like the Fuck Overdrive with the gain up and the treble up. It has that same bowl-moving low-end and crumbling grittiness that chews and sputters the more you thwack the strings. It also has a little Vox AC30 flavour in the brightness of the overdrive. It's like playing a Tone Bender MKI into a cranked AC30 in the Top-Boost channel. The sound is granulated and sludgy. It also works as a dirty boost that possesses all the harmonics of an all-tube amp. It has that distinguishing 'Fryette/VHT' attack and dynamics. If you're a dynamic player then you'll dig it. I'm not just talking rolling back on the volume control. I'm talking about the differences in pick attack. It has so much presence that you can't hide behind a wall of distortion or a muffled high-end. What you play is what you get, like a real Fryette amp.
It's also affordable considering it's a genuine tube preamp in a box. It only works in the front-end of your amp, like a traditional solid state fuzz, but that's not an issue for me. It runs on 12vAC (a common output that many modern power supplies can accommodate) but has a charge pump inside that increases the voltage to 200+ volts or whatever it is the EF86 requires to rip. The tubes then compress in the same way a valve amp would. It's smaller than most tube pedals as well considering it's got a proper toroidal transformer in there. It's not overly noisy (though not the quietest pedal ever), doesn't overheat, and isn't heavy. Fucking awesome thing. I'm a total Fryette fanboi. I have a Memphis 30 combo and I'm GAS'ing for the Boostassio, a Deliverance 60 head, and a Deliverance 4x12 cabinet. They have a new jazz amp coming out as well I'm really keen on trying.
Nice, sounds like everything I was hoping it would be. Should have grabbed it when I had the chance. I'm pretty much all humbuckers and usually use post-dirt eq too, so excess treble is never a problem for me. Preamp pedals have been a bit of a curiosity for me ever since I got my first AMT (E1), so now I'm trying new ones all the time, and this one was on my radar mainly because I was hoping it would have that signature sound. Thanks for the detailed description, I'm gassing like fuck for it now.
To be fair it's not actually a shelf but a large stool
