More pedals

PipeLine®

Tremolo / harmonic vibrato

Amplitude modulation — tremolo — is arguably the first overt guitar effect. Amps with built-in tremolo appeared by the late 1940s and were standard equipment by the late 50s. Surf music made it its own: the Del-Tones, the Ventures and the Chantays combined tremolo with reverb to build the definitive surf guitar sound.

In 1961 Fender released a complex variation known commonly as harmonic vibrato. It isn't technically vibrato at all, but the effect is vaguely reminiscent of a rotating speaker. It was costly and complicated, so it was short lived, and nothing adequately replaced it.

Development started in January 2009 and finished that December. Rather than simply duplicate the original, PipeLine was built as a stereo version that also does standard tremolo, with a low-pass frequency trim and expression pedal control. In mono the primary output gives you standard trem; plug into the bottom jack and the signal splits for stereo, which produces an alternating effect a mono source simply cannot reproduce.

The toggle selects between normal tremolo and harmonic vibrato. The waveform knob shapes the LFO, from a smooth sine at the left to a clipped square at the right. Speed sets the LFO rate, Intensity sets how much effect is in the signal, and there's an internal trimmer for the low-pass cutoff. Connecting an expression pedal disables the Speed control and hands manual speed control to your foot.

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Phantasm

Analog phaser

Winner of the Guitar Player Magazine Editor's Pick Award, Phantasm was the world's first 9V battery-operated opto-analog dynamic phaser with a centre-axis control. Three basic modes of operation, and the end product of three years of development.

It uses vactrols in both the signal and the control path, which makes it remarkably smooth and ridiculously quiet — and it still runs on a 9V battery. Analog phasers don't have to be noisy.

The centrepiece is the attack-controlled modes. Attack Controlled Depth and Attack Controlled Sweep let you increase or decrease depth and sweep based on how hard you hit the strings, each with its own switch and bi-directional sensitivity control. Both can run at once, and both work forward or reverse.

Every other phaser begins and ends its cycle at a fixed point. The Axis control changes that — it sets the centre from which the LFO and ACS sweep, across the full range of phase offset. Turn Width fully down and Axis becomes a manual sweep control.

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Texas Flood

Classic overdrive

A classic overdrive modelled on the legendary TS-808 circuit. It isn't a clone — we don't make clones, and there was certainly room for improvement.

The TS series has been the most popular in the world for the better part of thirty years. Everyone has one, and the complaints are always the same: no bottom end, a less than perfect tone control, not enough range of gain. The boutique world answers with a sea of clones and mods and endless argument over carbon versus metal film, op-amp variants, through-hole versus SMD. The sheer number of variations on one theme suggests nobody had got it right.

Texas Flood is op-amp based, with asymmetric diode clipping and a tone stack derived from the TS-808. Unlike the original it has a big bottom end that won't quit, and a tone control that sounds good across the whole sweep. Drive sets the amount of overdrive, Tone cuts or boosts the high end, Level sets the output.

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Mr. Squishy

Compressor

An analog compressor that combines purity of tone with tight, punchy squeeze on demand. Tested across tube, solid state and hybrid amps, and it delivers every time.

Don't you hate it when you kick on the compressor and your guitar sound changes? Compressors aren't supposed to do that. Mr. Squishy is the anti-compressor — compression without oppression, transparent enough that you never lose the tonal qualities that made you love your guitar in the first place.

There's a nice tight attack and a long slow release. It won't distort unless you want it to — there's no buffer, and the op-amp can be overdriven, which is what the Gain control is for. Turn the Squish off, crank the Gain and set Level at 10 and you have a very serious clean boost with power to spare.

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