With recent problems behind me, my enthusiasm for music has started to return this month. While I haven’t picked up a lot of new (to me) gear, the items I did snag are all very special to me.
Lovepedal Les Lius Overdrive Pedal
I only had one tweed-tone pedal left on my pedal bucket-list: the Lovepedal Les Lius. It’s taken me a while to get one: second-hand prices and supply have gone a bit nuts since Lovepedal (temporarily?) disappeared a year or two ago. I finally have one.
The Les Lius is one of the most famous tweed-tone pedals around, and with it, my Lovepedal tweed-tone pedal collection is complete. Well, as complete as it can be. There’s one or two more that I don’t have, but they’re so rare, I doubt I’ll ever see them.
Was it worth the wait? Or does the Les Lius fare badly when compared to the competition? I think this pedal is fantastic … as long as I use it a certain way. I’ll explain more about that in the upcoming First Impressions post.
Warm Audio Centavo Overdrive Pedal
Yup, third month in a row where I’ve picked up a Klone klone. Or, in this case, a potential Klon clone: a pedal that reproduces the Klon so well that it’s as good as the real thing. (I promise: no plans to make it four months in a row!)
Warm Audio’s Centavo has also been on my pedal bucket-list, ever since it came out in 2022. The guys over at Thomann’s YouTube channel clearly loved it, and that got me intrigued. I’m already sorted on the Klon front, so I decided to wait until I could snag a second-hand example at a suitable price. It’s taken a while; I’ve only seen a small number of them so far.
Rather than post a First Impressions, I’m going to cover this pedal in detail in an upcoming #CoffeeAndKlon post. If you can’t wait for that, I can tell you now: this pedal is something special.
Warm Audio Warmdrive Overdrive Pedal
When Warm Audio launched the Centavo, they also launched the Warmdrive. This is meant to be a faithful reproduction of the legendary Hermida Audio Zendrive pedal. And I enjoyed the Centavo so much, I decided to pick this up too from a different seller. (I think this is the first Warmdrive I’ve seen on my local second-hand market?)
The Zendrive (and, by extension, the Warmdrive) belongs to the Dumble-style family of pedals. Pedals in this family are chasing the tone and characteristics of a Dumble amp. It’s not a tone genre that I’ve spent much time with, so I’m looking forward to trying something a bit different.
My first impressions of this pedal are that it works better in a mix than it does on its own, and that it can really bring out the qualities of a Stratocaster.
Paoletti Stratospheric Loft HSS Guitar
I’ve started work on writing up my long-term review of my PRS Paul’s Guitar (aka The Earl). It’ll be coming out at some point over the summer. Doing that write-up made me realise that while the Paul’s Guitar can get me most of the way there, it can’t replace a great Strat for me (just like it can’t replace a great Les Paul either).
My plan was to spend the summer visiting UK guitar stores to play a lot of Strats and learn more about what’s right for me. Yeah, well … on the very first of these visits, I found the perfect one for me. And it isn’t even a Fender!
This was the day before a business trip to finish the month. Now that I’m back, I’m looking forward to spending enough time with it to write up my First Impressions. Until then, suffice to say that I’m seriously thinking about selling all my actual Fender Strats. That’s how I know that I found the one.
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