Category: At Your Feet

Pedals, pedalboards, and anything to do with these little boxes of joy :)

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TIL: The Amber Drive And Golden Cello Are The Same Drive Pedal

When it comes to pedal manufacturers, I’m a huge fan of Mad Professor pedals. I’ve owned pretty much all of their older (pre-Simple) drive pedals over the years, and I’ve probably logged more hours playing these pedals than any other brands’.

So I was floored when I recently read that the Golden Cello is actually an Amber Drive with added delay (a la the Bluebird Overdrive). How did I miss that?!? But it’s true.

The reason I hadn’t noticed this before? I’ve always used my Golden Cello with the delay turned up a bit (it’s endless hours of fun with an ebow), and it’s an older delay design that doesn’t feature a dry signal blend. ie, the delay colours the sound quite a bit.

Turn the delay off, and hey presto: the two pedals are identical.

So if you’ve always been curious about the Amber Overdrive, but found the second hand prices too high, keep an eye out for a Golden Cello. In my experience, the Golden Cello often goes for rock-bottom prices.

I guess I’m not the only one who didn’t know about this!

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Tone Stacking: Using Another Pedal To Shape The Fender MTG:LA’s Sound

In my opinion, Fender’s MTG:LA pedal is a bit of a conundrum. I think it’s got just the one sound, and if that sound doesn’t work for you or your rig, the pedal’s EQ controls can’t save the situation.

I love it with my Strat and my Tele. I don’t like it anywhere near as much with my Les Paul.

Thankfully, we’re not limited to what the MTG:LA can do on its own. We can give it some help, in the form of a second pedal to shape the tone a bit more. And I’m really liking the results.

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Side By Side: Fender MTG & Fender MTG:LA

In 2019, Fender released not one but two tube-based drive pedals: the MTG Tube Distortion Pedal, and the MTG:LA.

I’ve had both pedals for several months. During that time, I’ve also played quite a few other tweed-tone pedals from Boss, Mythos and Lovepedal, which has helped me with my understanding quite a bit.

How do they compare? What are the differences? I’m going to try and answer that in this blog post.

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First Impressions: Mythos Pedals’ Lark (Rhett Shull Signature) Overdrive Pedal

Back in May 2020, my pre-ordered Mythos Lark drive pedal arrived. It’s been on the practice board most of the time since then, sharing time with various other tweed-tone pedals that I’ve been looking at.

How has it gotten on? Here’s my First Impressions of this drive pedal. It’s a bit of a long read …

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First Impressions: Boss FBM-1 Fender 59 Bassman Overdrive Pedal

Above all others, there’s one tweed-tone pedal that I haven’t yet tried. It might not be the very first tweed-tone pedal, but it’s certainly the earliest one that I know about. It’s a pedal that’s rumoured to have graced the boards of many successful recording and touring artists.

And finally, after years of watching them go for very high prices, I finally won one on eBay. Was it worth the wait? Or will it remain forever in the shadow of my beloved SHOD?

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