Today, I want to answer one question: can vintage profiling tech recreate the sounds of vintage amps?
Read on to find out.
Continue reading “Can The Kemper Profile Tweed Tone?”Side By Side: NABLA Custom Black Tweed and Mythos Lark
In my first impressions of the NABLA Custom Black Tweed, I said that one of the things I didn’t like about it was that I found the tone to sound very dull. This morning, I was going back through my New Arrivals posts, and I was reminded of another tweed-tone pedal with a top-end that I didn’t like at first: the Mythos Lark.
I thought it’d be interesting to throw them both on the board together, and explore them side by side. This isn’t a ‘best’ kind of review: it’s about understanding the options that each pedal offers … and yes, about exploring the top-end of them both.
Continue reading “Side By Side: NABLA Custom Black Tweed and Mythos Lark”2020 Review: Pedals
Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what pedals I’m using, and why.
Previous posts in the series: [2019]
Continue reading “2020 Review: Pedals”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 …
Continue reading “First Impressions: Mythos Pedals’ Lark (Rhett Shull Signature) Overdrive Pedal”New Arrivals For May 2020
It’s been the second full month of lockdown. eBay remains quiet, partly because sensible folks are reluctant to head out to post parcels, and partly because eBay has been limiting their discount sales fees to once a month.
The blog’s been quiet too. I’ve had some other things in life to deal with. So many basic, run-of-the-mill things are difficult-to-impossible to resolve when most of society has shut down. It’s one thing to know it, it’s quite another thing to experience it first hand.
Here’s what’s arrived this month. Spoiler alert: it’s all really good stuff, and there’ll be full First Impressions blog posts for each of them soon.
Continue reading “New Arrivals For May 2020”Attack Of The Klons!
Chappers and The Captain have done a shootout between ten Klon-like pedals.
If you’re not sure what all the hype around the Klon is all about, let me explain …
The Klon is low-gain pedal that (in its day) did something unique. Set as a clean boost, it lifts the guitar in the mix (or in a live setting) thanks to the way it increases the upper mids. And yet – it also does something to the bass response that makes clean tones sound fuller, without making drive tones muddy or boomy.
The hype is partly because, for many years, the only way to get this tone was to get a Klon Centaur. They were hand-built by Bill Finnigain, and due to limited availability they started changing hands in the second hand market for eye-watering amounts of money.
Eventually, klones (with a ‘k’) started appearing. Bill himself created the Klon KTR as a mass-production version of the Centaur, did a deal with JRAD to make them, before JRAD went on to create their own klones.
The most important klone is the Soul Food. It wasn’t the first klone, and I’d argue it is amongst the worst, but it did bring awareness and availability to the mass market. Since then, there’s been an explosion of interest in klones and the Klon thing. Today, there’s plenty of choice to suit all tastes and budgets.
I’ve got three of these on my boards, including the (for me) unmatched Klon KTR. It’s the only one that I’ve tried that doesn’t add a huge bass bump to overdrive tones. That’s something that doesn’t come across in this demo, to be honest.
Watch the video to choose your favourite, and then please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment..