Tonefiend Forum

I have a "Pure" Boost+Buff which to date I have tested with my little Webcor tube amp which can't barely make no grind on its own. Although I have read Guitar Player for years, I lack the journalistic skills to describe it other than "more gain = louder and more grind". I'm a bit baffled by the Buff switch and maybe when playing into a high impedance tube amp input it doesn't make a lot of difference.

I spent a little time dialing back the Webcor's gain and adjusting the pedal gain in various combinations. Clearly, with everything turned all the way up, I am getting a good amount of power amp distortion, because when I back off the Webcor's volume, it cleans up a lot, but not totally. Between the two controls (and no tone control) there seems like a good spectrum of mild to semi-bombastic crunch sounds to be explored. Does definitely sound better on the bridge pickup of my 2-HB Yamaha solid body. Need to spend more time exploring single coil sounds.

What I will say is that having this boost pedal (which was not part of my arsenal previously), negates the desire that I get occasionally to add another triode to the Webcor. Which is good because there's no room!

The Codpiece Ego Booster is pretty cool it has some nice texture and tonal characteristics.Add that to the 5 or 6 other boost/od on my board and we have more options!

Oh man, are my ears burning!

A few words about the stuff I sent out: First of all, I cleverly made no notes of who got what. I probably couldn't tell anyone exactly what they actually received without looking at a photo of the circuit board. Also, all the pedals I sent around were experiments/prototypes. But then, at this point EVERYTHING I make is an experiment/prototype, because, while I've sold a few pedals, I'm really searching for a better way to bring them to market than just making one-offs.

To make things more complicated, I've played around with many different pedal names, and the "real" names (i.e., the ones I'm using THIS week) may be quite different from whatever's slapped on the pedals I gave out as gifts. Am I organized, or what?

But I think most of what I sent out were one of two designs: either a JFET clean boost that's sort of a cousin to the Tonefiend Boost and Buffer project, but with a slightly different character, and a sort of hyper-dynamic Fuzz Face spinoff I've (usually) been calling the Beef. It's a very low-gain Fuzz Face that can sound almost bypassed when you roll back your guitar volume, but dishes up a fairly fat fuzz when cranked. (I'm on a bit of a crusade for lower-gain pedals, because to my ear, most distortions and overdrives are way too overpowered.)

That is SO interesting that you say that! I've spent a LOT of time just listening to different boost stages back-to-back, and am sort of stuck on the idea that in most cases, the nicest sounding overdrive arrangement is a simple tube amp and two simple overdrive/distortion circuits that dramatically contrast each other, and also sound nice in series. A recipe that almost always works for me is (something like) a Rangemaster/Fiendmaster in front of (something like) a Codpiece/Tonefiend Booster, usually in that order.

And if you think about it, a LOT of more complex distortion/overdrive pedals are, if you subdivide the schematic, exactly that: two booster stages in series.

Over at my beloved freestompboxes.org, there's a lot of snark at Zachary Vex's expense, pointing out that several Z. Vex pedals are nothing more than several Super Hard-On circuits in series, as if Zachary were being lazy. But I TOTALLY get his thinking. (Also, I think the Super Hard -On is probably the nicest boost I've ever heard, tough I tend to use more neutral-sounding clean boosts like the one mentioned above because the seem to blend more easily with other gain stages.)

Spotted a Duh on Joey Santiago's board in the upper right between the El Capistan and the OCD.

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