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19 Apr

Reviewed: Mad Professor Kosmos Ambient Reverb Pedal

Dunphy Imports | madprofessor.com.au | Expect To Pay: $350

When you’re lying on your back at night and you think about the universe, what do you think it sounds like? Some would imagine a thick, heavy silence like you would hear underground. Science suggests that with nothing for sonic vibrations to reverberate against in The Grand Vacuum that this would be the most accurate assumption. Science be damned though; when I think of the sound of the universe, I hear everything all at once. I hear the unending, catastrophic, caterwauling orchestra of every atom singing simultaneously accompanied by the lilting, effervescent melodic freedom of floating endlessly untouched by time, stave or physical limitation. It seems that the brains behind the Mad Professor brand of pedals tend to agree as somehow they’ve managed to distil this limitless symphony into one modest blue box, the Kosmos Ambient Reverb.

19 Apr

28 Mar

Reviewed: Valeton Loft Series Mini Analog Pedals

Global Vintage | globalvintage.com.au Expect To Pay: OD-10 - $99 CH-10 - $110 AD-10 - $119

I don’t know who works at Valeton or how they got their info, but there is something funny going on in that secret lab of theirs. Playing through and listening to the three pedals from their Loft series that I see before me, I can only assume that the engineers behind the OD-10, CH-10 and AD-10 are a combination of Rick Moranis in Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. Either they’ve cackled their way through discovering the formulae on some dark, stormy night or they’ve shimmied through a roof and stolen the microfilm containing the secrets behind just about every classic stompbox on the market. Either way they’ve done something right because these are some of the healthiest sounding clones I’ve ever laid ears on.

28 Mar

16 Mar

Reviewed: Line 6 HX Effects

Yamaha Music Australia | au.yamaha.com | Expect to Pay: $999

Since the early inceptions of the Flextone, AxSys and POD, Line 6 have continued to develop guitar tools that have been eagerly embraced by the greater guitar community. Recent trends with modeling and subsequent success of the Helix range have seen them expand their range. Listening to guitarists’ needs and incorporating high quality effects with plenty of switching and routing options, the HX Effects was recently met with huge anticipation at NAMM. Wonder what all the fuss is about?

16 Mar

16 Mar

Reviewed: Mad Professor Fire Red Fuzz

Dunphy Imports | madprofessor.com.au | Expect To Pay: $240

Way back when, not long after the dawn of rock and roll, there lived a number of now notorious lunatics. History has since updated their collective noun to genii thanks to the popularity and longevity of their wayward yet profound sonic experimentation. Whether you call them maniacs or masterminds, the fact remains that anyone rampant enough to put a pocketknife through the speaker cone of an amp that these days we covet as a holy relic is at the very least pushing an envelope few would dare to approach. Still, where would we be without these glorious mavens? Hendrix would never have tuned in and fuzzed out; Clapton would’ve never rolled off his entire top end and basked in the sunshine of all of our love. They in turn would never have given birth to latter day torchbearers like Josh Homme et al. whose wild-eyed, fuzzy snarl gives rise for Mad Professor to manufacture the perfectly imperfect Fire Red Fuzz.

16 Mar

16 Mar

Reviewed: TC Electronic Crescendo Autoswell, Tube Pilot Overdrive, and Iron Curtain Noise Gate

Amber Technology | ambertech.com.au | Expect To Pay: $109

Imagine what the world would be like without our ability to see colour. Were the richness and fullness of all creation flattened to duotones as appears in silent movies, would we be so inclined to seek out more of it? In a way, the invention and proliferation of technicolour techniques to the film world reads as a metaphor for what I am asking. Once the full spectrum was loosed upon the unsuspecting public, the rate of change was palpable. It was as if suddenly there was a whole new way for us to describe our world to ourselves. To a point, the guitar world has a similarly poetic paradigm shift in its history, that of the invention and proliferation of the humble effects pedal. Small, sturdy, varyingly affordable and thick with every sound imaginable, pedals are the Pantone or Technicolour of the medium of sound and companies like TC Electronic are continually seeking new ways to help us describe our everything.

16 Mar

13 Mar

Reviewed: EarthQuaker Devices Westwood Overdrive

Global Vintage | globalvintage.com.au | Expect To Pay: $275

A word of warning before I dive in: this review will be chock-a-block full of the most mercurial and indefinite adjectives in the thesaurus. This, ladies, gentlemen and others, is a review of … an overdrive pedal.

13 Mar

28 Feb

Reviewed: MoogerFooger MF-107 FreqBox

Innovative Music Australia | innovativemusic.com.au | Expect to Pay: $859

For those of you who are not entirely familiar with the MoogerFooger range of pedals from Moog Music, you are really in for a treat with this fun tool. The MF-107 FreqBox is big, brash and full of attitude, allowing you to integrate your synthesisers for additional filter options. But the real fun comes when you get the MF-107 into your guitar signal chain and really start experimenting with your playing and making the features of this outlandish pedal stand out. This is not just your typical envelope filter pedal that offers that same sound we’ve all heard time and time again. This thing will mess your tone up and spit it out at a different frequency to what you intended, if you let it. But if you can tame the beast, some really cool sounds can be achieved.

28 Feb

9 Feb

Reviewed: Ernie Ball 40th Anniversary Volume Pedal

CMC Music | cmcmusic.com.au | Expect To Pay: $295

As a company Ernie Ball has always positioned itself as the young upstart on the market. The peak of their popularity came hand in hand with the rise of southern Californian pop punk in the late ‘90s. Even on the occasion of their 40th anniversary much of the marketing is peppered with rapacious youthfulness. Checkerboard Vans shoes, brightly coloured gaffer tape and scrawled, handwritten logos render the company the Bart Simpson to their competitors Mr. Burns, the brackish provocateur skateboarding just ahead of the old guard. Be that as it may, they are four decades into their lifetime and have not shied away from the wisdom that comes with age. Aside from their neon packaged string sets, their most popular design has been their line of volume and expression pedals and what better way to celebrate the big four zero than to do a better version of what they do best.

9 Feb

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