Lo-morning

It's Saturday morning, it's always fantastic if it's away from work. Just finished playing some tunes, here's the set up:

• Guitar: Gibson LP Tribute 50s with Duncan humbuckers
• Pedal: CMATmods Butah
• Amp: Marshall DSL40 Classic gain channel

It's a slightly different approach as I dialed in a tamed drive voicing- the Marshall's Classic Gain gain channel has significantly less roar & the fact that I only had it at 3. The saturation came from the Butah, the drive's almost max-ed out with the brightness in check- tone knob not even past 30%...

What's the point? It's about the ability to play like me with a less familiar set-up. I've always turned things up, way up in fact & this served me well in terms of playing technicalities but that's like wallowing in familiar territory. What if I was made to play with unfamiliar ingredients, could I pull it off or would the excuse be that lame 'it's not my set up, I can't play'?

But the reality of the situation is that we can never be our real selves when faced with a compromised playing situation but it would do us well to be prepared should the situation arise.If you can't be at your 100% best then you can try being very close. Nothing beats playing with your gear & dictating your set up, eh? 

So moral of the story: If there's no caviar, the cod roe has to manifest a near-caviar experience & you have to see that happens.

No trigger

I've always admired my (CMATmods) Butah for its excellent single coil jangle (never failed to inspire me). In the pic above, I've lined it up as a drive-type booster. The Butah, upon activation, would beef up the (Biyang's Baby Boom) Mad Driver but it has to overcome the NG-100 along the way, which it could NOT. Even when set to its minimal threshold, the Butah simply could not trigger the gate well. The implication here is that, the Butah was conceived with very mild drive so we shouldn't look up to it to perform a booster function comprehensively. Anyway, I've never used it as such, this was a curiosity address. I love it as a stand-alone unit. It's simply superb that way.

LTD ST-203: Owner's take

I've been playing my ST-203 for days now, here're some opinions:

Feel/ Playability

Fender Strat? Maybe in looks but not in feel; the LTD's neck isn't C-profiled like the Fender. In fact, it's still very curvy, it's LTD's U-profile which means the roundness is in tact, just thinner in depth. Inevitably, it would attract the shredders more than the blues campers. In the true spirit of vintage vibe, the action adjustment saddles are the tradition types featuring much screw protrusions to discomfort the picking hand. The default strings in this one were not .009s for sure but I had the Pyramid .009s in there for personal comfort.

Tone

I didn't expect too much from the trio of ESP's LS-120 single coils. They are there to reflect the price tag, really, but this trio were much more than I had hoped for. They sound warm in clean mode, nothing too sparkling ala Fender. This might be due to the rosewood fretboard as well but that's what I hear. In overdrive mode, the pickups' non-hot output make their presence heard, it's something I know would sound splendid with my Butah & it proved to be true. This LTD-Butah combo is the best coupling in terms of enjoyable overdrive but in excess, the LS pickups could handle proceedings well. These pickups stay put in there. They were also wired like the mid-life Strats; 5-way selector but the bridge is free from any tone control manipulations.

Pyramid strings

As the Pyramid strings season, they maintain a great bounce despite feeling less crunchy. That in between, neither-too-crunchy-nor-too-flimsy feel makes playing rather addictive.

Butah-90!

The itching continues; I just have to try the Butah with a single coil variation- the P-90 pickup. So the Edwards was out to address this. As expected, the Butah very much preserves the P-90 fatness, layering the drive voicing on top of the inherent tonal character. Unlike the Strat-type single coil, there's added bottom end here so messing with the EQ was inevitable.

Butah Strat!

This is tonal bliss. I've never enjoyed single coils with very low drive levels till the Butah came along; it's either OTT distortion or squeaky clean. I kept switching between the neck & bridge pickups of my ST-72 to hear a drastic tonal difference. The Butah makes it really enjoyable to play at lower drive levels which was never my cup of tea. What I dislike about playing at such sparse drive output is the lack of saturation which makes playing fast rather tedious as I have to pick a little harder to ensure every note pulls through but the Butah takes care of that. Thumbs up from me.

Screaming Butah!

My Ibanez TS7 & CMATmods Butah are good friends. I've been enjoying the Butah as a stand alone pedal, it serves me very well as a cruncher for single coil tones. It simply means, the drive generated is slightly hotter than the typical OD unit (think Tubescreamer) but isn't as hot as a distortion. The Butah is wonderful for single coil tones, simply great for that jangle with more definition & sensitivity for solo inducements, not just rhythm work. It sounds like the drive sits on top of your favourite cleans & not intruding into what you already like to hear.

Things get really interesting when the TS7 is used to boost the Butah's drive. Instead of masking the inherent Butah drive, it adds more to saturation rather than churning out a fresh drive voicing. This pairing aleviates the drive sensitivity to shredability levels; that's what appeals to me.

Butah!

The CMATmods brand name started out as a hobby pedal modding by Chad Matthews but as it is with this indulgence, one tends to discover & want to manifest one's own ideas & reinterpret popular/ current offerings. The Butah pedal is a delicate drive generator, in the light of your fav Tubescreamer & BOSS OD3 units but what's the diff here?

I'm not much of a pedal person, I believe there shouldn't be anything in between the guitar & amp to rob one of this pure chemistry. The Butah is a very polite drive unit & has very little in store for a distortion-mad person like me so it serves me as it is- that crucial jangler for single coil tones. Yes, single coils, quasi-clean, save for the input of this gentle enhancer.

Say, are you that fanatical single coil proponent always bursting your head trying to figure out how Stevie Ray got that clean but driven tone from his Strat? Unlike SRV, we do not have the luxury of pairing up a TS10 with the Fender Twin to get this done. The Butah lets your single coil tones through & adds that signature jangle without the worry of having a magnificent boutique tube amp to let all this through. This is the very reason why I bought this pedal. A very rewarding purchase, indeed.