Smoothie (2)

Was inspired to play early, like 7am early 😅 Cascaded a clean boost into the TS7 & had some of the creamiest tones for legato. The Killing Floor there is a bit of overkill, really. More than 30kb of boost. With high output pickups, it becomes an overdrive. The formula for smooth overdrive is not about adding more low frequencies into one's tone. In fact, without a marked treble response, it would be a muddy affair. The reason the TS7 was dialled up  for more top end & the KF tone mode was set to neutral. It had been a good Sunday morning.

Clean: Re-visited (sort of)

Confession: I'm not a clean fan. OK maybe the jazzy stuff- that, I can tolerate. Lately, due to a single coil preoccupation, I'm appreciating clean tones. The cleans which contain traces of drive when cranked up. Nick Johnston- that's my best reference. So the adventure requires me to add a pedal into the signal chain because the single coils I'm dealing with are not the high output type; the Ashburn's Bloodline pickups are polite entities. A clean boost is added as seen above, it's a Protone Clean Boost which turns into an overdrive at maximum setting.

What's the benefit of approaching tone from this perspective? It allows the player to clean up the signal via the volume control. Not all pickups-boost combo will give you this luxury, it's a matter of trial & error.

Selling: Pedals...

One Control ABD mini pedal. Unlike others, this one works with battery as well.

Protone makes some of the best pedals around. This clean boost is under-used, in superb condition & going for half price.

ONE CONTROL: Anodized Brown Distortion

• Condition: 9/10, box included
• No reservations, no trades
• queries: subversion.sg@gmail.com
• Self-collect: CCK mrt stn
• Price: $85 (final)

Protone: Clean Boost

• Condition: 9/10, box included
• No reservations, no trades
• query e-mail as above
• Self-collect @ CCK mrt stn
• Price: $99 (final)

Hotone: Lift Up (2)

This was the line-up yesterday; the Hotone Lift Up went to the end of the signal chain. It was a blast & I must say that I'm happy with the inclusion. I'm largely a guitar-into-amp person, the reason I am going through this trouble is because I'm short-listing some pedals for a board. Yes, I would want a pedal board for days when I plug into a clean amp to humour my boredom. The objective is to put together a smallest possible board for personal use. Two more pedals & I'm done :-)

Hotone: Lift up

If size matters, then the bigger pedals would out-tone the little ones but we know that's not the case. Hotone pedals would easily fit into your palms & they pack a punch. Some serious punching, at that. Anyway, the Lift Up here is a boost unit, a clean boost. Something you'd employ to beef up your solos. The deal with many clean boosts is that they give you a higher serving of volume & that's it. The more adventurous booster pedals add some gain into the mix, making your signals break up like a tube amp set at upper volume levels. 

My requirement- I want a boost that can do a clean volume push as well as add a little dirt when the need arises. It's gonna be difficult starting with a distortion unit or a very mild drive for that matter because it's about subtraction. One has to slowly & tactically remove the dirt amount from one's settings & it would be quite impossible to remove this entirely because one is dealing with a dirt-specialist so to speak. Clean is not an option. So this is the reason why I chose a clean boost. The idea is to bring the gain up a tad without causing too much clipping so I get to hear more of what I have without too much added flavour. I've tested some other clean boosts along the way & the Hotone Lift Up was my final pick due to that Warm function there. Besides giving the user some PAF type warmth in clean mode, this rounds up the midrange in drive mode so my tone won't end up sounding a little sharper than it should be. Done :-)

Rating: 85%

Hotone: Lift Up

Availability: SV Guitars

Price: $120

Ibanez: Bottom booster

So the Jet Driver was not the only pedal I bought that day, the Ibanez Bottom Booster (BB9- new for 2011) was also another taker. I have no use for a bottom end/ lower frequency booster because the tones I hear coming out from my amps contain a healthy fat end mix; since I do not dial up my treble, I have no need for lower frequency reinforcements. However, because I was given the opportunity to try this pedal, turning the tone knob way up to accentuate treble, in full knowledge that the pedal wasn't conceived to address this application exclusively, yielded an interesting outcome for us players who are wary of ill definition when it comes to clean boosting per se. The other factor accounting for this this result was the GAIN knob, it's there to check drive grit (more prominent when the pedal is in use with an already overdriven amp/ milder distortion pedals); if you are a distortion purist, you'd appreciate its inclusion.

The other reason why I bought this pedal was because it does some good for single coil tones- it adds much beef if you are predominantly using your bridge pickup. In this light, the BB9 works like Seymour Duncan's pickup booster. If you wish to simply use this pedal for clean boosting without much bass emphasis, then you need to look elsewhere. The bass highlight will always be present regardless if you max-out the treble.

PS: Thanks to bro Faizal @ Swee Lee's BB showroom for the assistance- much appreciated!