The Wampler Pinnacle: The Best Overdrive/Distortion in the world?

I have always enjoyed reading the monthly effects pedal column in Guitar Buyer which is written by all around stomper guru Dan Steinherdt of thegigrig.com. I remember a few months ago when he first introduced me to Wampler Pedals and in particular the Pinnacle distortion.

It claims to nail the Eddie Van Halen 'Brown Sound' and give you some of the most shapeable and dynamic overdrive around... of course pouring over videos on youtube can only teach you so much but last week Nick who thumps the bass guitar in my band (the irony is I play guitar but he is an immeasurably better guitar player than I will ever be) bought one so that when he travels the country demonstrating a particular brand of popular electric guitar he can blow peoples minds with the sound of brown.

He brought it to band training last week and I was impressed with how red and sparkly it was and spent a good few minutes just looking at it and playing with its various knobs and switches before eventually plugging it in. It sounded good, damn good, up their with the best distortion I've ever heard but it didn't quite click with the single coils of my telecaster. In Nicks own words 'it rocks your tits with humbuckers' (he's Australian so he talks like this all of the time) so hopefully I'll get to hear it with some dual coil power at some point in the not too distant future.

Of course whenever I hear someone say 'this is the best distortion pedal ever' I get all excited and have an uncontrollable urge to start spending money all over the place but then I calm myself down and remember that all things musical are completely relative to the individual in question and this individual is still very, very happy with his T-Rex Dr. Swamp (see earlier articles for more about this) in fact I am currently championing T-Rex pedals left right and centre... I challenge all Fulldrive 2 owners to compare one to a T-Rex Moller and I'd wager 8/10 of you would swap it out for the superior Moller any time of the day... So if I am happy with my Dr. Swamp why do I have an uncontrollable urge to buy a Z.Vex Box of Rock? This is because a guitarist is never happy with his tone, and why should he be! This is all part and parcel of what makes it exciting to be playing the electric guitar at the moment, the market is saturated with super exciting noise boxes and axe wranglers around the globe are all carving their own little tonal niche and who knows, maybe some of us will stop lusting after gear and write some fantastic music at some stage.

Forgive me, I've gone a bit philosophical on your collectives asses... probably due to playing Final Fantasy VII for the last five hours (I forgot just how SaVE THE PLANET it is) I'll let the demo skillz of Gearmanndude do the rest of the talking.

Ladies and Gentlemen, take a bow for the Wampler Pinnacle (and while you are at it check out the Triple Wreck, that thing sounds demonic!)

Devi Ever: The Goddess of Fuzz

I'm on a bit of a pedal trip at the moment (to be totally honest I am ALWAYS on a pedal trip) and now that I've finished a gigging pedal board that I was happy with for about five minutes I naturally want a load of new pedals to make new horrible nasty sounds with and from what I've heard no one does more horrible or more nasty than Devi Ever FX... (that sounds very, very wrong and for this I apologise.)

I first heard Devi's boxes of tonal destruction a couple of years ago when I came across the now seemingly defunct Effector 13 pedal brand and I spent some time putting aside pennies for a 'Truly Beautiful Disaster' which was an almighty yet disgusting fuzz that also featured a built in effects loop and photo sensitive eye so presumably you could look like a complete tit on stage waving your hand madly like some deranged version of Jean Micheal Jarre whilst you gradually deafen your audience. Sadly when I went to buy one I couldn't find one anywhere and learned of the apparent demise of the Effector 13 company (coolest name for a pedal company ever too...) and spent my money elsewhere on things like takeaway pizza and beer.

Recently I discovered that Devi Ever carried on building this pedal and heaps more under her own company of the same name out of her home in Portland, Oregon which has reignited my fuzz-lust. The only real problem I have now is deciding which one to get... my needs have changed and the all encompassing power of the Truly Beautiful Disaster would be complete overkill so I'm pondering investing in the simplified 'Disaster Fuzz' or perhaps the 'Destructo Noctavia or maybe the 'Hyperion'... ARGGG I JUST DON'T KNOW.

One of the things I really like about these pedals is the disclaimer that when you order one there is no guarantee she'll have painted it like the one in the picture so you don't know what you're getting... well apart from that you'll have a tone-mangling weapon of mass destruction at your disposal to destroy feeble audiences who doubt your guitar wielding credentials.

You should really go to www.deviever.com and check out the plethora of pedal power available and then check out now one but TWO awesome videos below, aren't I good to you?

Just a note regarding the Oohlala version of the Truly Beautiful disaster that you may have seen knocking around... It doesn't look as cool and therefore you should get the Devi one, thanks.

Malekko Heavy Industries Chicklet

A few weeks ago I was harping on about Malekko pedals to some friends of mine and anyone who has seen any of the proguitarshop videos on Youtube will know that they are the manufacturers of some pretty formidable delay and reverb pedals as well as the infamous assmaster fuzz. What follows is the true story of how I came to be the owner of one of their superb pedals.

At some point in the not too distant past I consciously made a decision that my new pedal board had to have a reverb pedal at the end of the chain that I would probably leave switched on all of the time. My Orange Rocker 30 combo doesn't have a reverb circuit (and in my opinion the tube driven reverb on the larger Orange models is way too over the top to be musically usable) and so once again the quest to find the perfect pedal in it's class had begun!

Of course the first thing I did was ask my friends what they though and they just said "reverb is for losers" so I decided not to ask their advice again and try some out for myself. I was looking for a nice lively and bright sounding spring reverb that wasn't too mushy and still let the dry signal cut through nicely, I also wanted to add a little depth to the repeats from my MXR Carbon Copy delay. The physical footprint of the box was also extremely important as I wanted to fit as many pedals as I could onto a board that I can carry around with me with not too much difficulty. I created a short list of reverb pedals after spending an hour or so on youtube which consisted of the Electro Harmonix Nano Holy Grail, The T Rex Tonebug Reverb and the Malekko Spring Chicken all of which had received numerous levels of praise from various sources.

The Holy Grail was good, of course it was, it's featured on pedalboards of many pro players and has probably been used on countless recordings and me being the guitar snob I am this put me off a little. I liked the pedal put found it to be a little mushy and the extra modes surplus to my requirements. I wanted a reverb that I could set up and forget about so moved on to trying out the recently released T Rex tonebug but found it be slightly over the top and a little uncontrollable with a tendency to drown out what you were actually playing. It was still a top quality reverb and I was tempted to try out their much more expensive Room Mate reverb but it was too large (I have enough pointlessly large pedals on my board already) and I have never been a fan of valve driven pedals running into a valve amp...

So by the time I got to the end of my list I was pretty sure that the Spring Chicken was going to be the reverb for me. Hell I was sold on it just because it had a picture of a chicken and a single knob labelled 'cluck' on it but then DISASTER. Turns out Malekko only made a few hundred of these bad boys and they had already flown the coup... errr, I mean sold out, FOREVER.

I was at a total loss, I spent hours pining over youtube videos coming ever closer to the realisation that this was indeed the reverb I had been searching for and that I would never hear it's sweet clucking echo at the edge of my tone. THEN as if by magic the wonderful people at Malekko announced they were releasing a NEW RANGE of ultra small effects boxes called the OMICRON series and amongst them was the ultra cute, pink, sparkling CHICKLET reverb which not only had the original cluck control (now more sensibly labelled 'mix') but also had the upgrade of a 'dwell' control which controls the depth of the reverb time! This was my chance, I thought, my credit card magically appeared from my wallet and FORCED me to order it right there and then and so the weeks of waiting began.

When I almost couldn't take it any more a LETTER arrived from Parcel Force demanding MONEY and VAT for my US import. After a few short curse words I payed the damn fee and so my Chicklet was delivered. In fact I actually chased the courier down the street, but that's another story for another time.

I've been using it for a few weeks now and every time I plug it in I am reminded just how fantastic a reverb it is. The controls are simple but with a massive range that can take you from gentle slap back to all out cavernous reverb hell, the reverb itself is bright and lively and never interferes with your playing (unless you want it to in which you can crank the dwell and get lost in the soup.) Perhaps my favourite thing about this pedal is the way in which it responds to input levels and the dynamics of your playing making it perhaps one of the most expressive spring reverbs I've ever played, highly recommended.

Malekko Heavy Industries are a small stomp box manufacturer based in Austin, Texas that went into business in 2006 and they've just released a whole range of super tiny, super amazing pedals and will probably sell lots of them, in fact you should buy one but not a chicklet because IT'S MINE. http://www.malekkoheavyindustry.com/