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!)
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