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fuzz pedal that took the original Maestro Brassmaster’s design into the modern era. For our reviews, they were kind enough to send us four of their seven Omicron Series miniature guitar effect pedals. The Omicron pedals directly address an issue that’s becoming more and more common as guitarists strive to do more with less, both in terms of space and cash; they provide musical and easy-to-use functions at affordable prices in remarkably tiny enclosures. Each of these pedals is only as wide as a 1/4" plug is long, taking up about half the space of a conventional stompbox. They’re so small you can’t even fit a battery inside; they use a standard 9V power supply. The FUZZ is one of the purest expressions of a traditional Germanium-diode fuzz pedal out there. With two controls, Drive and Volume, you can dial in an appropriate combination of overdrive while matching levels to the rest of your rig. A hidden function under the unit’s bottom panel is a 3-position jumper switch that affects the tone of the FUZZ. It ships with the jumper at position 3, for an aggressive fuzz with lots of treble and scooped mids that sounds very good on leads but tends to “mush out” on chords. Position 1 provides a sweeter and more midrangy sound that’s more “old rock” than “metal” and worked better on chords in our tests. Position 2 puts both tones in parallel for a full-range over-thetop sound. If you’re looking for a straightup old-school fuzzbox with extras under the hood, the FUZZ won’t disappoint. The E.FILTER is a traditional vactrol-based Envelope Filter pedal, an “auto-wah” that opens up a filter in response to the dynamics of your playing for that funky “talking guitar” sound of old. Range and Frequency knobs let you control the amount of effect you get and the tonal center of the frequency sweep. Darwin had a lot to say about this pedal, so I’ll hand the mic to him: “It wants to be driven pretty hard. What’s interesting is that it has a subtle effect that I could use more often in playing than an over-the-top super wah-like filter; it has more of a vocal quality than an “automated wahwah pedal” sound. Although when you whack it with a chord, it gives a little extra life to the sound, it doesn’t have that powerful bark of an old MuTron. The bandpass filter tuning is very tight, so you can make it speak for particular notes but it doesn’t grab a whole chord the way some others do. I would use it set to a lower range, and use it for articulation on a lead.” The TREM is an analog tremolo pedal (a true volume variance, not a pitch vibrato; Malekko makes one of those, too, but we didn’t test it). An internal trimpot lets you adjust the unit’s overall level, and Speed and Depth knobs let you go from a deep, slow pulsation like that on an old Rhodes electric piano to a rapid fluttering warble. Darwin says: “A good clean
RECORDING JULY 2011

basic tremolo with no surprises. The big win here is that it’s tiny, so you can have it on your pedalboard for when you need it, and it doesn’t take up a lot of space... and when you do kick it in, it gives you exactly the sound you need.” After these three effects, the COMP was a bit of a surprise. It’s a traditional compressor using a New Old Stock CA3080 chip, with Level and Sensitivity controls to let you dial in the amount of squash and sustain you need. After playing with it for a long while, Darwin said quietly, “It makes me sound like I’m a cleaner player than I am. I’ve always been kind of flippant about dynamics, and I’ve never liked the old compressor pedals, they sound kind of effect-y... but this one does a nice job and doesn’t sound like it’s in the

way, even when it’s squashing me pretty hard. Much as I like the other Malekko effects, this little guy is the pedal I would buy.” And true to his word, he didn’t let me take the COMP out of the studio when I left at the end of the day. Enough said. Totally Wycked Audio LD-01 Little Dipper and TK-01 Triskelion $299 and $349; www.godlyke.com Totally Wycked Audio is a division of Godlyke Distributing, a New Jersey-based company that established itself as a source for very cool and previously hardto-find effects pedals from far and wide, most notably the popular Maxon pedals from Japan. TWA is Godlyke’s shop for high-end and unusual pedals of its own,

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http://www.godlyke.com http://www.kh120.Neumann.com http://www.kh120.Neumann.com
Recording - July 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2011
