Recording - July 2015 - 30

B Y PA U L V N U K J R .

Little Labs Pepper
This do-anything box for guitar recording can do, well, anything...

Jonathan Little is an inventor of little black boxes... in the most literal sense, as five
of his current products share the same black metal DI-sized enclosure. Most reviews of
Little Labs products include a comment about how they "solve common studio problems." I would like to amend this and say instead that Jonathan creates convenient solutions to modern studio tasks, keeping them from being problems at all.
In the case of this month's review of the Little Labs Pepper, those tasks include multiple facets of guitar recording. Pepper is billed as a Pedal/Pro/Instrument
Blender/Direct Box/Re-Amp! What precisely does all that mean? Let's look!
A guided tour of the box... NOT
Usually this is the place in my reviews where I run through the layout, controls, and
functions. Okay, fine. The Pepper has seven green backlit buttons, three knobs, a 1/4"
instrument input and a 1/4" instrument output on its front panel. On its rear panel are
six 1/4" ins and outs, one XLR socket, and a special locking power socket.
But what do they all do? In the case of the Pepper, doing the usual left-to-right faceplate tour is almost guaranteed to be more confusing than simply jumping into what
the Pepper does. We'll come at this review from a function standpoint, and talk about
the appropriate ins, outs, and controls as we do.
Outside and in
The Pepper and its very robust 16V linear bipolar external power supply come
housed in a molded plastic hardshell case for easy transport and storage... although
since getting this one for review, it has spent zero time resting in said case!
Internally Pepper makes use of the high-quality analog circuitry that Little Labs is
known for. This includes fully differential amps, Vintage UTC style mu-metal shielded
transformers on the instrument and the mic-level DI out, Panasonic relays, and more.

Pepper meat and potatoes
The Pepper is designed as central do-itall routing hub for all of your studio guitar
needs. As such, it is bit of a "Greatest
Hits" of Little Labs devices, incorporating
concepts and functions found in the
Redeye 3D (reviewed in our July 2012
issue), the STD, and even the LMNOPre.
Expanding on Little Labs' description,
the Pepper is:
~ a direct box
~ an instrument preamp
~ a reamplification box
~ a patchbay and blender for guitar
effects pedals
~ a patchbay and blender for pro studio
devices
Beyond all that, it has even more tricks
up its sleeve. Time to learn about them...
Let's be direct
You start with plugging your guitar or
bass into the left-side 1/4" input on the
front. From there, the Pepper can be a
high-quality direct box that can connect to
a mixer or microphone preamp with the
transformer-based male XLR output on the
back. As with many direct boxes, there is
also a front-panel transformer-equipped
1
/4" output to connect through to your
amplifier. This is just the beginning...
The Pepper is also a full-fledged line
level preamp in its own right; it can send
a non-transformered, balanced output
direct to your DAW or recording device of
choice. The signal comes out of the rear
output labeled Pro TRS Out. It has 24 dB
of gain with an adjustable Pro Send knob
on the front and is dead clean and quiet.
I personally like this option a lot when I
know the signal will be reamplified later;
I have confidence that I am capturing as
flat and honest a dry guitar sound as possible. Using one of my preamps might
color the sound and often thickens the signal; that's great when direct recorded
bass is all a track requires, but not so
much when you want to re-amp as cleanly and accurately as possible.
Reamplification
Speaking of re-amping, doing so is as
easy as sending the dry guitar signal out
from your DAW into the rear-panel Pro TRS
In and connecting your amp to the frontpanel 1/4" Instrument output. Output signal
level is handled by a Pro TRS Output knob.

RECORDING July 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2015