So I kept seeing people talk about this pedal, especially the whole “Kim Wilson uses/used it” thing. Well, I’m pretty against going off clips of Kim because he’s the best of the best so I tried to find clips which there were practically none. So here ya go. https://youtu.be/kEUX8KlNpQU
I would do this through my Bandmaster but unfortunately it’s not working at the moment. Truly this pedal just makes an amp sound good or better. It either warms it up or pushes it into natural breakup a tad easier. The preamp section seems to boost mids and highs a bit which is great for weaker mics. It seems like it improves the sound of any gear.
I use this with my Bulletini/Rackit setup when playing with Doug Deming and the Jewel Tones. It’s a killer pedal. It’s kind of similar to the volume knob on the Harp Octave pedal by Lone Wolf, except it does not add the overtones to every single note when cranked. This when cranked really drives an amp hard so there’s some overtones, but I prefer it to the Octave because past 9 or so every note had a weird octave whistle sound and the double stops just sounded bad.
I overall think a regular boost could work just as well (I used to use an LPB-1 very successfully) but there’s something about the preamp side that fattens things up. This is a positive with harp especially as I’ve found some boosts are a bit tone sucking or add way too much highs. It really allows you to cut but still maintain a big tone at any volume by either using it to supplement a loud amp or boost it when the gig requires.
By the way, it has two switches. The bright switch does just that, I keep that on. The unity switch just makes it so that you can click the pedal on and have it not boost for just the preamp sound added when it’s turned down. I like that for when my amp is cranked.
Cool & thanks for sharing I've done the tone chasing thing for live playing went through several amps some pedals & mics all fun and learned a bunch. Real happy with my set up now, a custom built 2x10 40 watt tube amp with gain staging/bias switching & circuit based the old bassman tweed it sounds great with the bulletini also not always use MXR delay for the effect & LW harp shield & sometimes a boss eq. to help with feedback. Over the last 2 years I haven't even thought about trying anything different the only tone complaint I have now is on me ! But after seeing your review maybe time to try one out.
