I dunno how many people here have heard of this pedal since there an Australian company but i was flicking through a guitar store magazine that i recieved just a few days ago having a look at overdrive pedals and i notice this pedal called the blue boy overdrive. The description was "like a TS(tube screamer) but with 3 times the gain". A few people here will know ive been looking for something to boost my Sovtek Mig ive found to be lacking in preamp drive so i instantly called up my dad and said "on the way home from work can you pick this pedal up for me at venuemusic".
Later that night dad comes home with my pedal. Wat can i say besides so far this is a godsend it does what i needed to be done which was boost my amp some but it does so much more. I havnt messed to much with the controls yet. Basically theres 3 external controls which are pretty standard you have your volume,tone and drive(gain) controls but there is also 3 internal controls.
These controls are brightness, voicing and character. Ill explain how these work. Brightness: As the name implies this adjusts the overall brightness of the pedal. This was Put in the circuit so that you can adjust the pedal corresponding to how bright your amp is. As an example in the owners manual they talk bout how they tried the prototype of the blue boy through a Carvin X100B(exceptionally bright amp) and it was simple way to shrill, this control will help make the pedal more useful in situations like that.
Voicing: With this control you can further decided how you want this to be well...voiced i guess lol. The bass frequencies arnt affected with this control but as the you turn the control down the mids and treble are attenuated. At 50% the the mids/highs are attenuated by about 6db, at 75% the mids/highs are attenuated by 12db making the bass 4 times louder then the mids/trebles leaving you with one real fat sound. The manual says that with this control all the way up you have the classic Tube screamer sound.
Character: This control is hard to explain so ill use the example in the manual. Vintage amps had a relatively flat frequency response which had alot to do with the warmth they had. When these vintage amps were pushed to mild breakup they had a nice edge to the sound, but when pushed to far they became muddy and unfocused sounding. This is where treble boosters came in to make the sound of an overdriven amp much tighter and clearer. The Vox AC30 is a perfect example of where treble boosters where used to produce a tight and clear overdriven sound.
To reproduce the sound of those old vintage amps what youd have to do is add more bass to the pre-clipping stage. This is precisely what the character control does. Although dont think of the character control as a bass control its more subtle then that. As the name implies it really controls the character of the pedal. All the way anti-clockwise your tone will be tight, focused and modern sounding. All the way clockwise and youll have a fat, warm vintage tone.
Theres a few examples in the manual of what tones you can get. They have control settings to get the classic tube screamer sound, a fat screamer sound, fat fuzz tone and a flat clean boost.
When i opened up the pedal last night all these controls were set to half way which sounded excellent. I havnt done anything with them yet though i will be soon. When i first played it just by messing with the external controls i got a tone that reminded me of steve vai and some big blusey tones were found aswell. I recommend this pedal to anyone whos already happy with their tone but would like to enhance it greatly.
Later that night dad comes home with my pedal. Wat can i say besides so far this is a godsend it does what i needed to be done which was boost my amp some but it does so much more. I havnt messed to much with the controls yet. Basically theres 3 external controls which are pretty standard you have your volume,tone and drive(gain) controls but there is also 3 internal controls.
These controls are brightness, voicing and character. Ill explain how these work. Brightness: As the name implies this adjusts the overall brightness of the pedal. This was Put in the circuit so that you can adjust the pedal corresponding to how bright your amp is. As an example in the owners manual they talk bout how they tried the prototype of the blue boy through a Carvin X100B(exceptionally bright amp) and it was simple way to shrill, this control will help make the pedal more useful in situations like that.
Voicing: With this control you can further decided how you want this to be well...voiced i guess lol. The bass frequencies arnt affected with this control but as the you turn the control down the mids and treble are attenuated. At 50% the the mids/highs are attenuated by about 6db, at 75% the mids/highs are attenuated by 12db making the bass 4 times louder then the mids/trebles leaving you with one real fat sound. The manual says that with this control all the way up you have the classic Tube screamer sound.
Character: This control is hard to explain so ill use the example in the manual. Vintage amps had a relatively flat frequency response which had alot to do with the warmth they had. When these vintage amps were pushed to mild breakup they had a nice edge to the sound, but when pushed to far they became muddy and unfocused sounding. This is where treble boosters came in to make the sound of an overdriven amp much tighter and clearer. The Vox AC30 is a perfect example of where treble boosters where used to produce a tight and clear overdriven sound.
To reproduce the sound of those old vintage amps what youd have to do is add more bass to the pre-clipping stage. This is precisely what the character control does. Although dont think of the character control as a bass control its more subtle then that. As the name implies it really controls the character of the pedal. All the way anti-clockwise your tone will be tight, focused and modern sounding. All the way clockwise and youll have a fat, warm vintage tone.
Theres a few examples in the manual of what tones you can get. They have control settings to get the classic tube screamer sound, a fat screamer sound, fat fuzz tone and a flat clean boost.
When i opened up the pedal last night all these controls were set to half way which sounded excellent. I havnt done anything with them yet though i will be soon. When i first played it just by messing with the external controls i got a tone that reminded me of steve vai and some big blusey tones were found aswell. I recommend this pedal to anyone whos already happy with their tone but would like to enhance it greatly.
