Earthquaker Devices Crimson Drive - Review

Earthquaker Devices Crimson Drive - Tone Factor product details



The Earthquaker Devices Crimson Drive is a germanium based overdrive. It creates an open, uncompressed overdrive with excellent sustain via a NOS germanium transistor and 2 germanium diodes. When it reaches top gain, it creates an excellent singing marshall-esqe fuzz tone.

It is a great sounding overdrive that has plenty of dynamics and retains the high end when you back the volume down.

The sounds one can obtain with this pedal go from Rangemaster-style (with a litte more drive) with the gain at minimum, to a overdriven sound that is well known from those vintage Marshall amps at full bore, with the gain at max.
It works wonders on single coils and sounds great on open chords.
Lots of volume on tap as well.
It has a wonderful brite and raw (but not brittle) tone.

Tone Factor Demo Video of the Crimson Drive:



Additional Soundclips:

Max Gain
Half Gain
Light Gain

Interesting comparison of delays

These are not side by side comparisons,
but the demos are made by the same guys from ToneFactor.
Here is their youtube channel: ToneFactor on Youtube

The following videos are demos of the Subdecay Echobox the Skreddypedals Echo and
the Earthquaker Devices Disaster Transport.
Those delays are analog voiced digital delays with modulation.

Update on reviews Copperhead and Liquid Sunshine

This is an update to the reviews of the
Subdecay Liquid Sunshine and
Mojohand Copperhead

As I wrote the review on the Liquid Sunshine I noticed in the description, that it is supposed to take boosters well. I have only used the LS as a booster itself, until yesterday.

So I tried the combination of Copperhead boosting Liquid Sunshine. Settings were on the LS: upper drive knob 9 o'clock, lower drive knob 3 o'clock Settings on the Copperhead: volume from 12 to max, gain max on one side

The result was absolutely amazing, you get clear, smooth, defined and transparent overdrive at its best. There are a lot of pedals that claim to sound like that one special amp (you know it starts with dum and ends with ble) and I had them all (I still own a few of them). None of them could shake a stick at the Liquid Sunshine - Copperhead combination!

The real fun started as I engaged the second boost stage on the Copperhead. The sound stayed clear, smooth and transparent but began to sing and sustain, unlike anything I have ever heard before in an overdrive pedal.

This combination gets 6 of possible 5 stars from me :-)


Subdecay Liquid Sunshine - Tone Factor Product Details

Mojohand Copperhead - Tone Factor Product Details

Subdecay Liquid Sunshine - Review

Subdecay Liquid Sunshine - Tone Factor Product Details



The Liquid sunshine is a Jfet based overdrive with a great breakup and will not cover up the the natural sound of your guitar and amplifier.

With two drive knobs, the Liquid Sunshine allows you to control the character of the overdrive rather than simply controlling overall gain. The drive knobs controls two separate gain stages, each with their own characteristics. The top drive knob pushes the overall frequency range, while the bottom drive knob accentuates the middle and high frequencies. Both are very interactive, and allow the Liquid sunshine to perform as a clean boost or treble booster, as well as an overdrive.

Unlike a lot of other overdrives that use diodes to clip an amplified signal, the jfet circuitry produces no "sharp edges" or hard clipping. Many tone knobs on overdrives have a very narrow band of useful settings.

Instead, the bottom drive knob on the liquid sunshine controls gain and also alters the frequency response, with many useful settings over a wide range. The Liquid Sunshine now has two internal controls for bass, and treble boost.

The LS is one of the unsung heroes of gain. A brilliant pedal that, if anything, has too much to offer for some people. You could probably run three different LSs on your board at different settings, and be convinced you have three different ODs.

It's a very cool take on a tweedy/gritty style voicing - the twin drive knobs interact in very much the same way as the two volume controls work on a tweed Deluxe. Lots of character to the overall tone - good harmonic content, picking dynamics, etc. Its a quality overdrive for sure.

Sound clips:

lightly overdriven amp
overdriven amp
max drive thru clean amp
light drive thru clean amp
light drive thru clean amp

Keeler Designs Shove Incoming

According to a thread at ToneFactor forums:
Keeler Designs Shove incoming
the brandnew pedal called 'Shove' from Keeler Designs will be available soon.

Rob Keeler himself described the pedal as follows:

"It has 4 controls. Volume, Gain, Structure, and Tone.

The Tone and Structure controls are pretty cool. They are very interactive and allow for a whole bunch of different textures, tones and eq. You really need to play this pedal to get a feel for what they do.

The Volume control has a bunch of boost on tap. I put a bit more available boost on my pedals than most. The reason being sometimes I just want to hit the front end of a tube amp hard.

The Gain control goes from gritty clean to distortion. There are pedals out there with more distortion but I've never found a need for more than what the Shove has on tap. I only put out pedals that I would use on my pedalboard.

This pedal cleans up from the guitar volume knob. This is must for me. I'll often leave pedals on the whole time and get different tones out of them by riding the volume knob.

The picture doesn't show it but the paint job is a translucent red with metal flake sparkle. Very cool looking.

I think it's distortion is more open than compressed. I did this so it would clean up and you'd get more dynamics out of it. Although if you stack it Pull -> Shove -> Amp.......you can get those sounds."

Sounds like an awesome pedal, looking forward for some clips.
More later ...

Earthquaker Devices Hoof Fuzz - Review

Earthquaker Devices Hoof Fuzz - Tone Factor Product Details



It is a germanium/ silicon hybrid big muff style fuzz (it's based on the old green Sovtek Big Muff) with massive amounts of volume and sustain on tap. It has a tighter sound than most muff's which makes palm muting an option and open chords ring out clear. The altered tone control eliminates the problem of being lost in the mix.

The Hoof has just enough fullness and gain for me but is also tight enough and to me it is the ultimate muff-style fuzz. It is the most 'liquid' sounding fuzz I haver ever heard.

I love the Big Muff sound, but I wanted something a little thicker and gainier than the ordinary muff, that has a usable tone control range and most imprtant that doesn't get lost in the mix.
The Hoof delivers on all of these aspects!
The tone control is based around the transistors and goes from the germanium side to the silicon side and never reaches the extremes of most muff tone controls.

Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys uses one.

Tone Factor demo video of the Hoof:



Tone Factor comparison video Hoof vs Little Big Muff:



Here are some additional sound clips:

Hoof with Fuzz at max, Tone at 12 O'Clock
Hoof with Fuzz at 12 O'Clock, Tone at 3 O'Clock
Hoof with Bass
Hoof with Humbuckers

Here are some additional videos:

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4

GAS or obsessive compulsive disorder

Gear Acquisition Syndrome (sometimes Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, both abbreviated to GAS) is a term used to describe an urge to acquire and accumulate lots of gear.
The term "GAS" was coined by Walter Becker in 1996 in his article G.A.S. in Guitar Player as "Guitar Acquisition Syndrome". The term started to be frequently used by guitarists and spread out to other musicians who were familiar with similar tendencies. As it no longer concerns guitars only, GAS is now commonly backronym

GAS is similar in many ways to obsessive compulsive disorder

GAS hasn't received any major medical attention yet GAS is not a clinical condition, but a psychological .

Further information:

Walter Becker GAS
Brett Ratner Avoiding Gear Acquisition Syndrome

Mojo Hand Copperhead Dual Boost - Review

Mojo Hand Copperhead - Tone Factor Product Details














The Copperhead has two fully independant channels
which can be used seperately or cascaded together.
Either side can be used for either clean boost
or set for a light amount of grit.

It is possible to get an overdrive-like sound
by cranking boost a and cascading it into boost b.
But it is more for boosting than overdrives

The Copperhead has a tight, spanky fender-ish sound.
It is open. Very open and uncompressed.

UncleSlam demo video of the Copperhead: