The HP1! This germanium overdrive beast was created in the 1970s for guitarists to do battle with. There's only two controls, level which controls volume on the right (going over 50% turns this things into a minature amplifer with lots of gain, although not nearly as much as Fuzzy Pedal by Squirrel Audio) and harmonics on the left which controls the amount of work the pedal does (going over 80% creates an amazing synthetic robots attacking Corgan’s Marshall stacks).
I tested the pedal with a Hofner Shorty (in drop D for lovely Melvin’s esq sounds) with Humbucker pickups and a Strat Clone on a 15 watt amp.
There’s a switch to turn it onto a sole overdrive mode which is louder and less distorted, this is a new addition to the original design and add something extra (eg less money on extra pedals, always good).
With regards to the gain control you get the following options, at a subtle level the device overdrives slightly, thus adding a much needed coat of colour to a rubbish janglyness a lot of electric guitars have.
A mid-level setting it steps up the crunk factor giving more colouration and a nice kkrrrraazzzz we associate with electric guitars.
A higher range levels it adds more colour and a nice sound of electronics doing work for you it you let a note ring. The gain is pretty big so in a decent setup i expect you could get some cool feedback to play around with. It also starts getting fuzz, not an untuned tv set like most distortion/overdrives more like a hoard of screaming wasps, only the wasps are actually guitars with wings and terrifying teeth filled faces.
The harmonics and gain are interlinked, e.g. no harmonic control big gain = no sound. I’ve found the best setting for myself is harmonics at 12am and gain around 2pm.
Harmonics seem to add more and more colour to the sound, unless the overdrive switch is on and they don’t do that much at all.
The only person linked to this pedal is Albini who uses this pedal solely but it doesn’t sound particularly Albini when you plug it in. So I think the nice thing about this device is it doesn't sound dated or linked to a particular type of music, like the way you’d link a wah wah or fuzz face to Jimi H, or a boss distortion or small stone to Kurt C.
Having kept an eye on Frederic Effects over the last few month some exciting things look to come, currently Tim is also offering the Sovek Big Muff (in a tiny case and accepts a normal adaptor!), MXR Distortion / Green Ringer Hybrid and a Shin-Ei fuzz clone.
I’m intrigued to see what this guy comes up with next.
Web site : www.fredric.co.uk/effects/
Ebay Account : http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/timhulio/
No comments:
Post a Comment