Saturday, January 20, 2018

OVERDRIVE- TOADWORKS Lil' Leo Pedal American OD ...as noted on the box a Bad Ass American OD

 TOADWORKS Lil' Leo American Overdrive 



A very good American sounding OD capturing the sound of overdriven
6L6 tubes in amps like Fender. In short NOT the Brit sound of an EL34 tube.
I have never been much for this kind of sound. But this of course is just my prejudice opinion.
One of the best examples of tweaking the 6L6 to get a nice warm sound is a Fender Bassman also used as the schematic for the Marshall Bluesbreaker the JTM45.

Bottom line it does what it does and very well.
It's clean punch in the low end is excellent. It does a Fender high end better then any pedal I've heard.



CODA
I am glad Toadworks is there to give us choice.

I checked out their John Bull pedal. A Brit OD... to be fair there are hundreds of choices from the good to the sublime. Theirs is at best only good. The overtones are muddy and smeared so I will not waste your time with it. But as I said outside of Friedman most American type pedals are lame.
Leo Fender the leader in 6L6 based amps has never sought to have a great dirt sound. Jim Marshall had gone out of it's way since the first day to try to make the perfect dirt sound then to make it better and better.

I will never stop defending Fenders clean sound. Every amp they made got cleaner and cleaner until they reached the Silver Faced amps the ultimate being the Twin reverb in '68. Although it is generally agreed that the Black Faced had it nailed with a few nice warm mids left in the sound. Fender lovers will be happy to know Leo left Fender in '65. LOL

It was CBS that thought bringing in young engineers in to design the new amps was a great idea.
Keep in mind these engineers had been taught at university the ultimate amplifier is one that is free of distortion.

It was not until guys like Randal Smith came along about this time and understood why deliberately making a Fender style amp distort was desirable. He started by hot rodding Fender amps until one day it made sense to just make his own  ...and the MESA Boogie was born.

The most popular tube amp in the world is the Fender Hot Rod. It is also the cheapest at under a thousand. It is generally agreed it's clean sound is second to none. BUT...its dirt sound is crap!!! Everyone that buys one uses a good OD so do not be surprised if you are at a club and a guy that has one is getting a Marshall sound coming out of it. LOL



No comments:

Post a Comment