New Pedal Day: JHS Superbolt

A prominent SOFTie was selling off an interesting pedal, one which he described was different from the market of tubescreamer clones. As a fan of Supro amps (who isn't after listening to Led Zeppelin and Switchfoot?), I thought it would be a good investment to expand my collection of "amp-in-a-box" style of pedals. JHS goes for the minimalist...

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Gear Review: Surprise Sound Lab Rock Block and SE-5 Speaker Emulator

When you hear the terms "1-watt head" attached to an amplifier, the immediate thoughts that come to mind are, "lack of headroom" and "too small-sounding". I was quite pleasantly surprised by two "pedals" offered by Surprise Sound Lab. Why the quotation marks? Well, I can't really classify them as pedals even though they can certainly fit very nicely on a pedalboard. The Rock Block is a true tube-driven, fully analog amp that's a direct competitor to the Zvex Nano Head and can run any cab of your...

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Gear Review: The Matthews Effects ICY Buffer

I have a lot of cable running between my guitar to the pedalboard and to the amp, and because my pedals are mostly "true bypass" and I don't use all of them at once, I end up having a giant hi-pass filter in the rig and I lose some high end. When I record, I always have to post-process and add the "sparkle" in by countering the effects of the hi-pass filter. When I added the Matthews Effects ICY Buffer into my rig, there was a huge difference in the tone--not that it added tone, but it restored...

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