What is a Tone Shaping Boost? At it’s heart, it’s a mix of sculpted EQ and ultra-quiet studio grade boosting that work in harmony to lift your guitar out of a mix, help it sit in a complex band palette, and generally just inject life and vibrancy into your tone.
How does it do this? I spent a lot of time listening to world-class rock albums from each decade to pinpoint the exact tones and spectral identity that characterised these albums. I then built a selection of custom EQ curves that boost, cut and roll off carefully chosen frequencies in harmony to move your guitar sound towards these tonal ‘eras’. You simply select the ‘era’ you want via the rotary switch, then dial in the amount of adjustment you need with the ‘Tone Boost’ control. For simplicity I added short-hand letters that give a very general sense of the ‘feel’ of those eras, such as B for Bass-ish, M for Mid-Focussed, T for Trebly and T+ for Trebly-Extra.
B+ ‘Bass-Extra’ is a new addition for this update, and is a little less serious than the first four. It’s a swampy, thick Bass designed to capture the Nu-Metal vibe. I’d recommend it for bass guitarists, 8-string players and traditional guitarists who want the ultimate in thick and syrupy vintage solos.
It wouldn’t be an Audiostorm pedal without button-modes:
- OXY2 opens up the high end, adding clarity and air by modifying each of the Tone Eras to tame the HF roll-offs, effectively doubling up the number of Tone Eras.
- HNO3 adds gain and boost and aggression and edge. Engage this to overload the next pedal or amp as a pre-boost driver. Disengage for more control as a post-boost shaper.
- NOVA engages soft-saturation that shapes feel and compression without adding distortion. Works best at very high boost levels.
These are constructed entirely in Manchester, UK. We use our own in-house Pick and Place machine to fit the premium, cutting edge surface mount parts precisely in place, use premium high-temperature solders in our own reflow machines to ensure long life and robust resistance to vibration and abuse, all mounted to custom designed, gold-plated (yes really!) laminated fibreglass PCBs that meet RoHS requirements for environmental safety and care. You get the benefits of an entirely human-supervised, hand-made product combined with cutting edge manufacturing technology and guaranteed old-school British quality every step of the way.
Quality: True relay bypass, metal-shaft pots, premium ALPS push switches, genuine Cliff jack sockets, solid cast-aluminium enclosure, full-colour UV resistant artwork with white ink printing and anti-abrasion lamination, near-silent soft switching, and top-quality parts throughout. No corners cut, ever.
Full MDK module expansion support so you can add extra expression features of your choice to your pedal in future.
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