I just noticed something: This blog is called Guitar Gear, but I haven’t reviewed much gear! That’s going to change right now! The first piece of equipment I’m going to introduce is the BBE Sonic Stomp.
Based upon BBE’s very successful line of “Sonic Maximizers” – the Sonic Stomp actually uses the same technology from its 482i rack mount unit – this is a very unique pedal, and I’m going to go as far as saying this: YOU MUST HAVE THIS PEDAL. It’ll be the best $99 you’ve ever spent. So what makes it so special?
Without going into technical details, the Sonic Stomp corrects phase differences that occur between low and high frequencies coming out of an amp’s speakers; technically called “envelope distortion;” the net effect being that dramatic phase differences between low and high frequencies can produce what we perceive as a “muddy” or in some cases a “muted” sound. By time-aligning the frequencies, the signal is restored to a more accurate state, thus producing a much clearer, cleaner tone, and this is the gist of what the BBE Sonic Stomp does.
Now here’s the catch to this box. Unlike other pedals that either add drive or modulation to your signal, this pedal does signal correction, and in most cases you won’t even notice that it’s on! However, you’ll miss it when it’s off. It’s hard to articulate what that difference is. Let’s just say that with this pedal on, your already good tone just sounds that much better.
Now don’t confuse what this pedal does with a compressor. A compressor flattens gain, limiting the louder sounds and loudening the quieter ones (with makeup gain), thus creating a perceptibly fatter tone. This is very different than phase correction. See the figures below:
I realize this is a fairly simplistic perspective, but as you can see, phase correction aligns the waves without acting on their amplitudes, whereas compression corrects amplitude but doesn’t work on phase.
So why might people confuse the two? Simply because when you correct phase, tonal qualities that you didn’t realize existed suddenly come to life. For instance, before I got this box, my amp had a real big, boomy tone. When I introduced the Sonic Stomp into my chain, my amp lost some of its boominess, which resulted in a much richer tone. It’s easy to mistake this as tone fattening as the lows got smoothed out and there seemed to be much more midrange, but I wouldn’t call it fattening – it’s more tone clarification – and this box it great at that!
So if you’re thinking about getting a tone shaping box, give the BBE Sonic Stomp a good look.
Guitar Gear 
You’re wrong on what compression does — compression corrects volume over time, not between high and low frequencies. Let’s say a compressor kicks in at -15 db — once the signal gets louder than that, it will make the entire signal quieter, not just the highs/lows/mids. (You can get a multiband compressor to work on each individual band.)
You’re absolutely right – I totally misspoke, and forgot to correct this when I finally learned more about compression. Thanks for the correction!
thanks for the review. very good explination. I’ve been researching this pedal and have grown tired with dissatisfied owners that complain because it is an “eq for idiots”. From what you, and others, have written the “eq” aspects of this pedal are only the tip of the iceburg.
BBE’s site advertizes that the current sonic stomp uses their 4th gen audio tech. Was this the same version when you performed this review. I ask because the box is now painted differently. Thanks again.
EQ for idiots? NOT. It’s a great little pedal, and it really helps define your tone. I don’t use it much for humbuckers, but I actually use it quite a bit with my single coils.