I’ve been on this reggae kick lately, and was tooling around with a riff the other day. Not sure if it’ll ever become an actual song, but while I was laying down the track, I thought that it would be cool to lay down a solo track with a dirty guitar. I was thinking about a singing lead with lots of sustain. So I pulled out the Circus Freak Tattooed Lady overdrive, and let ‘er rip. Up to that point, I had only used the pedal with my Les Pauls, and was thoroughly impressed with it. But with my Slash L “Katie May,” the sound was other-worldly!
It had a crying-like quality to it that literally stunned me. It’s hard to describe what I was feeling when I heard it, but it’s akin to the feeling you get when hearing something so completely unexpected and so completely beautiful that you have to stop and say, “Did I REALLY hear that?” Then playing it again just confirms that yes, you really did hear that.
I must’ve played over the loop for a couple of hours before I decided to track it. The sound that this pedal creates is simply incredible. Here’s a clip:
When I got up above the 14th fret, I couldn’t believe how the pedal created this wailing sound. To me, it’s breathtaking.
Anyway, I know that I’ve mentioned that this pedal is fantastic standalone, but in this case, I actually used it to help drive my DV Mark Little 40, so the breakup that you hear is a combination of the clipping of the pedal with the clipping of the front-end of my amp. I have the amp set at the edge of breakup with the pedal disengaged. The volume on the pedal is set to about 11am, with the drive between 2 and 3 pm. Bass and Treble are both at about 1pm.
Guitar Gear 
Leave a Reply