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Players Notes; Standard drive/clean parallel type pedal with a wholly non-standard execution. The clean side has a single knob limiter where you can set the threshold volume that the limiter starts to clamp down at. It starts fairly wide open and fully across seems to lower the threshold beyond any reasonable use but for the lightest of string ticklers on the lowest of output pickups, but the progress from wide open to through the floor is nicely natural with no jumps. The clamp is very smooth and has been tailored to mimic the dynamic repsonse of soft clipping (more on that later). The release is very fast, so no tails or whompy transients, just soft limiting with a natural decay. Can get a little distorted with hard playing dynamics/high output pickups but there is a trimpot inside for adjusting against this. The drive side is very high headroom and gives the feeling of "loud". The pre-gain bass control and the treble control work really nicely with the clean blend to target and enhance specific aspects of the clean. Pull the bass out and crank the treble and what is left in the mix is the clean bass strings with the top strings getting some snap and fizz, pull the highs back and crank the pregain and you can make the low strings growl while having nice clean top strings. Absolutely sings with single coils. Either side standalone is pretty impressive and well worth a punt, but the real fun is in that blend control. Thanks to the limiter on the clean side being engineered to behave like the drive side (more gain you use on drive the harder you limit and vice versa) the overall tone feels concise and together, rather than two tones at the same times.
Cinematic
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Discreet Class A Gain Blocks
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Custom made inductors for reactive top end response
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UK designed transformers
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High Quality SMD and through hole components
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Off board Input and Output Jacks & DC Jack
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Relay Bypass
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Fully RoHS compliant
Runs on 9v Center Negative (Boss style) power supply - Current Draw: 30mA
Cinematic cleans, post-rock grit, full bore blown out drive, or just a little hi-fi polish to send your tone over the edge.
A few years ago, MusicRadar described our Clean Machine preamp as "a somewhat flawed masterpiece." Love that. Something very us about it. But those two extra words landed, and stuck.
For. Years.
Then one day, about a year ago, we decided to get Clean Machine back on the bench and see about that "somewhat flawed" bit.
Initial tests forced us to stop selling "Clean Machine". We couldn't in good conscience sell it with what was coming together in front of us.
By the time we were done we had something completely different. If Clean Machine was Anakin, this thing was Vader.
High-headroom audiophile grade input and output buffers to keep every bit of your guitar intact. A tuned FET based preamp with inductive filtering and transformer-isolated input. And finally, a blendable parallel clean path that has a transparent limiter built in to match the dynamic response of the preamp.
Dig in and it blooms cohesively. No spiking on the attack or clean chords jumping out of the mix.
Back off and it stays open, clear and dynamic. No pumping from the compressor throwing off the dynamics, just your clean sound behaving exactly like your drive sound.
You could have it only on the clean side and make use of the buffering/limiter chain to tidy up your cleans. Or you could just have it on the drive side and enjoy an easily integrated and modified Clean Machine.
We reckon the magic is somewhere in between.
Overall? The feel of a great valve amp sitting exactly where you want it, with plenty of play either side.
Clarity. Cohesion. Texture.
NiceOne.
