Always looking for ways to save room on my pedal board, I realized that I love the tone of my ROC distortion pedal, but I wish it took up less space. So began the quest for a single channel ROC. I ended up stripping away the 'boost' channel, shrinking it down, and changing the EQ part of the circuit. The new EQ controls give you a high cut and two distinct voices. The 'Brown Note' distortion pedal was born. This is still the fire-breathing, face-pummeling, everything-on-10 wall of distortion pedal that made the ROC so awesome, just in a smaller package. If you have the space, and need the flexibility of an extra channel and two knob tone shaping, get the ROC. If however, you're like me and pedal board space is at a premium, the ROC's little brother, the 'Brown Note', will deliver that modern heavy rock n' roll tone that made the ROC famous.
I have had several questions from customers wondering where I get my super heavy duty pedal enclosures from. The simple answer is, I build them myself. :-) Most pedal manufactures use off-the-shelf, die cast aluminum boxes. I prefer to use something a little more heavy duty. After all, you are stomping on this thing so it should be built to take a life time of abuse!
The enclosures start life as flat, cut-to-size, 16 guage steel blanks.
From there all the holes are laid out and punched and cleaned up (all the metal burrs removed etc...).
Then the enclosures are bent, and screw holes are drilled and tapped. Done! After that it's on to painting and graphics but that's for another post. ;-)
That's all there is to it. Super heavy duty enclosures that will keep the components and circuits safe from the abuse that we put these pedals through.
Well, the king of pedal reviews, Gearmanndude himself, has gotten a hold of the LS MammaJamma. Here is his video review...
Finally, I have some demo videos of my pedals. You can see them at www.youtube.com/lseffects. Enjoy!!
Introducing my latest creation, the LS MammaJamma OD/Boost/Distortion pedal. The Mammajamma's tone control makes it one of the most flexible pedals ever created. The MammaJamma has a 2 knob eq stage. This is not your typical treble/bass tone control but a unique eq where both knobs interact with each other. You want a 'tubescreamer like' tone with a strong mid hump? No problem. How about a scooped, thick, British stack tone? Done. Completely flat? pronounced highs? Thumping bass? With the 'tone' and 'timber' eq controls on the MammaJamma you can nail them all. Combine this unique eq stage with a three way switch to select either vintage, clean, or modern clipping sounds and you have a pedal that allows you to tune it to your needs and cover almost any sound you want. The MammaJamma can go from a classic, harmonically rich overdrive tone, to a compressed, super saturated modern distortion sound, to an ultra clean booster or even a gritty treble booster. One pedal, almost unlimited tonal possibilities. This is the MammaJamma of all pedals!
The LS 'Tone Messiah'. An ultra transparent, Class-A circuit, line buffer pedal. No cheap IC chips here!
Most pedal manufacturers employ pre-packaged ICs (integrated circuit chips) to buffer their signals. These class-B chips are designed to be extremely efficient, quiet, and very compact making them perfect for electronics that employ batteries that would otherwise quickly run dead. These chips are also really cheap! This reduces manufacturing costs and best of all, because they are really easy to use and come with great application manuals from the same guys that make cell phones, anyone with basic electronic knowledge can use them.
Only one problem. . . they sound bad.
Why? Well--guitars are not buffered sources like iPod. Guitars are musical instruments. They breathe and spit and bark and cry. They are alive. As soon as you connect a pre-packaged frozen dinner in between the pickup and the amp, the instrument becomes detached. It just is not the same. It is the way that the guitar reacts to the circuit that completes the instrument.
For a buffer to work, you have to treat the guitar as if it is seeing the world's best guitar amplifier. The LS 'Tone Messiah' does just that. It uses a unique class A circuit that has been optimized for guitar.
Things keep evolving here at LS Effects. Just as we shrank the 8oh8 a few months ago, now we are shrinking the Tide tremolo. Don't worry, nothing has changed circuit or tone wise. This is still the same sweet, vintage tremolo that the Tide is famous for. Everything is just being housed in a smaller more pedalboard friendly box. The old Tide measured 4 3/8 x 3 1/2. The new one measures 4 3/8 X 2 5/8. It might be a smaller box, but it's still the same sweet pulsing tone.
 The New Smaller Tide Tremolo.
Building upon the success of the LS 8-oh-8 I am very happy to announce the 8-oh-8 vr. 2. Don't worry, nothing has changed circuit or tone wise. This is still the killer Overdrive that everyone is raving about. Everything is just being housed in a smaller more pedalboard friendly box. The old 8-oh-8 measured 4 3/8 x 3 1/2. The new one measures 4 3/8 X 2 5/8. Boom! Smaller box, same BIG tone.
For a long time now I have been toying with the idea of designing and building a pedal that would combine the transparency of the LS 8oh8 overdrive and the heavy distortion of a cranked JMC800 or equivalent type amp. I know that the words 'transparency' and 'heavy distortion' don't usually go together but I really wanted a pedal that could take me into the realm of insanity while still retaining my guitar and amp's unique tone. Basically my 'rig' still had to sound like my 'rig' but just pushed over the top. After designing and trying lots of different prototype circuits, I have finally built what I consider the ultimate distortion pedal. The final design is really two pedals in one box. Side 'A' is the primary distortion/overdrive side with 'gain', 'tone', and 'volume' controls while side 'B' is a super fat boost that feeds into side 'A'. Either side of the pedal can be run independent of the other, but the true insanity starts when you turn both sides on. As side 'A' is the primary side, I took extra care to make it very touch-sensitive. If you want to back off and play lightly the pedal cleans right up, but when you dig in, this baby just growls. Click on side 'B' and the growl becomes a roar. The next step will be a name and some nice graphics. I should be able to start offering this pedal on my site in a few weeks. If your looking for the ultimate distortion/overdrive pedal, this is the one!
Well it's been a long time coming but the LS SNAC (super nice audio compressor), is now available. I made a few last minute changes to the circuit since my last post. Fist, I added an 'attack' control switch. You now have the option to go from fast, medium, and slow attack times. I felt this was a more meaningful control then the 'brightness' knob on the last prototype. By having a variable attack time you can perserve the pick sound or compress it along with the rest of the signal. I still wanted to provide a 'brightness' control but resized that once the brightness was set, it wouldn't be something that you would change much, so now there is an internal brightness control. I will be adding the LS SNAC to the ordering page in a day or two but if you want to get an order in for one before then, just email me.
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