A Quick Look at Source Audio

Some of us are gear heads, and in that vein, some of us could be seen as being pedal junkies. Hi I am Ross and I am a pedal junkie. I have been for a long time and in this post, I want to wander about the line of a brand that I have come to depend upon and trust called Source Audio.

Source Audio was founded by former leaders of Analog Devices in 2005. Given the plethora of pedal brands, that longevity is significant. I don’t call Source Audio a boutique vendor because their pricing is reasonable for what they deliver as opposed to being under the influence of hallucinogens and when they announce a product, it actually ships. While Source Audio does sell direct, they also sell through guitar stores. I count this as critical because whether you like a pedal or not is highly subjective and highly dependent on your style, your gear and your hands. A pedal that sounds great in a demo, may sound like tearing dog turds when you try it. You know this, or have not experienced it. Yet.

I’m only going to talk to the products that I own and one that I is presently announced and awaiting delivery. That I would order something that I have only read about is indicative of my level of confidence with Source Audio products. I am not sponsored by the company and they do not send me gear for review or to keep, although should they choose to, I would accept and disclose that fully.

I had played through Source Audio pedals on numerous occasions, in the I’m bored, let’s try stuff model. I found them to be easy to use, manuals not required and delivering of what I consider to be excellent tone.

COLLIDER

I have a Fender blackface Twin rig. It’s heavy and it’s loud and there is nothing that sounds like a Twin, all alternate claims notwithstanding. It’s long spring reverb tank is really special and when you want spring, there is no better in my opinion. However, I wanted more for my Twin rig. While I was not seeking a dedicated reverb, alternatives to spring would not go unappreciated, particularly a really nice sounding plate reverb, which is my go to sound in the studio. My primary goal was a nice delay that offered me some options, but not so many as to cause option paralysis and it had to be easy to use and have very simple controls. I first looked to the Nemesis delay, but found that for a few $$ more I could get the Collider which is a dual DSP unit, with one DSP for delay and one for reverb. The math made sense to me.

The Collider offers a variety of delay models including Oil Can, Reverse, Tape, Analog and Digital. In my playing, I tend to favour Tape and Oil Can and very rarely Reverse, although I find all the delays to be very good sounding with negligible noise and very accurate reproduction.

As you can see above there is a microswitch that allocates the control knobs to either delay or reverb with a centre lockout function so you do not inadvertently change settings unintentionally. The delay patters are single quarter, dotted eighth or triplets. The knob and switch functions are easy to understand with aqua indicating the functions that are delay specific and yellow indicating the functions that are reverb specific. The tone and mix controls work the same in either config. I run this in a dry / wet config and run the mix all the way up as this is on the wet amp, but in a traditional setup, the mix is a perfect blending tool. There is tap tempo as expected. The only memory related issue is the function of the Control 1 and Control 2 knobs which have different roles depending on the type of delay or reverb being used. I am not super fond of this model, but it keeps real estate demands down.

The reverbs are as you might expect to find. Shimmer is great for ambient stuff as is swell. I don’t use room or hall that much and have yet to find the perfect application for e-dome. Having a great spring in the Twin means that I don’t use the spring setting much at all, but in a different amp configuration like an old Bassman, this spring setting is really excellent. I tend to work with plate most of the time, because it appeals to me, and I’m not going to have an EMT plate reverb around ever.

You can also save four rapid access presets into the unit with reverb and delay independently accessible. I love this unit and it delivers awesome tone in a single box. It’s also fully MIDI capable with a maximum of 128 MIDI presets. You can also edit presets and download them via the Neuro Editor for iOS or Android. The cable from your device to the unit is in the box.

ZIO

I believe in always on clean boost units. While I have tried many that were questionable. I bought the ZIO on release. It is a very simple clean boost/preamp to go on your board. I sent mine to unity gain as I don’t need to push the front end of the amp, I just want to open things up a bit before the split to wet dry. I use this on a board that sends the dry signal to either of a Tone King Imperial Mark II or hand wired VOX AC30. The wet signal goes to a REVV D20.

There are four preamp options for the boost pedal. They are all analog. You have JFET, LOW CUT, STUDIO and E-PLEX. All sound really good, and also different enough to warrant the options. JFET is perfectly clean. LOW CUT relieves the issue of a loose bottom end, by tightening things up and boosting headroom, very handy if your amp/speaker combination gets flubby in the bass as is sometimes found with some pickups. STUDIO uses a Pultec inspired mode to tighten up and gently bump midrange for cleaner articulation and E-PLEX gives that pleasant overdrive that many players used an Echoplex for even without delay. There is a tone space switch, that changes capacitance to give the effect of short, medium or long guitar cables. The foot switch can be set as either a Bypass or Mute. In Mute it will push a signal out the tuner jack.

The output knob should be called the Howitzer. This is a boost pedal and unity gain occurs just before 9 o’clock. Anything after and things start to get loud quickly. The unit offers up to 20dB of boost.

Mine is always on. Both the dry amps have great tone natively and this pedal just opens them up a bit more. I really recommend it.

EQ2 PROGRAMMABLE EQUALIZER

While I think that an EQ is always a good idea, I find that I use one as a pedal most often with acoustic guitars with a pickup inside. All acoustics have some frequency that can use a little bit of work, and based on life experience, I prefer parametric equalizers to graphic equalizers because they are more surgically precise. Graphic equalizers are quicker to find the bands that you want to work on, so the best would be a graphic equalizer with parametric capability. Thus the EQ2.

To be blunt, unless the pickup in an acoustic is one of Taylor’s latest or my preference the Mini, I don’t tend to like them. I particularly find piezo pickups grating on the ears and they tend to make my teeth hurt. However when running into a desk or acoustic amp, using the pickup may be more convenient that miking the guitar up, so you work with what you have.

The EQ2 has ten bands with a range of adjustment per band of +- 18dB. When used with the Neuro Editor pictured below, you can sculpt the curves using parametric Q values. It supports full stereo with the ability to set different curves for left and right channels. It is rack functional gear in a pedal. There are 4 or 8 built in presets and 128 available via MIDI. For an interface I use Universal Audio Apollo devices with UNISON preamps, and for live applications an AIR Compact 60 amplifier. The AIR has DI out and can feed a PA if needed. This simple pedal allows for fast tweaking to adjust your instrument for the room that you are playing in or recording in. The Neuro Editor connects from your computer or mobile device via the built in USB port.

The completeness of the editor makes this the perfect pedal for the live player who also records or who is simply particular about his or her sound. It is not guitar specific, you can really use it with any instrument that you can get a signal out of. I used mine briefly with a friend to cut some nasally spikes out of her electric violin. Worked a charm. I own an excellent older Empress Parametric EQ, but when I needed something a bit richer for recording live, I went with the EQ2, and if I needed an EQ again for another application, I would get another one.

ATLAS COMPRESSOR

Full disclosure. I don’t own an Atlas yet. It is on order with my local dealer, Cosmo Music in Richmond Hill Ontario. In fact the product is so new that it wasn’t even listed when I contacted the store manager to order one. Given that I am a compressor dork and have bought many, why would I get another one, when I own both first and second editions of the Empress Compressor, have an original Diamond and a Diamond Junior, a couple of Origin Effects compressors including the Cali76 and the Stacked76 and the Effectrode PC-2A. I have others as well, some good and then there are others.

Simply because the Atlas brings to me what I would look for in a compressor in 2022. The Diamond optical compressors were superb, but sadly they are gone. I have heard rumours that Diamond may arise and if so I wish them well as they are great people with great products. I like the fast response of the FET based UA 1176 compressors that Origin did such a good job emulating in their Cali76. I love the warmth of the Teletronix LA-2A tube compressor that we find in the tube based Effectrode PC-2A.

The Atlas brings the tone (according to the marketing - I will know for certain when mine arrives) of the Diamond compressor, the UA 1176 and the Teletronix LA-2A. It also offers dual band compression with different setting for high frequencies and low frequencies. There is also a VCA based compressor option. There is a little button on the top edge called ALT that activates secondary functions on the controls for tone, attack and release in addition to the standard functions of threshold, ratio, blend and output. I want those functions in a pedal compressor, regardless of what it is emulating. There are stereo ins and outs. While there are no MIDI ports on the device, the Neuro Editor for the Atlas provides full control of MIDI function programming. I find that the editor looks as rich as the editor is for the EQ2.

Conclusions

I like the Source Audio products that I own. They have never let me down, sound amazing and don’t ever get in my way. They are slightly more expensive than what you might find from Boss or MXR, but with respect, I think that you are getting a lot more for your money. While I respect that the company has to sell direct in today’s world, I am also glad to see that they still support the guitar store channel, because pedals really need to be played to get a sense before buying and a good store will ensure that its people have knowledge about the offerings.

Thanks for reading and until next time, peace.