Review : The Mountain by Frost Giant Electronics
When my friend Chris Spano over at The Arts Music Store suggested that I do a review of products from the folks at Frost Giant Electronics, I was very cautious. I'm not a fuzz guy and I didn't want to do a review on a sound that I don't typically like and come across all negative due to prior experience. Chris encouraged me to give it a shot, so given that he knows my tastes, I asked him to pick a product. He chose The Mountain.
Both Chris and teammate Cody Shaw suggested that The Mountain is Frost Giant's interpretation of the well respected old Pro Co RAT. I have never owned or played through a RAT but I know folks like them and I had heard quite a testimonial from Josh Scott, founder and owner of JHS Pedals on his Youtube channel. He played a selection through a RAT and it didn't set my teeth on edge so with that guidance and some prodding from Chris, I agreed.
The construction is robust, like an old MXR case, with very good fitment and very well laid down graphics. Unlike the majority of Frost Giant pedals, there is a lack of D&D style artwork. I know that this sort of thing really excites some folks, but in a darker room, I cannot see the pedal anyway. The input, output and power jacks are on the top edge to help maximize pedal board real estate. I removed the back to put a battery in the unit. The internal construction is very clean with lots of space and the look of hand wiring, although I have no idea if they are indeed hand-wired. While there is more than enough space for a battery, there is no connection for one. So make sure that you have a spare power cord on your pedal board to drive the unit. There are no markings near the power jack and the box had no documentation, so I hoped that it was a standard 9v connection. No smoke or fire, so I expect that I am correct. I used a 1Spot plugged into the front of a Furman Power Conditioner in the rack where the G Major is. I swear by Furman products after an experience years ago where I did not have one and a peer did, and only one of us did not have a repair bill when the power went sideways.
Figuring, I wanted a guitar that cooked, I pulled down my mid '70s black Flying V. I have always found this guitar with its cloth wrapped humbuckers to punch well about its weight and to work nicely through a pushed Marshall stack. I don't do that much, because a pushed stack invites all manner of commentary and visitors to the door who may be accompanied by flashing lights. So I unplugged the usual pedal rig, amp selector etc, and went direct into The Mountain from the guitar and then direct to the input on my Marshall 2550. There is a TC Electronics G Major in the loop on that head, so I bypassed it completely. With a little TC clip on tuner on the headstock, I was ready to go.
First I wanted to set the Marshall up for a nice clean tone, so I did so on the normal channel leaving the EQ at noon, reverb off, volume at about noon, and the gain way down. It's a pleasant sound out of the matching 4x12, with good overall tone with both pickups active, and a bit bright with just the bridge pickup.
The Mountain has three knobs as you can see in the photo. Reading left to right, you have Volume, Frequency and Gain. In addition to the stomp switch there is a left hand switch to toggle through the clipping modes. Position I sounds like the bass is scooped away, Position II brings it back and is reasonably flat, and Position III brings a huge tone, which accentuates the bass without making it muddy and gives a nice punch to the mids. That's what I hear at least. On the right is a switch that offers an OD and a DIST position. The Frost Giant documentation which achieves a nearly ZEN state of minimalism by being nearly non-existent says this is to choose depending on whether your amp is clean or overdriven.
Given that I set the Marshall to this really nice open, almost sparkling clean tone, when the Frost Giant was first activated with all knobs at noon, and the clipping set to I, I found the OD setting gave a pleasant enough Overdrive sound. The volume drop was significant and I had to turn it up a fair bit to achieve the same level with the effect in or out. Once I had the volume balanced, the sound was nice, but if you are looking for a great overdrive, this one didn't set my hair on fire. Kicking it to the DIST setting revealed a very musical distortion that I found different from most other distortions that I tried. I could still hear the notes in chords, but they were wrapped in a very pleasant level of distortion.
Playing with the Gain did what was expected, which was to control the amount of distortion without impacting the overall volume. With the Flying V, I kept coming back to around 9 o'clock regardless of the position of the clipping switch.
I then tried different settings for the Frequency setting. I don't know what it is supposed to do. All the way left sounds like a puddle of mud, and all the way right sends all the treble on a one way trip to Neptune. After trying the control in different positions with different switch positions and different gain settings, I found that leaving it at noon delivered a really pleasing distortion without any negative effect.
For solos, I found the III position on the clipping switch, Gain to around noon, and the OD/DIST at DIST gave a nicely distorted, kind of fuzzy tone with sustain for days. I would note that if I was using this pedal in this way all the time, I would drop a TC Sentry in the line somewhere, because the pedal is noisy when no strings are ringing and you aren't touching metal on the guitar. Once you are on the strings, all the distracting noise goes away.
For chords, I backed off the Gain to about 9 o'clock and chose the clipping switch as either Position II or III depending on the chords being played. Open string chords sounded better to my ear in III, while more typical 5 and 6 string barre chords pleased me most in II. Obviously each player is different and likes what he or she likes. I have to admit that I got carried away for a bit, playing Rush's 2112 at some length as it came back to me, all too slowly (getting older is lousy, but light years better than the alternative). The V into The Mountain into the Marshall took me back to the seventies when Rush recorded All The World's A Stage over three shows at Toronto's Massey Hall. (Yes I was there, and those were the days that Geddy's range was still piercing).
My initial decision to go with the Flying V was successful. The V is strung as I often do, with 10-52 strings. My next play-throughs would be with a PRS Custom 22 and a 60th Anniversary Telecaster.
I started with the Telecaster which according to the specs and such is supposed to be like a '51 Blackguard. Well through The Mountain and into the Marshall it was wonderful. I did need to raise the Volume on The Mountain to compensate for the lower output pickups in the Telecaster. This was not unexpected. As the Tele is naturally bright, I enjoyed it most in amp postion III. When used in OD mode, it was fine, but as I noted with the Flying V, if one is looking for an overdrive, there are better options in this regard, (see my article on The Dane from ThorpyFX for a killer overdrive).
Moving to the Distortion setting, the combination of the Telecaster, The Mountain and the Marshall kick butt. It is a really pleasant fuzzy distortion without getting all muddy and thick. I did not care for either amp position I or II with the Telecaster. I did find that the Frequency knob sounded best to me at about 11 o'clock and the Gain at noon for most everything. With The Mountain off, I noticed a very specific voicing in this Telecaster from my others, and I think if you needed a beautiful sparkly clean, along with a really nice neck pickup sound and then some real raunch without changing kit, that The Mountain is a great choice. Adding in the Echoplex from the G Major and it did a great job on tunes from Led Zeppelin I.
My final guitar used was a quilt top Paul Reed Smith Custom 22. This is an older one, with a push-pull tone knob to coil tap the PRS humbuckers. This guitar was built before PRS starting putting numbers engraved into the pickup covers, and I think that the guitar is from 2006. With The Mountain inactive, it provides the expected PRS tonality from neck and bridge, with and without coil tap. I like the humbucker sound, and the coil tap of the neck, but on this guitar, the coil tap of the bridge sounds weak. Certainly not a Strat sound, and in my opinion, not a P90 or P100 either.
I dropped the Volume on The Mountain back to the level that I had with the Flying V and then had to raise it a bit to get even volume whether The Mountain was on or off. This just confirms that the pickups on the Flying V are quite hot. I found I needed to move the Frequency knob just to the right of noon, and also raise the Gain to about 10 o'clock for a sound that I liked. I think that this is important to note that as every guitar is different, you will want to find the best settings on The Mountain for whichever guitar that you use.
By now, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect with The Mountain. It performed as expected, but I must confess that I liked the PRS through it the least. It's not that it was bad in any way, it just didn't stand out like the Flying V or the Telecaster did. Nothing wrong with that, it's a what's so, and my mood was different on this day than when I was right into things with the Flying V. I would have said that The Mountain is best with high output pickups and an amp that is already overdriven, but my favourite use cases involved the 100 watt Marshall head set up for really nice clean tones, and then punching in The Mountain. With either the Flying V or the Telecaster it really cooks.
I'll get a chance to play a lot more guitars through it, because it's not going back. I will buy it, a purchase I would not have expected given that the product is marketed as a fuzz. I don't care much about the semantics, what matters to me is that I like the sound and that it works with very different guitars. I could try a different PRS and have a very different experience. I think that when I have time, I will put my '56 Les Paul Reissue with the P100s through it on a day when no one is studying elsewhere in the house and I can let the Marshall go a bit more. Please don't write me to tell me that P100s suck because they don't sound like P90s. They don't sound like P90s because they aren't supposed to sound like P90s. I like them in the Les Paul. I have staple P90s in my '54 Black Beauty. Nuff said on that topic.
I guess I had better look at another Frost Giant offering, just to see if my known aversion to Fuzzes is waning.