REVIEW - Cornerstone Gladio Overdrive - Dumblesque?

Hey folks.

That's a pretty dumb question since if you really want the sound of a Dumble amplifier, you need to get a Dumble amplifier. Too expensive you say? Yeah I'm there. Never played a Dumble? Yeah I am there too and so are lots of us because Dumbles aren't sitting around in most guitar shops waiting for us to show up and plug in.

So why the myriad pedals focused on being Dumblesque? Probably because it makes them sound like more Unobtainium, although there are a stack of so called Dumblesque pedals.

I bought the Gladio because I liked the sound that Mick Taylor of That Pedal Show was getting. Overdrives continue to enthuse me, because I am always chasing that perfect tone, whatever that actually means. I checked in with my supplier of more esoteric gear and he became the Canadian dealer for Cornerstone. I got one of the first Gladios to come to Canada via that route and love the darn thing,

The Gladio is a dual preamp pedal. I'm not an engineer so I don't know if it is a real preamp (meaning that it could replace the front end of an amplifier and only need a power amp) but I do like the sound regardless. Via a switch you can set the preamps as always independent or stackable. I tried it both ways and for me I preferred stackable. It allows me to chain the two gain stages and set each one up to be decent on its own but strongest together. Since doing so, I have it in a loop on my pedal switcher with both sides on all the time.

That board also has a Voodoo Labs amp switcher. I can send the signal to a Boogie Mark V, a PRS Dallas, a Marshall Silver Jubilee or an aged Super Lead Mark II. The Super Lead Mk II can be very clean to the point of deafening, and if I push it into that Marshall gain tone, the dB level is a health hazard. It runs through a WAZA Amp Expander to the Marshall 4x12 A and B cabs and I can get that Marshall gain tone without killing myself or summoning the police, but to roll off enough volume to clean things up, gives me inconsistent volume and a bit of high end pain.

Enter the Gladio. Now with a tap of a switch I can go from the very classic Marshall clean tone, which is often overlooked in favour of their overdrive tone to a wonderful gain tone. Marshall clean is not Fender blackface pristine, not VOX chimey, but lovely none the less, like an old Fender brown face amp. The overdrive driven by the Gladio sounds like it should out of big Marshall stack. It's so good that I was continually pushing the volume playing a 1960 Vintage Reissue Les Paul that my little handheld sound meter, encouraged me to stop as did the ringing in my ears. Fortunately the neighbours did not call the police.

There are a number of Youtube videos out there with tone samples of the Gladio, although I personally recommend those from That Pedal Show because I know them best. Andertons in the UK usually does some good videos, but their Cornerstone video was horrible and does not do the company or its products justice in any way.

One of the things that makes some folks think that the Gladio is trying to achieve a Dumblesque label is the control markings. You will see a Jazz / Rock switch as found on some Dumble amps on the right side preamp. You also have an option to add some compression on the left side preamp. The centre switch lets you control how the preamps work together or work independently. The other controls are simpler with options for Gain, Volume and Tone, with independent options for each preamp. There are no secret squirrel button hold downs or other nonsense to get in the way of your use. This is a performer's tool, less a tweaker tool although I have found the range of adjustment options to be significant.

Personally, I don't like overdrives that artificially bump a specific area of the spectrum to the disadvantage of others. That's one of the things that I dislike about tube screamers and their millions of variants. The other thing that I appreciate about the Gladio is that it does not artificially shelve off the high end. There's less likelihood of getting that overdrive mud sound. Now if you like that sort of thing, the Gladio is not for you. 

I've written mostly about how the Gladio sounds through the old Marshall. It sounds very good through the Silver Jubilee as well, although if I have to pick, I like it better through the Super Lead Mark II. I am less fond of it, or any overdrive for that matter, through the Boogie Mark V. In that amp, I prefer the built in crunch and overdrive channels because they do a better job of maximizing the headroom. The PRS Dallas is Paul Reed Smith's take on a classic American amplifier, more brown Rolex than Blackface. It is a beautifully clean amp, but with less jangle than a Fender Blackface Twin. The sound of the Gladio through the PRS is also lovely, albeit with different settings than with the Marshall.

The pedals takes a 9 volt supply. On that board I have a CIOKS DC7 and CIOKS 8 to provide power to the pedals and each pedal is on its own loop in a Cusack Pedal Tamer.

The Gladio is not in every store. I got mine from ElectricMojoGuitars. At $549 CAD, no one can call it inexpensive. It's more expensive than a Keeley D&M Drive which I own and that lives with a Victory Viscount or the Hudson Broadcast dual preamp that lives with a Fender Custom Hot Rod Deluxe. Both are fine products, but if I could have only one, it would be a Gladio.

Check one out and until we meet again, peace.

Review : Cali76 STACKED Edition from Origin Effects

What could be better than one compressor? Two compressors! Specifically two compressors that are joined together in the same box. Especially when they are the modern equivalents of UREI 1176 class studio processors.

Now I understand that a compressor may not be on the top of your must have list, but you might be amazed by what a difference a really great compressor can make in your tone.

For a lot of folks, the word compressor brings to mind the classic Ross style guitar pedals, or the many alternatives using a similar circuit design. You also hear the term "chicken picken'" in relation to compressors. This naming has been known to drive away players who don't play "country". That's too bad because a good compressor can help any tone.

The Cali76 Stacked Edition is based on a very different circuit, the same model as the famous UREI 1776 studio rack compressor. It's very different from a classic "squishy" compressor. The tone is different, richer, wider and while all compressors reduce dynamic range to some extent, the Cali76 family have none of that squishiness. Some compressors also introduce some unpleasant boost effects. Not this one. While you can dial in a small amount of boost, this is not a boost pedal

What it is, is two compressors that work independently and where you have the ability to control how much of the first compressed signal hits the second compressor. I have heard compressors described as "overdrive for your clean tone". I presume that by this the person saying so is describing the increased sustain that can come from a decent overdrive. A good compressor can certainly do that for your clean tone, but the non-squish kind can also benefit an overdriven tone. I am not a user of distortion or fuzz and they introduce so much compression themselves, I cannot comment on the need for a compressor for those playing through such devices.

What I like about the Cali76 Stacked Edition is that I can set each compressor to do what I want. I will typically set the first compressor to increase sustain and increase fullness. This is my always on option. I can then use the second compressor to further increase sustain with some more compression of the dynamic range or just let it control peaks in the signal, typically associated with variations in pick attack and where on the string I hit in relation to the pickup poles.

There is no one size fits all setting. Different guitars and different pickups deliver different responses. When you see the Cali76 Stacked Edition as two devices, it gets a lot simpler to understand and use.

The Cali 76 Stacked Edition requires a power supply that is not included. There is no battery option and for my use cases, that does not matter to me. My unit is on the split board for my AC30 with the Cali76 Stacked Edition, a Frost Giant Treble Booster and ThorpFX Dane into the front of the amp, with the delays and chorus effects in the effects loop. As I often use single coil pickups through this amp, I use a TC Electronics Sentry to control noise. I like the Sentry because the one pedal works both in front of the amp and in the effects loop.

Playing a Strat, a Tele or a Rickenbacker through the Cali76 Stacked Edition into the AC30 is a wonder of chime and sustain, and I will use the compressor even when pushing the signal with the treble booster or the Dane and am very happy with the tonal results.

This is a boutique pedal and if you want to get one, I heartily recommend going to ElectricMojoGuitars to get yours.

Let’s Talk About Pedal Power

If you are, as I am, somewhat of a pedal geek, you know that getting the right power to your pedals is a real thing.

For those of us who may be inclined to use pedals that are more demanding than the commonplace units that don't need more than 9V or 100mA there are lots of inexpensive options out there. Yet when we read up on power supplies a couple of things come up very quickly. The first thing is that each power tap is fully isolated. Why we would care is simply noise. Some pedals are noisy. Some are really noisy. You don't want that transitioning to being electrically noisy down your chain. Even with good inexpensive chain supplies like the well respected OneSpot devices isolation can be a problem.

In my case, I have purchased a number of pedals that cannot get by with 100mA. Some have different power connections or flip the centre negative to centre positive and this starts to mean a plethora of wall warts. To be candid, I have found that some of these wall warts are not really well shielded and become little noise antennae all on their own.

What really struck me was the price jump from non-isolated to non-branded may be isolated supplies to name brand isolated supplies. Talk to a pro tech and they are using Voodoo Labs or Strymon power supplies. The rationale is proven reliability, flexible voltages, support for diverse connections and the ability to drive more amps to demanding pedals.

I am a fan of boutique stuff, or higher end kit, such as Strymon for example. Many of their products come with wall wart supplies because they are demanding of amperage. Some devices also sound better if you can feed them more power.

I was planning on buying a Strymon power system when I learned from my friend Charles of ElectricMojo Guitars about CIOKS. 

I have had nothing but good success with Charles so I went with a DC7 unit. The connectors on the block are RCA style connectors so not the more standard DC power sleeves. The cables come with the unit, in a variety of lengths and with reversed polarity and ⅛ inch options. The greatest thing about the DC7 is that each output is selectable for one of 9, 12, 15 or 18 volts with plenty of mA available in every case. I have been very successful with the CIOKS except where I screwed up and used the wrong cable with a Diamond Halo Chorus and fried the voltage regulator. Diamond has excellent service and the repair was cheaper than what it cost me to ship the unit to them.

I mounted the CIOKS DC7 to the underside of a PedalTrain board. This particular board is for DI recording use and headphone practice only. Even with a full load of Strymon effects (it is an all Strymon board - except the Tuner) there is no problem and things sound fabulous.

When I started moving away from the OneSpot stuff, my first step was to one of the Donner units available on Amazon. Says that they are fully isolated, but I found that they were randomly glitchy. Promised LEDs worked only some of the time and I would get weird things. As I maintain a number of boards for different amps, the Donners were an inexpensive solution, but are proving to be suboptimal.

The other problem that I have run into, is my love of pedals in general. 7 or 8 power ports aren't enough, so either I needed multiple blocks or the ability to extend.

The DC7 has a 24V extender port to which you can connect other CIOKS products designed to be power extenders. The CIOKS 8 is such a product. It is powered from the DC7 and gives you an additional 8 fully switchable and fully isolated ports.

CIOKS 8

Even for a geek like me, this is enough. I also find the full isolation helpful as some of my boards are split with some of the pedals in front of the amp and others in the effects loop. Where I have encountered strangeness in the past with other supplies, no such thing is so with the CIOKS stuff.

CIOKS was founded in Denmark in 1991 by Poul Cioks. They are one of those small, highly focused manufacturers that do what they do extremely well and don't try to be everything to everyone. The boxes themselves are really tough and nice and compact. For the stage performer, they have the durability you would need and for the recording artist, they are perfectly silent.

I've tried more power supplies than I want to admit. For my use cases, with boutique pedals with different power demands, and wanting something reliable that was going to last and that would do what it says it would do while having lots of power availability, the CIOKS family is perfect.

If you want to buy a CIOKS, I will always recommend ordering from ElectricMojoGuitars

Thanks for reading and we will speak again soon.

Review : Revival Drive Compact by Origin Effects

As guitarists the correct answer for how many overdrives we have seems to be at least one more than what we already have. I count myself in this space. I've not thus far been much enamoured of distortion and fuzz pedals but overdrives are an issue for me, and while I sometimes find other reviews to be JAFO content, I have to say that the Origin Effects Revival Drive Compact does not fit in that bucket.

The Compact is a smaller version of the double sized and nearly double priced full unit.

The full size Revival drive

You'll notice that the Compact has half the functions of the full size leaving out the Silicon Rectifier side. This was ok with me and why I chose the Compact model.

The controls are incredibly simple, and Origin provides some suggested settings in their documentation to get you started for different configurations.

My test environment is a very lean board (tuner, Revival Drive, Keeley Delay) into the front of a Fender '65 Twin Reverb Reissue. I love the Twins enormous power and tendency to stay clean at all volume levels. Twin users know that at full pop, a Twin will blow you through a wall, so I tend to play it with the volume relatively low. Using the Revival Drive gives me a lot of tone control without having to have the amp too loud not that it would overdrive much anyway.

I have tested the unit with single coils from an SRV Strat which has the Texas Specials pickups, an Eric Johnson Strat, a rosewood Telecaster from the 80s, a Gretsch White Penguin 59VS and a Les Paul 57 Black Beauty. Obviously I need to alter the settings on the Revival Drive for these different guitars, but in every case I have been successful quickly in getting an overdrive tone that I like without having to resort to black magic in the guitar settings. If I could say that about all the other overdrives that I have owned and tried, I would have a smaller number of them.

My Revival Drive Compact came from my good friends at Electric Mojo Guitars. They are my primary dealer for boutique stuff and my provider for my other Origin Systems gear. I find Charles to be both knowledgeable and helpful with excellent pricing and very fast delivery. Origin Effects kit is not found in many stores, partly because they are a small company and also frankly because the price points are well over better known overdrives and the buyer market is fairly vertical.

However, if you are tone hound and are looking for an overdrive that really kills it, but that is also versatile enough that it's not a one trick pony and that plays nicely with other amps (I have used it with an AC30, Marshall 2555, PRS Dallas, Kock Multitone and Blackstar Club 40). I even tried into the front of the tiny Yamaha THR30 II. All good sounds, although I admit a preference for valve (tube) amps.

If you can handle the cost of acquisition, this pedal is the finest that I have found for this kind of task.

Review : Dawner Prince Boonar

There are a few products in the market that aspire to bring the sound of vintage Binson Echorec delays to the pedal marketplace. I have already looked at the Catalinbread offering and have not yet found the opportunity to test out the Strymon Volante in depth. The Volante is more than just an Echorec delay, and more than what I wanted specifically. Charles at Electric Mojo Guitars recommended the Dawner Prince Boonar Mk II.

He has never steered me wrong. In fact, his company is where I go for boutique pedals because, frankly, he has them and knows his stuff.

Dawner-Prince is out of Croatia. Origin should not matter, but while we see lots of pedals from Japan, the US, the UK and even Canada, I was not aware of a high end Croation builder. Now I know better.

The Boonar is a recreation of a Binson Echorec in a pedal. It is very small and does this one job with great aplomb. If you are a fan of the work of David Gilmour, you know the sound of the Echorec. It's not a tape delay, it is a rotating magnetic drum with four equally spaced playback heads. What makes the Echorec special is that you can activate any combination of the playback heads, and the four simple buttons on the Boonar make this a complete treat. This was one of my complaints with the Catalinbread. I also note, that in my opinion, the Boonar just sounds better. It is more expensive to be sure, but for glassy clean tones with just the right magnetic drum delay, there is nothing else that I have tried in depth like this device.

You might be wondering what all the fuss is about a device designed to sound like a drum based echo device with four fixed playback heads that first showed up in the late 50s. Partly it is the idea of renewing a vintage sound, partly it’s the desire to emulate the sounds of artists that we like, and partly it’s the reality that a genuine Echorec sounds like nothing else.

The Boonar does a great job of being an Echorec.  There are four “playback heads”, buttons really that you can turn off or on.  The delay between heads is always consistent, whatever delay you set, is the same separation between heads.  Whichever heads you activate, create echoes that are governed by the global settings, so you can get repeat patterns really not available on a different type device and certainly not with the high level of simplicity.

The controls are powerful but still simple to use. There is documentation included, but I really liked that I could plug the device in and get good sounds without having to traverse the docs.

Across the top you have a volume knob, to control, you know, the volume. Next up is a tone control, handy because the nature of a drum is that it can lose a bit of high end. You have more control with this. Then there is a level indicator because the Boonar has a preamp and you will probably want to know when it is clipping. Then there is the Swell knob which controls the modulation of the echos. Finally there is the Drum speed, basically a control on the rotation speed of the virtual drum. Think of this as the delay control. Each of the playback heads is an illuminated push button. Push to turn the playback head on or off. Simple as can be. There are two foot switches, the left most used to configure your swell or repeats setting and the right one to turn the effect on or off. There's a small knob on the top that lets you set the age of the drum. This gives you some very nice textural control, similar to the wow and flutter controls on the better tape echo simulators. On the right side is a small control to allow you to manipulate the input impedance to better match the pickups in use from 100 kOhm to 1 mOhm.

Power requirements are 9V minimum, but you can use a supply up to 15v. The input power is converted internally to 24v.

I have tried several different Echorec effects. In my opinion, the Boonar kills all the others. Yes it is more expensive and worth every cent. I live in Canada and sourced my Boonar from Electric Mojo Guitars, the company that I use for all my boutique pedals. I highly recommend them.

Review : YOMI from Frost Giant Electronics

Treble Boosters. You hear about these critters. You hear that if you like Brian May or Tony Iommi or Rory Gallagher or Ritchie Blackmore or Eric Clapton, you MUST have one.

Sure you can go online and search for an original Dallas Rangemaster for hundreds of dollars. Or you can get a new build of one from The British Pedal Company and my buddy Charles at electricmojoguitars.com. Or you could do what I did and take the advice of my friend Chris Spano at The Arts Music Store and hunt yourself down a YOMI from Frost Giant Electronics.

Chris told me about the YOMI when he asked that I do a review of The Mountain. I had been asking about fuzz and while there are folks who say that The Mountain, which is based on the ProCo RAT is not a fuzz, Dan Steinhardt over at That Pedal Show says that it is a fuzz. Be that as it may, Chris mentioned that Frost Giant did their own treble booster and that he grabbed the only one that came through the door and it never saw space on the retail counter. I checked and not only were there none in stock, the unit did not appear on the website. I went over to Frost Giant and their site said out of stock. Ru ro Shaggy. Over to Reverb and I found that the nice people at Axe and You Shall Receive (cool name huh?) in Brantford Ontario had two in stock.

Mine arrived quickly and while the version on the Frost Giant web site is black on light blue, I was fortunate to get one of the limited edition red on gold models as seen in the top image.

Documentation is like most Frost Giant Electronics products, meaning that it is non-existent. The YOMI has a knob marked Boost, an on/off stomp switch and a three way toggle that offers three different EQ options.

I was already set up for independent pedal tests with my silver Marshall 2550 into a silver 4x12. I had configured the clean channel to be super clean, even with hot pickups, and the ultra gain channel to sound like an overdriven Marshall, with Marshall style harmonic distortion but not fuzzy. I had the simple Marshall channel switcher on the floor and the YOMI on a stool in front of me to simplify tweaking. I ran direct from the guitar into the brand new Peterson StroboStomp tuner (review is coming on it), then to the YOMI and to the Marshall. The TC Electronics G Major that lives in the effects loop was completely bypassed. I checked the tone with an without the tuner and could hear no difference. All cables were Ernie Balls. About as generic as possible.

The first guitar that I used was my old Explorer. It's not a Korina body (sob) but it is solid mahogany and has nice heft. Like my Flying V, I find the factory pickups are a bit hotter than those in my Les Pauls and thought, hey why not. The Explorer sounds lovely clean, much as you would expect. Kicking in the YOMI in the clean channel and adjusting the boost brings a really nice bright distortion. Clicking through the three EQ settings you work with a three different levels of bass cut. I liked the top setting best which had the least cut. Definitely very playable and nice rich distortion. Wrong pickups for the Queen sound. Kick in the Marshall ultra gain channel without the YOMI and ah yes, there is Mr. Marshall. But add the YOMI and WOW! There's the sustain for days that was missing and while it sounds initially like you have lost some low end, I realized that I was getting a much more open top end than without the YOMI and pleasant feedback was readily available.

I love the sound. I will try a noise gate between the YOMI and the amp when I get around to it to isolate some of the other guitar noises when I am in glorius feedback territory, but I am not suggesting that this is necessary. You do want to play loud, which sounds wonderful but probably not your best choice at 2 in the morning. I was lighting things up between 4pm and 6pm so if I was annoying the neighbours, they had the good grace not to say anything.

I next moved on to my SG. It's a cherry model in the '63 style, albeit this '63 model as advertised from Gibson came from the time when Gibson couldn't remember that real '63s had the small headstock. So it has the large headstock. It's also got relatively low output humbuckers and while I have had it a long time, it's not a guitar that I go to very often. I had tried it with the Frost Giant SOMA (different review) and hated the sound. With the YOMI set to the top EQ and boost around 1 o'clock in the ultra gain channel it was quite nice. Not as quick to go to feedback as the Explorer but I expected that. Still going to change those pickups and I suspect that at the time, Gibson was using gum wrappers for caps and toilet roll for pots. There's no such thing as a vintage Gibson from the 70's or 80's that did not come out of the Custom Shop. But I digress...

Third guitar for the test was my red Suhr Strat, or as it is correctly known, the Suhr Standard Plus. This is a SSH configuration using Suhr's proven SSCII hum cancellation circuit. Mine is a rich red, a colour no longer listed. Which is good for me because it's freaking lovely. I love Suhr guitars, they are just so perfect right out of the box. I have this one and a custom shop Modern that my friend Andrew Lai down at Cosmo Music got built for me about ten years ago. Anyhow, the Suhr sounds great on its own, and although it is a humbucker in the bridge position, does not get all thickened up. I found it a bit too bright with the YOMI into the clean channel, but into the ultra gain channel on the Marshall with the Boost backed off and the EQ switch in the middle position it was really singing with any of the pickup configurations. I have found some pedals only work well with humbuckers while others only work well with single coils. Good to know that the YOMI handles single coils very well.

Obviously there is a lot more to do with the pedal. I want to put it into the pedal rig for my AC30 and try pushing P90s or P100s through it or one of the PRS guitars with the coils tapped. I've got a couple of very old CE bolt neck models that have the old five way rotary switch that sound awesome.

I had seen Mick and Dan on That Pedal Show covering treble boosters and while they did not cover the YOMI, I thought it was interesting that Mick concluded that if you run into a Marshall stack, a treble booster should be on your board. Brian May uses the Red Special into AC30s, and Tony Iommi played SGs into Laneys. BTW did you know that Mr. Laney was in a band before building amps? It was called the Band of Joy and included two other fellows who became rather famous, a Mr. Robert Plant and a Mr. John Bonham.

Thanks for reading and until next time, play on!