Lovetone Brown Source/Big Cheese

Lovetone brownsource, well what can I say, other than underwhelmed. (is that a word?) I digress...I have owned, and SOLD 3 lovetone pedals to date and this was by far the worst of them. Lovetone seems to think that people want more than the brain can process and it makes me a bit frustrated. I bought a group of Lovetone pedals for my board for a what I thought was a high price at the time (it wasn't) and they went out of business, suddenly they sky-rocketed overnight in price. It really surprises me when this happens. Sort of like an artist dying. When I first tried it out, it sounded a bit thin and raspy, sort of like an old transistor amp gone bonkers eventually it replaced as it took up too much real estate on my board and I wasn't using it all that much. I put it back in the box and forgotten about it. After they had gone out of business, and seeing the prices they were going for, I thought perhaps I was missing out on something, and I A/B'd with several pedals, an Analogman KOT, Keeley modded blues driver, and Siegmund Missing link. In comparison to the others, they all sent the amp in a nice simulated tube distortion, and I must qualify this here, the Siegmund pedal actully uses a real tube, so I think it had sort of an unfair advantage over the others. IN COntrast, the most noticable thing was that the Lovetone pedal seemed to have a much thinner sound than the rest, lacking in bass and lower frequebcy. SOrt of like cutting the edge foam on your speakers. I tried it with several different amps, and got the best results putting it in front of a non-tube amp, much to my surprise!

The majority of my equipment was produced in the 60-70's. I have a Marshall 18 watt combo, Balls 2x12, Siegmund MB head, a Hughes & Kettner transistor amp, and a 1970 Marshall 50 watt. I am a session guitarist and have to keep up with technology and some of it is quite nice, So I try a lot of things out Guitars include a Hamer Phantom, Anderson Hollow T, and Les Paul 57 reissue, and Fender Tele. THe effect was not noisy at all, as stated above the darn thing didn't work with anything but my Hughes and Kettner, and it sort of did it an injustice. I found I could dial in a nicer sound on this amp and it wasn't all that different than the master volume on the stock set up.

I like the construction overall and the nice way it opens up. The damn thing eats batteries like a pig in a trough though. I would use it live if it sounded good, but it didn't so I could not find a place for it. The studio is a pretty safe place so I used it there instead. Once on a random look on Ebay I saw how much these things were going for so I reboxed it, sold it, and pocketed a nice profit...ha Thanks

Company went out of business awhile back never used them. If there was something that could be done about it I would do it though, (to make it sound more full and have harmonics)

Well like I said before, I was nto all that impressed in the first place, and put it away thinking I was missing out on something. I also kept it as a reference too. Good thing I did because once I tried it again, it turns out the only one who missed the mark was Lovetone. I wish it had some way to fatten up the sound and have more lower frequency come through. Maybe using Quality NOS components might help them out. I liked the cool colors though and the size was sort of neat, because it is pretty unmistakable. It ranked a dead last in my informal compare/contrast and the only thing good about it was the crazy price I sold it for. Would never replace, even if the company reopened, they must have gone out of business for some reason. Well good luck to you saps buying these things up, hah ha ha ha!

this is an addendum to my earlier review. both of the Fulltone 3pdt switches crapped out on me within 4 months of each other and they weren't getting stomped on a lot either, i really don't punish my equipment. Fulltone crow about how good their stuff is but i will never buy any Fulltone gear after seeing what garbage these switches are, and expensive too.

great sounding pedal which keeps flaking out on me.

two pedals in one box, big cheese fuzz and brown source overdrive wired in serial, two sets of ins/outs. how difficult is it to understand a stomp box? unless you have a migraine maybe.

using this with a Mesa Boogie DC5, Shergold meteor and Gibson firebird, various effects, Ross phaser, Foxrox tzf flanger, Boss dimension c, Lovetone doppelganger & wobulator, Coloursound wah, Rocktron surf tremolo, small stone, Hughes & Kettner rotosphere, Morley vol phaser, and some more phasers - another small stone, MXR phase 100, Sound City phaser, it gets ridiculous, i like phasers. this pedal has amazing sounds coming out of it, the big cheese is the most seriously compressed squeezed out distortion imaginable but it's very quiet in operation, there's none of the chaotic racket that you usually get with fuzz pedals. sounds much better with a battery, it starts to do this amazing octave below thing when the battery starts getting tired, play a note and the tone jumps down an octave and back up again it realy sounds amazing - like a child with a sore throat or something, i've not heard anything else like it. the brown source is the other end of the scale, gritty, crackly overdrive, really designed to go in front of an amp, sounds pretty lousy on its own -very crackly and raw, it's no good if you want a distortion going straight into a mixing desk but it squirts its special magic into a valve amp, really gives the sound more definition or something, i don't quite know how to explain it. it gives the overdrive of the amp extra attitude without colouring the sound of the guitar at all. i find that it cleans up quite suddenly when the vol knob is turned down, perhaps this pedal would not be so useful with the low output pick ups of a strat but it works a treat with high output humbuckers. there is a trim pot inside this pedal so maybe it's possible to adjust the responsiveness of the pedal but whether that's the fuzz part or the overdrive i don't know and i don't want to mess about with it for fear of losing its peculiar characteristics. i give it a 10 for sound quality but it isn't a solution for every situation where overdrive is needed.

i have had some problems with lovetone switches not working when engaged or just breaking down. i had to find a replacement Fulltone 3pdt switch which i had to get from the US, these are expensive switches and there is no alternative that i could find in the UK -at least that i could find via google. so i opened up the old switch and this tiny rubber cap thing on the end of a tiny spring had just snapped in half. Fulltone rave on about the quality of their switches and stuff but this just was a piece of junk, i'm not heavy on my pedals and this was down to faulty fulltone parts. also the chickenhead knobs developed serious crackling after a while, i contacted Vlad via e mail and he said it was faulty and i'd have to send it back to him at a cost of about #40 or thereabouts, i didn't think this was the case and declined the offer, when i had my local tech put the new switch in for me he had got rid of the crackle problem with the chickenhead knobs but he never even mentioned anything about finding a fault with them, i think he just cleaned them out. i would gig with it if i needed to but i'd have to guard it because this particular Lovetone incarnation is particularly rare, probably the rarest, i think there were only about 100 made, mine is no cs0052.

Vlad's a nice guy. support was great when Lovetone was fully operational but it's not anymore. i think he's got better things to do with his time these days. i tried e mailing Vlad and asking him about where i could get suitable switches in the UK but he didn't reply. i also requested a circuit diagram as it will be a bugger to find out what chips are used in this thing if it ever dies but he didn't reply to that e mail either. he will usually reply when you want to buy a pedal from him though. coincidence perhaps.

if this pedal was stolen i would track down both pedals seperately, the chances of finding another one of these are virtually nil. i have never seen one on e bay. i love the way it looks, the colours of it - red and purple with red and yellow leds. i hated the faults which developed but they're relatively easy to fix. i'm glad i bought this pedal despite the trouble and hope i never have such a mad moment that i go and sell it, the fuzz in this thing can sound incredible.

Overdrive and Fuzz in one box. Contains all the Controls of the single pedals and two additional LED indicators. You can wire them serial (preset) but I never do so, since the tone gets really mushy then. The BS section has a very musical drive knob that happens to slightly change the timbre of the distortion when you crank it up - very good blend of sensitivity and range. The BC section is mostly affected by the preset EQ voicings and the other knobs can be used to tailor that sounds. After all dialing in the desired tone takes two seconds if you get the thing to know a bit.

My setup includes several solid body guitars (PRS, Fender, Ibanez, MusicMan) into several stompboxes that contains (depending on the show/purpose) a Wah, the Lovetone BS/BC, a Lovetone Doppelganger (which I never turn off), and a Tremolo. For live I solely use a rackmount MesaBoogie MkIV that runs into closed back cabinets.
The BrownSource is now my main overdrive source (Since I got the BS I use the "orange" channel of the amp rather seldom). It sounds smooth and most of all HUGE. Maybe a bit dirty (that is not as bassy and Eq'ed like a Fulltone Fulldrive, say), but thats what rock is about, huh? It really screams whith a Wah in front (this is extremely important for me) and it adds a hint of mudd when turned down. I never use the Eq, though.
The Big Cheese is a real Fuzz pedal that is however, quite versatile. The classic midrangey sound is good for soloing, especialy whith intervals, since you can really hear the difference frequency tone DEEP below. The scooped mids setting is great for metal riffs, if you are that kind. The Cheese setting is good for funky farting, but on solos it dies away to fast and for chords it is to dirty. All in all the tone has a slight nasal quality that you can har on all settings. It cannot be taken out or changed; its always there. So it IS a Fuzz box and not a do-it-all distortion.
Both distortions a extremely quite and perfectly suitale for recording. Make shure, however, to take out some bass and high frequencies since the unit produces a quite broad frequency-blast. The whole thing gives you almost every distortion you could possibly desire, especially in conjunction with the Master-EQ of the MesaBoogie.

I have it for a year now. Never tried it whith batteries, so I dont know if it could possibly die in the mid of a gig because it would suck so much juice. The housing of the box - like all LoveTone gear - seems a bit odd at first but seems to work quite well. My only complaint regards the status LED of the BS which flickers from time to time - I did not try to reach Vlad because of that.

Vlad has always been a helpful guy. However, having no local dealer (you deal always directly with Lovetone via email and snailmail) is not very convenient. So its only a seven.

I play almost every kinda music and I happen to need a distortion on more than 50% of it. This pedal replaced an old boss overdrive, a mxr pedal, a TS9 and a dunlop distortion box. It also replaced the need for a good preamp-distortion on my guitar amp - onlee the spongy response of power section overdrive still needs to be combined with this pedal. You get the most out of this pedal when fed into a clean or a slightly cooking, but in any case LOUD tube amp. Its perfect for almost any kind of overdrive flavour - onlee some extreemes are not covered. However - it still is onlee distortion, is it? So why has this thing to be so darn expensive?

It is almost impossible to get a bad sound out of this pedal. Since the Brown Source and the Big Cheese are both available, it is possible to pull 3 distinct tones once you're dialed in...straight up Source, straight up Cheese...or Source and Cheese combined. Both pedals have all of their functions, making it even more versatile than I had anticipated. The addition of the led on th Source is very helpful...it's easy to forget that bad boy is on!!!

Both sides have their own switch...it's as easy as stomping gets.

Imagine having both the Brown Source, and the Big Cheese in one pedal...YOU'RE THERE!!!!
In my experience, the OD does tend to color my sound more than my Budda Phatman, but that's not always a bad thing..

I use this pedal with my Tele jr., Gretsch Blue Pearl Jet, and my ES-335...the tone of each guitar ultimately cuts through....there's really no complaining about the coloration...it's so righteous! A bit noisy with the P-90's...but everything is noisy with P-90's...major feedback with the 335...but I like that for certain songs.

I use all of my effects with my main rig...a Dr. Z Route 66 through a Top Hat 2x12 w/ a celestion 30, and a Naylor 50. I also record them direct...which leaves my peers in awe ( how the hell did you get that sound??? )

Kills Batteries Dead...

I have a standalone Cheese as a backup. But you dont need a backup with Lovetone effects...they just dont die.

Vlad is a gentleman and a scholar. No one provides better support. He even called me to let me know that supplies were way low...which was cool, because I had a chance to scramble for the $$$ to get it.

I play melodic rock...sometimes psychedellic...bluesy...man I really cannot describe it :). I have been playing for 4 long years. If it were stolen or lost, I'd be jammed in a big way....Lovetone is on a semi-permanent vacation. You wouldnt want to be near me if this one gets stolen or lost....seriously hostile....big cans of whoopass! I love it's versatility, and the fact that no one can get as many sounds as I can with this one pedal...and my rig. I watch other guitarists shed tears over my tone when I play out. I cannot say that I compared it to other products...because you would have to compare it to 2...maybe even 3 pedals to be fair. I wish it had an external pedal jack like other Lovetone pedals...I'd love to be able to do gain swells :). It actually inspires creativity...just like any great piece of gear. As far as it's cost...it will hurt your feelings...but you just cannot touch anything that even comes close to what this baby can do...without it!