Pharaoh Amplifiers Class-A Boost

Very Easy - Volume, Tone, Contour- which is gain or overdrive
Tone is actually a high end roll off.

Amazing tube amp tone. It does not sound like a pedal. Very organic, natural sound that lets the sound of your guitar shine through. It can actually thicken your sound in a way that's very tube-like. I would call this a Dumble amp type of sound.

Built like a tank. Very reliable.

Never had to use.

This is a very high quality rare boutique pedal that is true bypass and analog. I've been a pro player for over 30 years and this pedal thee best overdrive I've played through so far.

5 years and lots of stomping later, the Class-A still rocks.

This is an update to the review I posted for this pedal in 2004. Sometime after I posted the review mentioning my frustration with the Tone Engine, I received the Tone Engine and it had been repaired. While it was frustrating having that pedal out of commission for so long, Matt did a good job fixing it back up.

Years later, the Class-A Boost is still going strong, and it's been one of a select few vital and necessary tools that have furthered my enjoyment for playing electric guitar. If it were lost or stolen, I'd purchase a replacement.

Not much to say, push the button and ajust the tone...

I play a ES-335 and a Les Paul with a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue. I bought this pedal because I needed a clean boost for soloing. I was impressed by the reviews here saying it does not affect your tone. Some reviewers said it gives some fuzz to your sound and I should have paid more attention to this because when I tried the pedal at home I found I was not able to get a pure clean boost, there was always this subtle cheap fuzzy sound in my tone. The gain is probably to high for humbuckers.

Having bought the pedal used, there was no way I could return it. I checked the circuit, but there was nothing wrong. The problem is in the design. I removed the circuit and built a new circuit using an OpAmp and an old schematic from Radio Shack (!) with a gain control and a tone. Now I have a perfectly clean boost with a pure tone. I rationalize thinking at least I paid for a good casing and hardware, everything is not lost, otherwise I would have thrown away the pedal...

It looks very solid. Some reviewers had problems with the switch. I had the same problem with a Mad Professor pedal and I had to change the foot switch. it is a common problem but mine seems OK.

No opinion.

Naming this pedal a "Class-A Boost" could suggest it is a very good pedal. In fact, all booster schematics I have seen are working in Class A. No need for a push-pull design with such a low signal! This is pure marketing (why not?).

No big research in the design, a single NPN Transistor amplification stage, the simplest circuit you could find. It could have been a basic DIY project for beginners. Put this in a nice case, sign it and call it "boutique" and there you are...

The good thing with this pedal is the price. Of course, making it by hand takes time and it must be paid. But is the end result worth the price?

This IS a very easy pedal to get working. Three knobs (volume, tone, and contour), each independant and effective. The tone is simply a high roll-off, so when dimed the signal is uneffected.

I ADORE THE SOUND OF THIS PEDAL. I sometimes wonder how I ever survived without it. It fattens up the signal, whereas other boosters I've had over the years (Xotic RC, ZVex SHO, MXR Microamp) thinned it out or brightened the sound. The countour adds a kind of gain, sag and roundness that is tough to describe. It just makes things bigger.

Okay, I have to echo the problems the reviewer below mentioned. The switch was either killing the sound or cutting it down. This happened a couple times at gigs and made me upset. I opened the pedal up, and switched out the X-wing DPDT with a Carling and I haven't had a problem since.

Here's my beef. I fixed the switch myself because of a problem I had with Pharaoh regarding a Tone Engine booster I bought. Long story short, that pedal was never fixed, returned to me or refunded, so I'm out the money I spent. So I had real apprehensions about sending him the C.A.B. for repair.

To be fair, Matt did reply to an email before a purchase to say he thought the Class A Boost would be better for what I do...and he was right. But after the Tone Engine started having problems, it was like he drank the invisible juice. It's a shame, because I really like the C.A.B. and I was interested in other pedals he's made - but after the experience I had with the TE, I'll take a pass.

I like the Class A Boost, even after the trouble with the switch. I know it's contrary to most of what has been written, but I think Pharaoh's customer service leaves something to be desired. I would eat these words if the matter were rectified, but the experience so far has left a sour taste in my mouth.

Silver lining is that the C.A.B. is a really good pedal. I just wish it wouldn't remind me of the bath I took on the other pedal every time I see it on my board at rehearsal or shows.

Very easy to get a good sound out of it, some tweaking to get YOUR sound. Volume, Tone, and Contour all seem to work together.

I LOVE THE WAY THIS PEDAL SOUNDS. It just makes you bigger, fatter, fuller. It's tough to turn off, so I forced myself to dial it in really for the single notes just for soloing. You can get it looser and more gritty with the contour. Outstanding.

Okay. First beef with this pedal. The switch went bad during a show, where sometimes it would work, sometimes it would thin the sound out, and sometimes it would cut out alltogether. So I opened it up. I was expecting to find a Carling or Fulltone switch in here, since it is a boutique pedal with true-bypass. Instead, what I saw was a cheap Taiwanese X-wing switch, which on the Small Bear Electronics website is good for prototypes or bedroom gigging. Not the most roadworthy choice here, and since the switch is the thing most likely to go south on a pedal like this, I have to knock some points off here. Also, some cold looking solder joints on the switch and jacks made me a bit nervous.

I've been playing as a pro for a long time. I really like this pedal, but was turned off just a little by the chintzy switch and some cold looking solder joints on the inside. I'll swap the switch out, and touch up the solder joints, and hopefully she'll be good for the long term. It's a pain, but really a small price to pay in terms of time and materials for the sound this pedal gives you.

2 knobs ,volume and contour-nice and simple but effective.

since it has the contour knob there are a lot more ways to use it-turning that knob up makes it sound a bit like the Rangemaster clone i used for a while but it's less honky. with the contour up about halfway and the volume set about unity it does make a moderately set fender tube amp(BF Bassman)sound fuller with a little more mids...nice! using it before another OD is also cool but when i can get loud enough on the amp this will work great by itself especially since it will generate a bit of it's own drive and 'cut' . btw,i use a Tele mostly...

it would be cool to have the tone control pictured on the site but i really don't need it-this definitely has it's own thing going on. boosters really all do the same(basic)thing so it can be tricky deciding which one to go with-try as many as you can and have fun.

I wanted something i could adjust with my feet. That should tell you how simple this pedal is. I have the one knob wonder and when i first got it matt was still using the old big square electric junction boxes. I have since upgraded to the new slim chassis.

This pedal fit a very simple need; a volume boost for solos that would preserve the tone of my amp clean or distorted. And for the most part is does just that. Sometimes with the humbucker in my ES-335 it can put an edge of fuzz when I want a really clean solo sound. Other than that it works perfectly. Combined with my Line 6 DM4 distortion modeler into my old Rolland GA-120 they make a great team. I can dial in whatever distortion I want with the DM-4 and then my Class A boost just makes that same sound louder for my solos. It does also add a nice subtle treble boost while doing it; it just helps the notes stand out a bit better. Very good quality sound, I couldn't see anybody not liking it no matter how they used the pedal.

It is build like a brick outhouse and there isn't much to it but to be honest I did have some problems in the beginning. It just wasn't switching properly and it had to be sent back for repairs, at that time the case update was done as well. I kind of regret switching to the new fancier case, the old beast had some serious character and it got lots of looks and questions. People thought I made it myself! To be fair Matt was very helpfull and fast with the reparis. It has been bulletproff since then and it really gets a workout between gigging and practice. And like I said earlier i adjust the volume with my feet so its gotta be put together well.

Matt is a kick ass dude. He is very helpfull and fast with any stupid questions i had. You can just tell that he is excited about what he does and that is wants nothing more than the player to enjoy using the pedals he makes.

The Class A boos is pretty much the main attraction of my pedalboard. I based my whole effects setup on how it works. The thing thats cool is that some people use it all the time just to colour the sound, some use it to push a tube amp into a smooth overdrive. Its such a simple pedal but its very versitile. Even more so with the optional knobs and switches available. If somebody stole it i would buy a new one the next day and hope i didn't have a gig because i wouldn't know what to do without it.

After owning this pedal for over a year, I'm ready to submit an objective review. Cosmetically, my Class A Boost ("CAB" hereafter) pedal is green with gold metallic sparkle... Functionally, it has the Volume, Contour, and Bright Switch (bass cut/treble upper-mid boost) controls. It would seem easy enough to set up a pedal with three controls, but they are all highly interactive, and can really yield a wide ranges of tones from crystal clean boost (with the contour all the way off and the bright switch off), to what basically sounds like a unique fuzz pedal with the contour all the way up. The bright switch works exactly as Matt describes it to me, which is basically for humbucking pickups to remove some of the extra bass and introduce more treble and upper mids. All controls work well, and it's been fairly easy to dial in the "sweet" sound with my PRS Custom 22 and Dr. Z Carmen Ghia once I got used to the interaction of the controls. I really consider this interaction more of a "pro" than a "con," as this is really a quality I look for in all good stompboxes... Similar interaction when using this pedal is found with your guitars volume and tone controls, as well as picking attack/dynamics. It's very responsive. The pedal did come with a manual explaining some of the interaction between the controls featured on my pedal, and also various applications (using it as a "cut" instead of a boost, where to place it in the signal path, batteries to use, etc.). If a wah pedal or the SHO (ZVex) are the easiest pedals in the world to use where all you have to do is turn them on (that'd be a 10), I give this one an 8. It takes some fiddling, but once you're used to it....

Again, I run the pedal exclusively with my PRS Custom 22 and Dr. Z Carmen Ghia (if you're not yet familiar with this amp and you've been roaming the HC amp forum, what rock have you been living under? It's a 2 EL-84 amp w/ a single volume and tone control, that's it.) through a 1x12 Dr. Z rear-ported cab.

When I bought this pedal, I was not a huge fan of stompboxes. The only other pedal I currently owned at the time is a Z Vex SHO, which was actually the pedal that sparked my interest in stompboxes again. I was hoping to user the CAB as a lead boost for guitar solos, or whenever else I wanted to take my Ghia up to "11" as it says on Matt's website.

This pedal does a really nice boost with the bright switch "ON," the Contour at about the 9 o'clock position just to add a little fuzz-like (think a fuzz on the lowest setting) grit and compression/sustain, along with whatever volume boost you want to dial in. I usually set it just above unity gain, and use it more as a tone shaper. If I use it to feed the Ghia clean, it works well for clean leads with a little fuzz and sparkle around the edges... Use it to feed the Ghia when the it's on the verge of overdrive, and it pushes over into nice singing sustain. It's a very organic and natural sounding pedal, with very good conrol (via contour) over how much fuzz you add to the edges... if you don't want that, simply turn the fuzz control off. There is no mid-hump with the pedal a la a tubescreamer, which is good because the Z amps have plenty of mids on their own.

I'm not really into copying artists tones, and that's why I chose to use a unique pedal that not everyone uses (like a tube screamer). This is a very quality, somewhat unique pedal, which you can customize with your choice of options... If you pick options that are right for you (talk to Matt about this - he was a big help in helping me decide what would be useful for my application), this pedal should do exactly what you want it to. It's more of a pedal for fine-tuning and shaping, rather than drastic-alteration. If you already have a good tone and you want to put a bit of a different "spin" on it at times, this is a good pedal for you.

Also, as Matt says, different batteries yield a different sound in this pedal. I have opted after some experimentation to stick with the Carbon-Zinc batteries that the pedal comes with (OK, not the SAME battery it came with, but the same type... :-) They yield a different tone than Alkaline batteries because they discharge differently... I liked the tone w/ the Carbon batteries better. The same is true when using a 9v power supply... different again. Experiment and see what you like. In this regard, the flexibility of this pedal is really nice because it responds to so many different things you should be able to tinker until it works best for you.

I'd say it's very dependable. I've been using it for over a year with no problems. Just make sure to use fresh batteries. The box seems to be built well. It's the old MXR-style box, which is kind the 2nd version that Matt started using... The original boxes were just that - square boxes... Kinda funky looking, but I can't tell you much more than that.

This is where it gets a little mixed up. See, I spent probably an hour and half total with Matt discussing different options, tones, applications, etc., in order to come up with the pedal that would work perfectly for me. This was very effective, and Matt was very nice, and very helpful.

Recently I placed a phone call AND an e-mail to Matt about my interest in his other pedals, wondering if he sold one that would help me get a really good overdrive/distortion tone at lower volumes for my bands small practice space (even though I prefer to just crank the Ghia, sometimes this just isn't practical). Well, it's been about a week, and I still haven't heard back from Matt. To his defense, it's vacation season, but that's why things like "extended absence" greetings on e-mail and updated answering machine messages were created.

Long story short, I need such a pedal yesterday (figurativly), and Matt probably missed out on selling me another pedal if he had one that he thought would work well for me... I now own a Tonebone Classic instead, and I've got an Everman Fuzzdrive GII on the way. I realize you can't expect this kind of consultation from all people in this industry, but Matt sett this standard for me the first time around. Also, dealing with Dr. Z over the past few years has probably spoiled me in this regard as well, as Mike Zaite's customer support is literally second to NO ONE. If Dr. Z sets the benchmark for perfect customer support, then I'd give Matt an 8 based on recent history (if he contacts me at some point!!!), a 10 based on my previous experience with him, and we'll average that out to an 9... for now. I'm just having fun here - honestly, I don't care if he returns my call/e-mail me or not. If my CAB were ever to die and I couldn't get ahold of him, I'd probably replace it instead with a Keely Java Boost, a Fulltone Fat Boost, a Bad Bob, or one of the other plethora of cool boutique booster pedals that are available nowadays. It's really getting overwhelming to have so many choices!

Honestly, what caught my "eye" with this pedal was that Matt offered custom pedals featuring custom paint jobs and controls specific to user request/need/application. At the time, I was completely disillusioned with effects pedals in general, but thought it'd be cool AND functional to add a booster pedal to my Ghia... So I ordered a green-sparkle/green-led CAB to match my green-tolexed green-jewel lighted Ghia... I know a bit cheesy, but I like the concept. I also like that Matt really helped to tailor this pedal to my needs - a nice lead booster that works well with my Dr. Z amp. This pedal along with the SHO really got me liking using a stomp box or two again... A Z Vex wah probe was added shortly after, followed by a Tonebone Classic and now the Everman on it's way. I don't know if all of these will become a "permanent" part of my rig or not, but it's nice to use them to get different sounds, especially when recording an album (in the middle of recording a demo right now). When it comes to playing live, only the best and most important pieces of gear make the cut, and the CAB makes that cut in that it's become a pretty integral part of my tone, especially leads. Good pedal Matt... Now, RETURN MY CALL. J/K.

you have to do a little bit of noodling to get your sound out of this pedal. I got the 3 knob, volume, contour,and tone model. this model gives you alot of versatility. But with the versatility comes the noodling.

I use a strat & a tele with Van Zandt pickups through reissue 59 Bassman. I currently have a ZVEX SHO, which sounded great with my strat, but shrill with my tele. In comes the versitile class A Boost. I could just about get the SHO sound, probobly could get it exact with some more noodling. But I could dial in alot of warmer, and slightly overdriven sounds as well as the sparkly clean sound. You can also get a model with an extra stomp button for contour. So you can use it as a crystal clear boost, or with a little bit of grit, with the push of a button. Versatile. I like my clean lead sound to have just a touch of grit, to fatten it up, and this pedal does that very well. A very natural sound. Bassman's get a natural breakup with the volume on about 5-6. This pedal allows you to get that natural sounding breakup at any volume. Because if you turn the Bassman up to 5-6 at a club, you'll get beaten about the head(turn the #%@* down). The day after I got it, I had a gig where it really shined. It also sounded good pushing my Keeley modded Bluesdriver.I'm looking above on this page where it says, do you get the sound of any favorite artists, and a sound I was getting was similar to Santana on "willin"(or whatever its called). I dialled in a touch more grit, but it has that same warmth.

Just got it, but it seems very sturdy.

Matt's customer service is really amazing. He e-mailed me back the same day for every dopey question I had. He also will spend as much time on the phone as you need, to answer your questions. He also rushed the pedal out to me so I would have it in time for my gig.

I play anything from revved up old funk tunes,classic rock,blues and country. I've been playing about 25 years(seeing that makes me feel old). If it was lost or stolen I would get another one. I love the warmth and versatility it gets. Sounds extra good with the tele. If you turn the contour up too far(3 0 clock and up) it gets a little thin. But I haven't really played around with that sound much, as I dont want that much overdrive on my clean sound. Its not really the pedals strength. At that point its getting into a medium overdrive pedal territory. I've read that its similar to the Fulltone Fat boost. But its alot cheaper, and again, more versitile, with all the different options you can get. Its strength seems to be as either a pristine boost, or adding a touch of grit to your clean sound to fatten it up. Like a naturally overdriven amp.

This is a simple clean boost that looks and sounds great. This is like a micro amp with true bypass. Looks great in and out. Matt does great work and gives great service. This is the one knob, standard model.

sounds great with strats or les pauls

yup, the work is top notch.

great to deal with, very friendly, prompt responses. i have had a sweet cheetah 2 as well...great distortion pedal.

I play bkues and classic rock. This is a great clean boost. Who needs a sho?