SIB Nick Nitro

Takes a little tweaking and reading, but then you go "Oh...I get it!" Very cool little machine here, but not for the latency minded plug-and-go types. Twist those knobs, that's what they are there for!

Depends on your point of view here! If you like Z-Vex, you will like this. Enough said? It's for the alternative minded crowd.

Freaking tank construction, never had an issue yet! Would not want this to fall off the amp and land on my toes, youch.

No idea, never tried.

Very cool for the entrepreneur of tonal exploration, for those who go boldly where no gear head has gone before. Purple haze o mania to squealers delight. Can you dig it?

Easy to use. Two knobs and a switch for each of the two effects.

Used mostly with a Telecaster through a Peavey Classic. When it worked, I could get beautiful fuzz tones from it; even "clean" psych-pop style fuzz. The octave was a bit extreme for me. With single note lines it cut through, but any more than one note at a time was just a trebley mess. I've never used another octave before, so maybe that's what it's supposed to do. The 6 rating is averaging the 10 for the fuzz and 2 for the octave.

It seems very solid, but the octave function just up and quit in a matter of weeks. This was with little use and no gigging or band rehearsals. I didn't worry about that because I didn't like the octave. However, after less than three years, the fuzz has deteriorated from a beautiful and dynamic effect to an electronic squall to a weak buzz. The volume knob now makes only a marginal difference, and the fuzz knob doesn't do anything. It's not even good for noise because of a drastic volume drop at lower pitches.

Haven't figured out yet how to get in touch with them.

I went from praising this thing through the roof to replacing it with the pedal I bought it to replace. It does look nice, though.

Very easy to use out of the box. Two footswtitches for each side, the fuzz and the octave, with two volume knobs and one tone knob. Pretty self explanatory.

I use this pedal with deluxe strat and a fender deluxe reverb and an orange tiny terror. I get crazy fuzz on the orange tiny and the fender deluxe reverb can be driven to insane fuzz levels as well. The Nitro is very quiet (no hiss or hum) and sounds great in bypass mode. I put a maxon od830 OD in front of this pedal as boost and, man, its fuzz heaven. As for the octave, its very natural sounding and definately better than clangy sounding fulltone octafuzz. I also have a voodoo labs proctavia, but I prefer the nitro because it has more fuzzy crunch.

Had it for a few months now and 0 problems so far.

Hopefully I won't have to deal with SIB, but from what I've read its hard to contact them.

I've been playing blues and classic rock for 7 years now and I've also been through a fair number of fuzzes. The only fuzz pedal I like better, out of the one's i own, is the Zvex octane. However, I actually end up using the SIB more, simply because it rocks and is very versatile. I can use fuzz and octave seperately or together. Another major plus is that I don't ever have to disconnect the pedal since it's DC negative tipped, unlike the AC ZVEX.

Very easy, just plug in and go. Good clean pedal with not much noise. The switches are as obvois as it gets.

Great sound quality for recording purposes - it produces loads of fuzz with very little noise. Unfortunately, the pedal has what feels like a bult in compressor - the volume only gtes up to a certain volume and then the limiting kicks in, and your can't play louder than that nomatter what you do. The limiter really screws you up becuase when you start hitting chords, it gets exceeded and crackles and sounds awful. However, for single note solos, its creamy and very pleasant. With chords though it gets oveloaded and can't handle it all and totally sucks. I battled with it for months and was not able to use it live becase of this problem. It's always either way too loud ot way too quiet. Becase totally usless after a while, and I sold it on e-bay for half of what I baught it for. So, I would stay away from this pedal, unless you just want creamy fuzz for single note solos in a studio setting. The octave setting was virtually unusable as weel cause it was too loud and searing, and was just painful to listen to.

Reliabiliy was not a prblem, but the first one that I got in the mail was broken, and they sent me a replacement. However I never had any problems with the replacement one, it seemed solid and switches worked great. I only had it for 6 months before I got rid of it though.

don't know

Usable in some situations, but horrible for live use. I would never buy it if I knew that it had this limiter of volume, and it took me a while while to figure out what was going on. Wasted a loy of my time, and made me look like a reatrd on stage more than once. So, crappy in my opinion.

dials are labeled, and its really up to you. The thing here is, its your pedal your sound - of course your going to experiment.
The good thing is the dials do what they say on the label, so its a
logical layout.

hello,.,., hello. I use this mostly as an octave and fuzz for my bass and keyboard, rich and raw with being too :velcro tearing: in the highs.
i havnt used it for the guitar but for Bass its seriously heavy. Really good for RATM and Audioslave kinds of lines.

erm,.,.,. I give this death, and its still going strong

never had to deal with them

excellent, raw and ballsy for bass and making the low end really vicious, a great fuzz tone with loads of tonal variety,

I'd say that it's a lot harder than you'd think to get a good sound out of it, because there's a good deal of fiddling to be done with the octave portion to remove that gated farting that it's so fond of.

The sound quality, once you've tweaked it is more than acceptable. It goes from smooth, old school type fuzz, to crazy octave upping madness. It responds beautifully to the volume and tone knobs on the guitar.

It seems to be geared more towards single coils, as humbuckers are even more gatey.

Well, it looks like a ten, but if you pop the back cover you may notice that EVERYTHING (pots, jacks, switches, etc) is mounted directly to the PCB. If the nut on the switch comes loose, and you stomp on this pedal, it'll be COMPLETELY buggered. Broken PCBs are bad beats. If I hada backup, I'd back it up. Until then, I'll just check the switches and be careful.

Not contacted them, not going to.

I play blues, rock and both at once. This pedal is definately a match for me, but I'm a tad concerned about the reliability. If it were stolen, I'd get a different fuzz, because while I love the sound, it needs to be higher build quality.

Seven, because it sounds capital, but reeks of fragility.

Easy peasy. Two knobs for the fuzz two for the octave. One LED placement which is green with ocatave and red with fuzz and red & green with both. groovy! Plug in and go.

Clean and clear. I've been playing loud and fast for around 20 years now so my ears may not be that good anymore, but this thing sounds quiet to me.
I don't particularly want to get in to gear wank as it bores me. Suffice to say i use a lot of stomp boxes on my board and this is a go to to solo with or to add a bit of distiction.
It's also cool to have good fuzz and octave together or seperate in one box. Saves space.

Seems solid enough. I always gig without a back-up, makes life more interesting.

Don't know for sure, I've never used them.

I play in a postpunkaltfolkaltcountryrock70'sfunk band.This pedal works well for bits in most of our songs.

yeah its easy like 99% of stompboxes.

this pedal has a fatal flaw... lack of volume/ability to cut through. The fuzz side of the pedal sounds great when your playing in your bedroom or whatever, but as soon as you gig with it you will realise that there is a serious lack of boost unless you have the octave side on as well. Other than this it sounds awesome... very quiet on the noise front and the volume knob clean up technique will give you a truly beautiful tone, its just a shame the pedal is unusable.

only had it for two weeks, seems to be built very well though

its cheap, so get it for a try out, it may work with your particular rig, its definately voiced for the fender side of the fence... otherwise I would steer clear.

Very simple ease of use... It's a stomp box.

The only thing I wish it had was a manual (For manual's sake) and maybe an octave control...even though the 'tone' control seems to effect both the tone of the fuzz and the tone of the octave.

Oh, and it's analog.

I tried this thing through a variety of amps/guitars including a Dr.Z Route 66, a Fender Bassman, a Vox AD60VT, and a Mesa Booggie Dual Rec. For guitars I used my trusty 72' Tele Custom reissue, a Goth Epi SG, and my custom Gibson ES335 (Burstbucker3 in neck, 500t in bridge, with a fishman powerbridge for pizeo).

My favorite setup was definatly the Tele Custom with t he Mesa. Second fav was the 335 with the Route 66. I found that with the mesa it just gave me such a fat and unforgiving fuzz (unforgiving in a good way!) that just made it sound great! Using the bridge pickup too, and usually I hate my tele through my Mesa! (unless I use the seymore pickup booster). When used with the route66 it gave me this great vintage vibe that spawned many 'jimi hendrix like riffs.

However, when I engaged the octave, I was very disapointed. I personally feel as if SIB spent all their time on the fuzz, and just through the octave in as an after thought. To be completly honest, the octave effect on the Danelectro French Toast seemed a lot fuller and cleaner sounding.

The bypass circutry also seemed to not be up to snuff. I found the pedal a little noisy when sitting passive, even when using my 335. It also seems to change the tone a lot mroe than usual. If someone would to take out some of the tone sucking capacitators it would be a much better pedal. (I did this with my TR2 and many of my other effects and it just makes them sound so much richer!)

Even with all these problems I still give it a 7. Why? Because that fuzz is just so heavenly!

I'd sa it's pretty reliable. It is a new pedal that I have never seen before until it arrived at my local shop (they just came in last week) and so far it seems to hold up pretty good.

Built like a tank too...would say its tougher design than MXR pedals.

never delt with SIB.

I play a variety of styles from blues, funk, rock, ska, punk, and do a lot of experimental synth/electronic work too. I personally think I could get the most out of this pedal for some 70's covers, and maybe my experimental stuff...but thats about it.

Stollen or lost...wouldn't worry about replacing it.

Did I compare it to other products? No, I just wanted to try it out!

Anything I wish it had? better tone.



I've tried the other SIB pedals in their new line as well (Mr. Echo, Mr. Fazedelic, etc.) and I must say my favorite was the Mr. Echo. But they all seem to have the same noisy and tone sucking problem. Maybe it was just the batch, maybe I'm just too damn picky, or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. But I don't think I'll be buying one in the future.

It has tone and volume for both effects-kind of a no brainer!

Like the previous reviewer, I have tried many fuzz, octave, and combination (ocatve/fuzz)pedals. This is the most smooth and expressive version I have found. Go for retro or modern sounds is no problem with this bad boy.

I purchased mine off of e-Bay and it is the older black model. I used it with no hassles for about two or three months when both of the switches started to die on me. They went out at seperate times.(I started to use it just as an Octave pedal when that switch went, this should give you an idea as to how good the sounds out of both effects are.)I had the switches replaced and was ready to go with under $15 out of my pocket. I noticed, at least in the older model, that the switches were cheap with plastic washers! From the pictures I have viewed of the newer yellow version that this has been changed. To be fair, I don't know how much abuse the previous owner put on this pedal(the outside still looks new)so improper stomping could have been the issue.

Try to call or email the spiritual diety of your choice before tring to email or call these guys. Their web site has pretty pictures and info on their stuff but no contact info. One must find one of SIB's distributors to contact the company. This is my only issue with the company-accessability! I was hoping to replace the switch with two purchased from them but, oh what a headache to figure that out. I went online and learned about DPDT switches to solve this problem.

I have been playing for over 13 years and own gear that has been tailored to me. I use a custom made strat and Les Paul that has been modified. My effects are a Boss PQ-4, Nick Nitro, Scott's Crispy Cream, Dunlop Tremelo or Dunlop Rotovibe, Digitech Whammy, Digitech PDS 2000 and an Eye of God pedal. My amps are both BMF, Randall made tube heads,amps that have a strong clean tube tone. I would consider the type of music I play to be rock. This pedal is a match for any retro or modern tones I am looking to use. I would definitely purchase this again if it were stolen. The price for a new one is worth it for the octave effect alone!!!! Again, my only gripe was with the switches. To simplify the whole review-this is a MUSICIAL pedal!!! Nuff said.

Extremely easy to use. there are two fuzzes or stages. one side gives a creamy fuzz that cleans up well with the volume on your guitar, the other is an octave effect. the octave effect can be used without fuzz so you can play clean octave sounds if you want. I didn't get a manual for it, but I don't think you would need one.

I have gone through many fuzzes, as I'm sure most guitarists do and I really like this one. It's not as biting as the Mosrite fuzz but can still provide some nice retro fuzzes if you wish. It is very responsive to the dynamics of your playing and the volume of the guitar, which give the pedal a lot of versatility. The octave part sounds less 'mechanical' than the octafuzz I think, a bit smoother, although playing on the neck pickup at the 12th fret yields some really nice, magical tones - a la hendrix - can also get some weird metallic alien sounds too. gotta love that

I play a strat through a nick nitro into fulldrive into a Boss DD-20. The nick is true bypass and sounds great. I know, however, that fuzz is a very personal thing so you may want to try it out first to see if it's for you, but for the price there's no need to wait.

This thing is built like a tank, true bypass, quality jacks. it really feels substantial, although it doesn't take up much space on the pedal board. I also like the fact that all the jacks are at the top of the pedal instead of the sides. I just don't get why there are so many pedals with jacks on the sides, it really takes up so much more real estate on the pedal board this way. I feel like I can totally depend on this, and would not need a backup at a gig.

haven't dealt with them. their website isn't very helpful

overall, this is a great pedal at a great price that is quality made and very versatile. I have tried the octafuzz, the ultimate octave and the UFO by homebrew, all nice pedals no doubt, but all have some fatal flaw, like a dramatic pause when switching on the octave section, or the inability to to play octave without the fuzz on, the nick nitro, in my mind, solves all these problems.