Tech 21 American Woman Overdrive

4-knobs and an internal trimmer makes this pedal very easy to use.

I'm playing Gibsons through a Krank Chadwick. The Chadwick is a bit picky regarding pedals, but this box works very well with it. Like the reviewers below have stated, this pedal truly goes from a clean boost, to slightlt overdriven, to distortion, to Fuzz. I play mostly boutique pedals (Fulltone, Z Vex, and Prescription), and I think that's why I appreciate this pedal, it's quirky. The gate does not bother me. I set the internal trimmer to it's minimum, and adjust the gate knob on top as needed. I turn it to it's minimum if I'm going for Boost, or overdrive, and bring it up to Noon - 2 o'clock for distortion and fuzz. The gate is actually very helpful when playing at high gain settings.

This pedal does not have a mid-hump, so it will not do the fulldrive thing. I have a fulldrive for that. It does not do crazy oscillation, like my Fuzz Factory. I use this mainly for a lead distortion, and love it's endless sustain, no compressor needed. I'm not a Guess Who fan, but it does have that cool lead sound heard on the song "American Woman".

The way I usually have it set, it just sounds right in a band setting. I fiddle around a lot with my Fuzz Factory, and have a hard time cutting through a band mix. The AW cuts through like a warm knife through butter, and it feeds back perfectly, with lots of control.

I hate to give out 10's, but for the money, this box is very cool.

I've gigged with mine for a couple years, and it has never failed me.

I've called Tech 21, and the owner called me back in an hour, great customer service.

If this box was made by Fulltone, or Lovepedal, the guys on the pedal forums would be raving about it, but Tech 21 does not have an elitist following, so it gets largely ignored. I paid $89 for mine used, and that's a bargain for this box.

I'm docking a point because it's not true-bypass. I don't know why Tech 21 is still using buffers. It does not effect my tone in bypass mode (and I'm very picky about buffered pedals), but I still wish it was true-bypass. Get with the program Tech 21!!!

Hard to dial in a good tone. Its a handsome pedal, but thats about it.

This thing farts out and just sounds over processed. I would gladly trade this for a Tube Screamer.

I don't think this pedal was thought out as well as it sould have been.

It is really easy to dial up totally usable sounds, and the tone knob really allows you to get all the tone you want out of your guitat. Pretty straightforward operation.

I'm running the thing in the front end of my dual rectifier, and am using a digital effects loop and I wanted to get a more interesting clean semi-overdrive tone and this is definitely the right pedal for the job. Some people don't like the noise gate and I happen to agree. However, after contacting Tech21, they happily told me how to disable it, so now I couldn't be happier. Some of the reviews of this product are way too damning. If you don't like the gate, find a way around it. If you like the sound out of a battery better, use a f@%^%ing battery, or wire your power in through the battery receptacle. Man up bitches.

No problems yet, and I fully intend to gig with this bad boy.

Great response and very helpful.

This pedal gives you options. If you want sick ammounts of balls out overdrive, this can do that but not to the point where it overly compresses your signal, so you can back off your guitar volume and still get extra tasty cleans and with a little doing you can get rid of that pesky gate, which I don't like.

The sounds this can get are quite nice-it's actually kind of similar to the Doube Drive and Comptortion as far as ridiculous sustain goes...there is a manual but it's not crucial to working the pedal.

The gate thing...even with the internal trimmer adjusted all the way down and no matter where any of the knobs were set i couldn't get the thing to not chop off the end of notes-i guess for some it's not a big deal but for me it was as i liked the cleaner/boost sounds this could do. For certain specific things(like the American Woman sound) it is fine but i couldn't warrant keeping it just for that...maybe i got a faulty one?

Seemd pretty well made.

I like good OD/distortion pedals and have used a lot of them-as said before,the oter Tech 21 stuff i've used has worked out fine and this one was almost a keeper ...maybe i'm being too critical and expecting too much but the AW didn't happen for me.

Seems easy enough to get a good solid classic rock sound out of it and seems very flexible

going from a Fender strat to a peavey transtube the only problem i seem to have is a lot of noise when i start to get high on the drive dial. otherwise fantastic for anything from smoke on the water to carry on my wayward son

kind of light weight but seems fairly solid.

anyone who likes blues riffs and classic rock should get this pedal. it is unbelievable.

Four knobs. Turn until satisfied. Except for... the Gate knob.

Too high and your sound farts out. And it doesn't like low volumes... Hmmm...

Open the case, look for the trim pot in the middle of the PCB. Turn that sucker completely CW. Close the case. Reconnect everything, power up and Voila! The best old school blues/rock OD/distortion you can buy this side of an all tube amp. But watch your Level knob. All of a sudden it is super sensitive.

The distorted sound will make you look at your amp/preamp's clipping light. But no it's not clipping. It's the American Woman delivering.

No Idea

No idea.

Perfect for my classic rock pieces.

I compared this with the Ibanez TS808 RI and while that pedal definitely sounded great, the AW had a fatter and closer to natural sounding OD/dist.

This pedal takes some time to get use to, the manual is good and gives some good starting points.

This pedal was designed to give the solo sound from American Women and if you use the neck pickup of a LesPaul you can get it dead on. I use a stock Epiphone LesPaul standard through this pedal into a AVT 150 combo and its Randy Bachmans sound in spades. This pedal can also be used as a overdrive with the gain at lower settings and has a very nice range to it. The noisegate can cause some you to spend some time tinkering with this pedal I do think it is worth it, the noisegate does cut off notes to soon so its setting is important.

Seems tough and would use without a backup because if I crank the gain on my od2 channel I can come close to the sound of this pedal.

Called Tech 21 abuot another of their products and got a helpful and prompt reply.

I play rock and it is a good match for me. If it went missing I,d hunt for another one. I like the sounds I think the noisegate needs more work also bass and treble controls instead of just a tone would be nice. Remember it was made to give you the solo sound from American Women and comes with the ability to do some nice overdrive sounds. Loses marks for noisegate.

Lots of great sounds from Overdrive to Fuzz (really!), very easy to get great sounds.

I can't believe the bad reviews this pedal has got, it sounds great to me, and it is very versatile. I'm playing tube amps with Gibson Les Pauls and a Tele. I go through a bunch or boutique effects, Fulltone, Z Vex, NVN, Roger Mayer, and a couple old Boss pedals. The American Woman is really an amazing pedal. It does Clean boost very well, the reviewers complaining about the gate have to be on crack, it is very adjustable. I adjusted the gate internally to be at it's lowest. For a clean boost, turn the gate on top to it's lowest position, turn the drive allthe way down, and adjust the Volume and Tone as desired. This pedal can be totally transparent with just a little, or tons of boost; completely clean. The gate dosen't get in the way at all; when adjusted this way, you can gently pick and never notice the gate at all.

With the gain set around 9 o'clock, this is a great overdrive pedal. Set gain at noon, and you ahve Distortion. Floor the gain and you have a full-out fuzz with endless sustain! It really is an incredible Fuzz-tone! To hear it, listen to the soundclips at the Tech 21 website, they don't lie.

As far as the gate goes, I think it's great and I'm not a big fan of noise gates. You can play with total fuzz saturation, and this pedal is silent when you stop playing.

Also, the tone control is very usuable. you can get a Fuzz Face low tone, a transparent tone, or it also works great as a treble boost.

Honestly, the people that gave this pedal a bad review are nuts, this is about the most fun you can have with a fuzz for around $100.

Oh yeah, it's mnot true-bypass, but it dosen't mess with your tone at all in bypass.

It is built very well. It's not a Fulltone, but it is very well made.

I haven't needed it.

This pedal is more versatile than any drive pedal I have ever tried. Most fuzzes sound terrible if you try to use them as an overdrive pedal and vice versa, but this one actually succeeds very well as a Clean Boost, Overdrive, Distortion, or Fuzz.

BTW, I'm into Blues, Jazz and Indie Rock. I'm not a Randy Bachman, Guess Who or BTO fan at all. I don't dig that stuff. I bought this pedal based entirely on it's sound.

Take your time to get the various settings adjusted.
The manual gives you some basic settings to start off from,of course the type of amp you use and it,s settings all interplay here.

I,ve only played this so far with a fender strat(neck single coil pickup)through a marshall mg15dfx amp. My settings on the drive unit were almost all in the 2o'clock position.Amp gain at 9,volume 5,bass3,contour6,treble8,fdd on(duh!)And I got that endless rich creamy singing sustain!(Not just great for guess who,but leslie west lead sound also!)which is a beautiful thing!However you have to get used to that sensitive gate threshold.(well worth it).

Seems tough enough,the jacks don,t fully insert all the way in which is a bit unerving but they stay in and work just fine. Looks like it is well made inside.You should ALWAYS have a backup!(murphys law).

N/A

I play classic rock,punk,metal,blues,hard rock,glam rock,lite jazz,blah,blah,blah!Been playing 25 years.Currently own a 67 gibson flying v re-issue,85 fender strat,epiphone elitist les paul std.plus,silvertone apocalypse pro,epiphone sg-400,squire p-bass.
mxr dist.+,marshall drivemaster,mg15dfx,lead 12,micro stack.
I would definitly buy this box again if i lost it.
It makes playing SLOW leads so sexy!You just have to practice a bit with it,s touch sensitivity, but DON,T let that scare you off,It is well worth it.I don,t know of any other effects box out there that will give you the same feel.I will explore this further with a clean signal and see If i get get a overdriven ac-30 vox sound out of it!

Fairly easy...just 4 knobs. A lot depends on the rest of your rig. (of course!) The gate effects the sound a lot and is always there...the control for the gate seems to affect both sustain and threshold - and it is definitely helping control the noise as this is a high gain pedal. I liked the gate at 12 to 3 o'clock. I like the simplicity and I can live with the caveats at this price.

Wicked. I love it. Yeah, it has a gate...it's part of the effect. I'm sure they could've put more knobs on it and doubled the cost. I can get some extremely cool lead sounds out of it - controlled feedback, squealing, grunge...sustain forever. This pedal probably works better with active or high-gain pick-ups. I first tested it with a personally customized old Charvel with active EMG's going into a Crate VC58 mini tube amp. Wicked... I know if it cooks with this little 5 watter, it'll cook on my larger tube amps. Worked with a Les Paul Standard as well. Tried it with a jazz archtop, bridge pu only, for the halibut; could be useful for a certain effect. Soft picking or low level - volume down - stuff is where the gate might bother you. But I like it for what it's good for - wicked electric expression. How it works for an individual is probably up to their style. I like it for what it does - it's not an all in one pedal....but's it's a lot of fun and fits into my sound palette well.

Only had it for a few hours....but if I don't add these reviews right away, I never get around to it. Only running it on AC adapter. The power supply problem the other fellow mentions must be due to low output from his pedal board supply...I'd check that with a meter. Not extremely sturdy construction...I'd probably be concerned amount a lot of gig stomping. I'm using it in a studio for now.

Not had to deal with 'em yet.

I play mostly jazz / world / fusiony stuff. I do a lot of purely acoustic stuff - baritone guitar, fretless bass, but I like to go heavy into industrial sounding fusion as well. I've been playing for over 30 years and I feel more expressive and experimental now than ever. If it ran off with another guitarist, I'd probably get another. I definitely plan on keeping it...adds to my creative mindflow when I'm in the mood for electric travels. You've got to try pedals to see if they work for you. If they don't...don't buy 'em...and definitely comment about what you didn't like.... but don't slam pedals because your girlfriend made out with the drummer during your 15 min solo and you're in a pissy mood. This review system only works if we are open minded and fair. And leave your email if you really want people to believe you. For ME and for the sound, money, size, ease of operation... it's a 10.

like the reviewer below,i had a big problem with the gate always being on no matter how the knob is set-even the trimmer inside won't fix this...otherwise,i thought the american woman pedal was rather cool overall and i would have used it quite a bit. other products made by this company have been quite useful to me for recordings/gigs,and i have to wonder why the AW was designed this way-are you listening,tech21?

This is an update to my last review. One of the technical supervisors from Tech21 apparantly saw the review and recognized the problems listed with the email I sent asking them for help and just sent me an email. Apparantly the email I sent a month ago was responded to (1) day later, but when it was sent it bounced back, then was resent the following day with the same result. So in good faith I must give the company a 10 in this category and chalk it up to a miscommunication because of email failure.

Alright, I bought this pedal looking for a new main fuzz/overdrive. I hooked it up by itself and running on a battery and it sounded great. Then I tried to integrate it into my pedalboard and thats where the serious design flaws of this pedal became apparant. It doesn't play well with others or on a power supply.

-Firstly, if you run this pedal from the power supply (rather than a battery) the LED actually is a bit dimmer (strange enough), but if you actually A/B the sound of this pedal running on a battery and then on a powersupply you'll find that on the power supply the pedal is missing a bit of volume and high end (when it's on that is). Not enough to imply that it's broken, but enough to sound much smaller and suck your tone... i.e. enough any guitarist serious about their tone would find unacceptable. So great, to power this from a power supply on a pedal board means you sacrifice part of it's tone.

-Secondly, running your guitar into this and then out the amp sounds great, but if you have any pedals running in front of the AmericanWoman in the chain you, once again, lose just about that same amount of volume and high end, even if the pedals in front of it are off!!! Great, now this pedal has to be first in the chain on the pedalboard or else sacrifice part of it's tone.

-unfortunately Tech21's "special" tone circuit they talk about on the website works greatly against this pedal. Because the tone control is a hi-cut filter and the knob shifts the cut from 10k down to 1k, it basically adds or decreases the fuzziness on the top end of your sound and thats ALL it does. Even worse, this distortion puts out more mids than lows, so if you turn up the hi-end fuzziness to match the mid response you have a tone seriously lacking lows, or if you bring down the high's to get rid of that fuzzy sound and match the lows you then have just massive mid-range honk. And I don't mean in a tube screamer way, the mids that are accentuated in this pedal are pretty ugly low mids that reduce intelligibility of your tone. You COULD of course adjust your amp to make this pedal sound good, but that would leave you with a pretty horrible clean tone when you turn the pedal off, so great I sacrifice the tone of my existing rig for this pedal to sound Great.

So basically these three points made this pedal out of the question for me to use as a fuzz/overdrive pedal. So I said "hey I'll cut my losses and use it as a clean boost", as the manual and website suggest it's great for because it puts out 10dB of clean boost. Well it does put out alot of very clean boost (though it is still REALLY honky in the mid range), but heres the CATCH:

-the gate on this pedal is not bypassable, so EVEN with the "gate" knob all the way down it's still active. So you turn the "vol" and "tone" knobs up all the way, and the "gate" and "drive" knobs down all the way (as per the manual's clean boost setting), and you get a nice clean boost... EXCEPT that if you play at all lightly (not even as light as most blues/jazz musicians would play) and let notes ring, you'll find the gate kicking in and cutting off your notes far before they've decayed. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS AND UNUSABLE. I mean really... this setting on this pedal sounds great except that it cuts off your decay.

well this is not a little boutique pedal (although they made it look like one), EVERYTHING (including pot's, jacks and switch acctuator) are mounted on the PCB, this is a mass production style pedal. It'll probably hold together pretty well, although if it does break it's pretty much gonna have to go back to Tech21. I'm more concerned that they apparantly didn't bother to put enough time/money into the DESIGN of this pedal in the first place, hey, if the pedal broke, that might help this pedals situation.

uh, fraudulent. I had emailed Tech21 before I bought this pedal and told them I was thinking about buying one, but wanted to know what AC jack it used. They replied the very next day answering my question (great service so I'd buy the pedal). But a couple days later, after my purchase, I emailed both the general tech support department again and also replied to the staff member who'd already replied to my first question, and I asked them what was up with the power supply problem, the change of tone with any pedal in front of the AmericanWoman, and the clean boost gate problem, asking if there were work arounds for these problems, AND GUESS WHAT... it's been a couple weeks and they never bothered to reply! I don't feel like their customer service is "Poor", I feel that their company is flat out FRAUDULENT.

This has got to be the most poorly designed/thoughtout product I have ever been witness to. It sounds good, just under VERY specific circumstances. So, in short... the only person I would recomend this pedal to is the user who is ONLY EVER going to use this pedal as an overdrive/fuzz, not needing the amp to sound good when the pedal's off, and running the pedal by itself and on a battery. But if you're trying to integrate this pedal into a rig that is already setup and sounds great, don't expect this pedal to give ya whatcha want without sacrificing your existing sounds.

I have never boycotted a product before (not even when a product broke or sounded poorly) but I feel compelled to never buy another Tech21 product again. Why, because I don't feel they really put the neccessary work into designing a pedal, and I think they know it (cause tech support won't talk to you about drawbacks of the pedal). I feel ripped off.

I mean c'mon, I can go out an buy one of a hundred boutique pedals made by random people who don't even neccessarily have the engineering degrees the Tech21 guys probably have, and yet any one of those pedals will function as well on a power supply or a battery, and will function just as well as the first pedal in the chain or with others in front. and well, I doubt they'd design a clean boost that killed you sustain by forgetting to bypass a gate circuit. I mean seriously, who tested this pedal before production, diaing in the "clean boost" settings from the manual and didn't note that while he had a really big, fat, clean tone that the sustain was half of what it should have been and decayed extremely unaturaly as the gate kicked it?!? really it boggles my mind how these problems were not caught.