Product: Thunder Tomate Phil Hilborne Fat TB (Treble Booster)
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted
08/16/2007
at
05:53am
by
Mike
Ease of Use
:
10
It takes a little time to get to know this pedal, but when you do you'll become drinking buddies. This is where you actually do have good fun finding out about this pedal's interaction between your amp, your guitar and yourself.
The front controls are 'Level' (volume boost) and 'Cut' which you can use to reduce the amount of treble which comes out. Great for tailoring the sound at hand.
The main tonal controls are set within the pedal on a bank of DIP switches. You'll need to remove the back of the pedal (screwdriver job like most pedals) to access these. There is a diagram with various sample settings on the inside of the cover which gives you ideas to start with. Just play with these to tailor your sound.
Even though the DIP switches are inside the pedal, it's no problem.
Sound Quality
:
10
Even though this is effectively designed to be an adaptable treble booster, you can do so much more with it. For example, I use to to grit up a clean tone, make a clean tone more transparent through a mix, drive the pre-amp stage more on low distortion, give lead boosts more volume, give more treble to distorted lead.....all sorts. And it's completely noiseless and doesn't screw up your overall precious tone (true bypass). In every gig I'm learning more about this pedal and, to be honest, it's saved my arshe (Sean Connery term) at a couple of gigs where the environment has been less than ideal.
Playing around with the DIP switches inside gives you different character to the tone, ranging from 'trebly' to 'getting fatter'. There are sample settings clearly marked inside which are very useful. I tried both extremes and worked on what I liked from there. A very very versatile pedal and I love it.
Using this pedal with a few amp setups : Cornford MK50H MK2 head through a Fender Super-Sonic 2x12 cab, Koch Multitone 50W combo and a Tech21 Trademark TM60 1x12 combo. Guitarwise : PRS Custom 24, Fender Strat Plus with Joe Barden Deluxe pickups, Fender Eric Johnson Signature strat. Pedalboard : A range of Fulltone, Boogie, TC Electronics and Keeley pedals. Sennheiser EW172 wireless system. GeorgeL's cables used throughout.
Reliability
:
10
Built beautifully with top notch components. Absolutely dependable I have no doubt.
Customer Support
:
10
Phil Hilborne is a great bloke and a very well known and highly respected musician based in the UK. He designed this pedal for a range of purposes and it's designed to deliver what it says on the packet - and it does this handsomely. He introduced me to this pedal with confidence and I'm very grateful that he did as I'd never heared of the pedal before and was looking at the Fullone FatBoost before. Needless to say, this pedal covers what I wanted and much more too. Thanks, Phil!
Overall Rating
:
10
I've been playing for around 19 years and I play all styles of music. This pedal can be used in all sorts of styles. Love the way it looks, the way it sounds and it's one of the few pedal on my board that I can see it's on in sunlight! :) Love everything about it and wouldn't change a thing. Some say having the DIP switches on the outside would help, but I don't think that it would really be worth the design alteration and I wouldn't know where you'd put the DIP switches safe anyway.
Don't just take my word for this pedal. Read these two great reviews from Guitarist and Guitar Buyer magazine.
http://www.thundertomate.com/guitarist.pdf
http://www.thundertomate.com/guitarbuyer.pdf
