Actually I have never heard of this song before. I discovered it while searching for more information about the Schaller wah. But it is for sure a cool song and the pedal adds a certain something.
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New pedals in the house! I received a parcel by fuzzbuzzfuzz from Japan with a secret pedal that I am going to unwrap in a week. And it contained two Aria pedals and a rather obscure Pearl device.
The
Pearl BC-21 Buffercord is not a device for guitar signals as I first thought. Instead it was used for the electronic drum pads that Pearl built in the '70s and '80s. These worked with piezo pickups and triggered sound devices like analogue and early digital drum synthesizers. This Buffercord transforms the impedance of the input signal so that the triggering works properly. I really might have a use for it in the future, because in the past I used the BOSS BP-1 Pad Controller (a drum pad with piezo pickup!) in combination with the inputs of my analogue synthesizers - and that only worked with a buffered pedal in the signal chain. This Pearl thingy could be a handy tool for exactly this application.
The
Aria ADL-1 Analog Delay is a really nice sounding unit based around the MN3205. I have one already, a beat-up Ken Multi branded unit with a non-original battery lid. Now I have this nice looking original black version, even with the box and an old Aria pedal brochure. I really like the sound of it. Surprisingly clear sounding for an analogue delay. In stock mode it is very tame with little feedback. That's what I adjusted first. The maximum delay time isn't too long, even with the trimpot in maximum position. I wonder if a 1MΩ trimpot (instead of the 500kΩ) would allow for longer delay times. I might want to try that with my beat-up Ken Multi ...
The
Aria ATO-1 Tube Overdrive is the
sleeper pedal of the year! Our dear fuzzbuzzfuzz had one of these a while ago and praised it to the skies. For a good cause! He told me that it was a really decent
transparent overdrive. Apparently it was introduced in 1993, at least this is the first year that I can find this certain model in the
scanned Japanese Aria catalogues. Nobody knew the term "transparent overdrive" back then! This was one year before the Klon Centaur saw the light of day and also a few years before this certain pedal created a hype that defined the start of the
boutique era. I have never played an original Klon Centaur, but this Aria Tube Overdrive is pretty much how I expect it to be. It doesn't get totally clean, though, but the breakup of the overdrive circuit is heavenly! Nothing in common with a Tubescreamer at all, just a lovely natural and "transparent" sounding overdrive with a very effective two-band tone control. It is easily among the Top-25 Overdrive Pedals that I have ever tried. Awesome!
The Aria ATO-1 Tube Overdrive was one of the latest additions in the pedal series (the last one was the AWH-1 Auto Wah in 1994) and I'm quite sure that not too many of these are around.
Better make sure to grab one before some guys at YouTube start raving about them! If you see a Ken Multi MTO-7 Tube Driver, a Monarch MTO-22 or Pick Boy MTO-7 - these are all the same, just rebranded units.
