Plutoneium Chi-Wah-Wah and Hotone Skyline Wally

I recently expanded my pedal board with the acquisition of two great pedals…

First I finally put my hands on a Plutoneium Chi-Wah-Wah, and my life has changed: I'm now able to use a wah effect - to use it and abuse of it: one more week of practice and I can play all the parts in Acid Mothers Temple! And that's possible because the Chi-Wah-Wah isn't a classic wah pedal with a rocking system - something I find really unergonomic and that I'm unable to play -, but works with a spring system - that holds in a Boss-sized pedal!
So no, you cannot use it 100% like a rocking wah but I miss nothing since I never really used one, but it definitely sounds terrific. I've been looking at that pedal since its release in 2010 but it's made by a Singaporean company, is poorly distributed in Europe and is a little bit out of my usual price range… Actually the company seems to have recently collapsed, since the average guitarist will hold anyhow to his old dysfunctional Cry Baby, because, you know, Jimi played one or shit, and then it doesn't matter if there are better pedals now…

And since I managed to grab this wah in Germany for half its price, I used the rest of the money to get the yellow gizmo next to it, a Hotone Skyline Wally looper. I chose it over a Ditto or a JamMan for its 15 minutes loop and its slowing down / pitching down control - lots of potential for down tempo heavy baselines there, like I used to do with my old DOD digital delay's 5 seconds loop back in the days! And the gadget factor probably helped, this tiny pedal looks so cool!

I know I always say that, but I really should shoot a demo of these ones of these days...

Mellifluous Pussy MP-1 review

When Erik from Inductor Guitars proposed me to review his MP-1 pedal, I was interested right away because it had already attracted my attention last year when Fuzz Box Girl released a video about it. But I'll have to do the review my own way because 1. my technical knowledge is quite limited, so I can just talk about what I hear and feel, and 2. most of the guitar sound description terminology is undecipherable to me, and I cannot really use any of the colorful adjectives you find in catalogues and magazines...

The astutely named Mellifluous Pussy MP-1 is Inductor Guitars's take on the Interfax Harmonic Percolator, a fuzz pedal from the 1970s. It just has 1 volume knob and 2 switches - that makes 4 positions. I tried it with my Rickenbacker 620 and an Eastwood Airline 3P, plugged in a Marshall stack.

The thing I noticed right away and highly enjoyed is that the MP-1 combines a super sharp bite with a warm sound, with quite present medium - that is probably what makes the harmonics sing. The sound is particularly rich with a single coil guitar, with humbuckers you can still go for a good fat sound with bigger low but it's less special. In its way it respects more the original sound of the pickups than many  distortion pedals I use, not that it matters much to me but people who play instruments for their specific sound will be interested.

I also like the velcro-ish quality of the MP-1 - it's not going synth but it's in the edge, staying on the enjoyable side (I mean it  stops before you feel your teeth are about to fall), so the sound is quite unique without having to be freakish to stand out of the lot. Since you don't have many controls, you have to like the sound how it is - still the pedal reacts quite well to the volume knob of a a guitar -, I mostly played the cleaner position, perfect for super chopping rhythm, something I have no equivalent of in my other pedals.

Here I made a rough demo of the most distorted position - with my Ricken straight to the computer (I didn't put too much effort in it since I don't believe that YouTube's sound through computers' speakers make justice to any kind of sound device unless you have a real sound engineer to do the post-production!)

Mellifluous Pussy

I just received this Mellifluous Pussy fuzz pedal MP-1 by Inductor Guitars for reviewing - just can't wait to plug it and play it loud....

First impression: good looking, seriously made - I have nothing against amateurish looking boutique pedals but I like it better when the outside says that the inside is a pro job too!

Review comes next week!