MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I suppose it's not a big secret that I'm a hard core Lollar fanboy. My favorite Strat, Tele and P90's are all Lollars.
I have them in almost all of my Strats, I keep coming back to them. Jason Lollar just has a touch with certain pickups.
Especially his single coils.
So when I heard they were making a limited run of overdrive pedals my ears perked up. I sent the link to @Robert and he managed to snag one. (I think they only made 300). It was designed by a Japanese pedal designer (can't recall who it was) but the standout feature of the drive was the enclosure, which was cast from the same iron the Japanese use for their ceremonial teapots. (Hence Cast Iron, heh).
Circuit wise I suspected it was going to be some kind of Timmy variant and by the time I got a look at the schematic, sure enough it's a YATimmy. HOWEVER, and this is a big HOWEVER, it freaking sounds great.
This was actually the last pedal I built back in January before I took my hiatus from all things guitar. I remember being so burnt out by then that built the pedal just to clear my workbench, fired up to make sure it worked then packed it away.
After moving here to our new house and getting my guitar gear set up again it was the first pedal I started digging into.
I know that I have a penchant for the verbose and superlatives but man, this is probably the best overdrive that I've built yet in my pedal journey. It just seems to do everything very well for me.
Consider it a Timmy with a mid control but it's more than the sum of its parts. There's a "bigness" to the sound a very "amp-like" feel to it in that I don't feel like I'm playing through a pedal.
It does the low gain thing very well with the mids scooped and while it doesn't get completely clean, it gets close enough to function as a dirty boost to push another overdrive or your amp's front end.
But you can also dial up the mids and get into TS808 territory if you need that to tighten up a flubby amp.
So the association with terms like "YATim, Timmy-derivative, Low gain, touch sensitive, etc is understandable. However, I'd throw another term in the hat that you probably wouldn't have thought, "MIAB". With gain above noon it just seems to nail that Super Bass sound. Not the chimey, mid-forward drive per se but rather the lower gain and dialed bassy. It reminded me of Neal Schon's Strat on the track "Lights". That "woolly" Strat sound that he got with his white 63 Strat has been a hallmark tone that I've been chasing for a long time.
Well enough yakking. In the demo I'm using my Gold Strat that was recently modified. It's got a Lollar (naturally) Special S in the neck and middle. This is his hottest Strat wind (although still pretty mild by today's standards). It's got a thickness to it that I just love. The bridge hum bucker is a Wolfetone Marshallhead. It had an A2 magnet in it and sounded s bit too dark and middy for me even though I liked the output power (9.2k). So I swapped the magnet out and put an A5 in it. Wow, it really opened the pickup up nicely. I didn't think there would be such a difference, I was expecting something more subtle. I'm digging this pickup configuration on this guitar right now.
Oh also, I got a notification that my video is partially blocked because of the song I played to show off the pedal. Some countries won't be able to see thew video. I apologize in advance if you're in one of those countries and please shout out here and let me know if you can't see the video.
Tayda Hammered Silver enclosure...of course...
I have them in almost all of my Strats, I keep coming back to them. Jason Lollar just has a touch with certain pickups.
Especially his single coils.
So when I heard they were making a limited run of overdrive pedals my ears perked up. I sent the link to @Robert and he managed to snag one. (I think they only made 300). It was designed by a Japanese pedal designer (can't recall who it was) but the standout feature of the drive was the enclosure, which was cast from the same iron the Japanese use for their ceremonial teapots. (Hence Cast Iron, heh).
Circuit wise I suspected it was going to be some kind of Timmy variant and by the time I got a look at the schematic, sure enough it's a YATimmy. HOWEVER, and this is a big HOWEVER, it freaking sounds great.
This was actually the last pedal I built back in January before I took my hiatus from all things guitar. I remember being so burnt out by then that built the pedal just to clear my workbench, fired up to make sure it worked then packed it away.
After moving here to our new house and getting my guitar gear set up again it was the first pedal I started digging into.
I know that I have a penchant for the verbose and superlatives but man, this is probably the best overdrive that I've built yet in my pedal journey. It just seems to do everything very well for me.
Consider it a Timmy with a mid control but it's more than the sum of its parts. There's a "bigness" to the sound a very "amp-like" feel to it in that I don't feel like I'm playing through a pedal.
It does the low gain thing very well with the mids scooped and while it doesn't get completely clean, it gets close enough to function as a dirty boost to push another overdrive or your amp's front end.
But you can also dial up the mids and get into TS808 territory if you need that to tighten up a flubby amp.
So the association with terms like "YATim, Timmy-derivative, Low gain, touch sensitive, etc is understandable. However, I'd throw another term in the hat that you probably wouldn't have thought, "MIAB". With gain above noon it just seems to nail that Super Bass sound. Not the chimey, mid-forward drive per se but rather the lower gain and dialed bassy. It reminded me of Neal Schon's Strat on the track "Lights". That "woolly" Strat sound that he got with his white 63 Strat has been a hallmark tone that I've been chasing for a long time.
Well enough yakking. In the demo I'm using my Gold Strat that was recently modified. It's got a Lollar (naturally) Special S in the neck and middle. This is his hottest Strat wind (although still pretty mild by today's standards). It's got a thickness to it that I just love. The bridge hum bucker is a Wolfetone Marshallhead. It had an A2 magnet in it and sounded s bit too dark and middy for me even though I liked the output power (9.2k). So I swapped the magnet out and put an A5 in it. Wow, it really opened the pickup up nicely. I didn't think there would be such a difference, I was expecting something more subtle. I'm digging this pickup configuration on this guitar right now.
Oh also, I got a notification that my video is partially blocked because of the song I played to show off the pedal. Some countries won't be able to see thew video. I apologize in advance if you're in one of those countries and please shout out here and let me know if you can't see the video.
Tayda Hammered Silver enclosure...of course...
