Tone Report Weekly Issue 80 | Page 19

PHOTOS BY FRANTONE.COM compared with The Sweet, the Tone control of the Bassweet is altered for much more low frequency response. However, this Tone control isn’t like your standard Muff Tone control, and it’s different from The Sweet’s Tone control as well. Not content to just switch some coupling capacitor values, the Bassweet is actually a finely tweaked machine, made by someone that knows electronics inside and out, and as a result, the Bassweet is a beast all its own. And despite its harmless name, doom and sludge players should take note, because the Bassweet has the power to dominate even the mightiest amplifiers and leave them quivering in its wake. PEACH FUZZ If you, the reader, is more of a casual fan of effects, this might be the Frantone pedal of which you’ve heard, but not for reasons you’d expect. Some time ago, Danelectro released the Cool Cat fuzz, and the savvy DIY community soon discovered that the Cool Cat shared a striking resemblance to the Peach Fuzz, and players who had played both noted their sonic similarities as well. However, Danelectro couldn’t quite nail it, and the Peach Fuzz remains tops in its field, which is bass-heavy sky-rending fuzz tones. Personally speaking, the Peach Fuzz is among my favorite fuzz circuits of all time (shout outs to the Roland BeeBaa and Death by Audio Soundwave Breakdown). I’m not sure there’s a more harmonically rich fuzz on the market, and surprisingly enough, the pedal contains not one transistor! In fact, it contains three ICs, two of which are power amplifiers and one of which is a precision Texas Instruments op-amp of very high quality. The feeling of plugging into a Peach Fuzz, cranking both Fuzz and Tone to 10 and playing an open chord is akin to hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. That is to say, it is unparalleled. GLACIER HYPER MODULATOR While most of the Frantone line centered on more traditional effects such as fuzz and overdrive. A couple compressors also snuck through. The Glacier, however, is by far the most left-field pedal in the Frantone codex; it’s a ring modulator, though the pedal itself suggests “hyper modulator.” Since about thirty seconds after the ring modulator was invented, guitarists the world over have bemoaned the effect’s musicality. Some say that it’s impossible to effectively wrangle in the context of a band mix, and others just plan don’t like the sound. While the Glacier may not bend the most hardline of the latter group to its will, the former bunch’s tonal palette might greatly benefit from the Glacier. Proponents of ring modulator throughout history have defended it in one of three ways: it’s a wonderful on-the-sly tremolo, it’s great at making bell noises and it excels at textural applications. Ring modulator purists will be pleased to find that the Glacier excels at all of those, and due to the adjustable waveform via the Y-Select knob, three different flavors are accessible. For those tremolo fans, this also means three LFO waves for your volume modulating pleasure. What’s more, there is a Y Input for a user-supplied carrier frequency. Players can plug in microphones, drum machines, tape loops and whatever else for their wavebending pleasure. CREAM PUFF PLUS This two-sided pedal combines two of the best Frantone boxes in one, with a bevy of switching options designed to run one, both or both in parallel—it isn’t a simple “two effects in one box” ToneReport.com 19