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