Few factions of the tone chasing community are as rabid and obsessive as that which devotes itself to the finer points of David Gilmour ’ s signature guitar sound . As evidenced by the numerous websites and online communities ( such as Gilmourish ) that cater to Gilmour tone chasers , the Pink Floyd guitarist and frontman seems to have easily eclipsed Clapton , Hendrix , and even Eddie Van Halen as the guitar world ’ s reigning king of tone . Specifically , the velvety liquid ambience of his Strat-powered leads are what so many guitar players and gear nerds lust after , as exemplified on classic Floyd records like Dark
Side of the Moon , Wish You Were Here , and Animals . This singular sound , perhaps the most instantly recognizable guitar tone ever , is what Robert Keeley aims to capture in his aptly named workstation pedal , the Dark Side .
The Dark Side recreates a very specific classic guitar tone by combining all the necessary effects for that tone in a compact , easy-to-navigate , and ruggedly-built package . It has two halves , starting with an analog op-amp fuzz circuit based on a Big Muff of the ‘ 77 vintage . Controls include knobs for Level and Gain , a three-way toggle for a flat , full , or scooped mid-range profile , and a classic Muffstyle filter control . The other half of this versatile pedal is the digital delay / modulation section , which includes a ‘ 70s Electric Mistress-style flanger , a Leslie speaker simulator , a phaser based on a vintage Phase 90 , a Uni-Vibe setting ( for that “ Breathe ” sound , of course ), and an excellent delay section that virtually recreates the 12-head configurations of Gilmour ’ s Binson Echorec .. In Delay mode , blend functions as a tape head selector , depth becomes delay time , and rate becomes feedback . There is a switch on top for swapping the order of fuzz and mod / delay sections ( this is apparently a new feature on the version of the Dark Side I reviewed ) and
KEELEY ELECTRONICS
DARK SIDE
REVIEW BY JAMIE WOLFERT
STREET PRICE $ 299.00
Few factions of the tone chasing community are as rabid and obsessive as that which devotes itself to the finer points of David Gilmour ’ s signature guitar sound . As evidenced by the numerous websites and online communities ( such as Gilmourish ) that cater to Gilmour tone chasers , the Pink Floyd guitarist and frontman seems to have easily eclipsed Clapton , Hendrix , and even Eddie Van Halen as the guitar world ’ s reigning king of tone . Specifically , the velvety liquid ambience of his Strat-powered leads are what so many guitar players and gear nerds lust after , as exemplified on classic Floyd records like Dark
Side of the Moon , Wish You Were Here , and Animals . This singular sound , perhaps the most instantly recognizable guitar tone ever , is what Robert Keeley aims to capture in his aptly named workstation pedal , the Dark Side .
The Dark Side recreates a very specific classic guitar tone by combining all the necessary effects for that tone in a compact , easy-to-navigate , and ruggedly-built package . It has two halves , starting with an analog op-amp fuzz circuit based on a Big Muff of the ‘ 77 vintage . Controls include knobs for Level and Gain , a three-way toggle for a flat , full , or scooped mid-range profile , and a classic Muffstyle filter control . The other half of this versatile pedal is the digital delay / modulation section , which includes a ‘ 70s Electric Mistress-style flanger , a Leslie speaker simulator , a phaser based on a vintage Phase 90 , a Uni-Vibe setting ( for that “ Breathe ” sound , of course ), and an excellent delay section that virtually recreates the 12-head configurations of Gilmour ’ s Binson Echorec .. In Delay mode , blend functions as a tape head selector , depth becomes delay time , and rate becomes feedback . There is a switch on top for swapping the order of fuzz and mod / delay sections ( this is apparently a new feature on the version of the Dark Side I reviewed ) and
62 GEAR REVIEW // Keeley Electronics Dark Side