frequencies, boosts mid frequencies, and
increases the focus of your guitar signal.
This focusing of your guitar tone is great
for lead playing, and not so much for
rhythm guitar playing. The reason I loved
the Sparkle Drive: When blending the clean
tone back in, I got a richer multi-amp tone
at the stomp of a switch.
Over the years, I’ve continued to employ
multiple clean-blend overdrive pedals. The
following, while not a complete list, should
serve as a primer should you want to
venture into this wormhole.
WAY HUGE PORK LOIN
The Way Huge Pork Loin is a hard dish to
perfect. With seven controls and a
generally darker tone, it’s tough to dial in
(at least with my rig). However, once you
get it set up, it really comes to life. Rather
than just offering a blended clean signal,
the Pork Loin runs your clean sound
through a “British-voiced preamp” and
blends that in with the overdrive. What you
get is a thick and boosted clean sound
paired with a natural tube-like overdrive.
There is also enough volume on tap to
work as a serious clean boost if you turn
down the overdrive. The blend of the clean
with the dirt is a little more cohesive than a
lot of the other clean-blend OD pedals out
there. I’m guessing this is because the
“clean” is not just clean, but boosted and
equalized. Still, it’s probably voiced a little
too dark for some people, but it’s great
for me.
I started by dialing in a nice overdrive tone
and then adding clean signal to thicken it
up and round out the sound. The tone that
came out reminded me of some of Rich
Robinson’s sounds on the first Black
Crowes record—distorted but still pretty
clean. The Pork Loin works wonders with
single coil pickups; it fattens them up
without making them muddy. Pairing it with
a bright Tele bridge pickup creates a tone
that is both thick and cutting and cleans up
nicely when you back up on your attack.
With my dual-humbucker PRS Mira S2 semihollow, running the bridge