In 2011, Japanese electronic genius, Yuki Hayashi set up his own company, Free The Tone to concentrate on making pedals, cables and rack systems for both the mass market and a growing bespoke client base.
His first pedal is the Free The Tone custom SOV-2 overdrive, a reworking of the revered Providence SOV-2 favoured by several prominent guitarists such as Matt Schofield and Carl Verheyen.
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The pedal is primarily designed to offer natural overdrive while retaining the guitar's tone. On top of the red metal casing, there are three dials (level, tone, drive) with a bright blue LED to show when it's on - this will become dimmer and eventually go out when power drops below 5 volts (useful for early battery change warning). Two quarter-inch jacks provide the ins and outs with true bypass circuitry for the purist signal path.
Unlike most drive pedals, the FTT SOV-2 pedal has a high power consumption of 90mA (9v) so while an alkaline battery will last for around 2 hours in use, it might be preferable to use a power adaptor instead. The reason for this is due to a special bipolar power supply that powers the internal circuitry with +/-15 volts. With more than three times the dynamic range of conventional 9 volt pedals, the sonic results are very special and make it different to Providence's present SOV-2.
As for the tones, the FTT SOV-2 overdrive excels in all manner of blues and classic rock flavours. Set the gain low and open up the tone for SRV-like neck singlecoil licks or increase the drive and dial back the tone for classic '70s bridge humbucker rock riffing or juicy Dumble amp-like tones. With this classy pedal and your guitar's pickup and volume controls you've certainly a lot of options!
The price for the FTT SOV-2 is 36, 400 Yen (approximately £295)
For more info visit www.freethetone.com
Audio demo
The audio clip below features five blues rock rhythm examples using the FTT SOV-2 overdrive pedal plugged into Guitar Rig 5's Twang Reverb (Twin) amp with matching cab software, all controls set to noon. The guitar used was a Musicman Luke fitted with EMG pickups (S/S/H).
1 & 2: funk blues - neck singlecoil then bridge humbucker, 1/4 gain, level and tone at noon.
3 & 4: funk rock - neck singlecoil then bridge humbucker, 3/4 gain, level and tone at noon.
5: rock - bridge humbucker, 3/4 gain, level and tone at noon.
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“Honestly I’d never even heard of Klons prior to a year-and-a-half ago”: KEN Mode’s Jesse Matthewson on the greatest reverb/delay ever made and the noise-rock essentials on his fly-in pedalboard
