TwinStomp Booster review

A unit designed to drive your valve amp to tone heaven

  • £155
Two boosts in one with very little colouration. Is this the pedal for pedalphobes?

MusicRadar Verdict

£155 is a fair price for this kind of quality, and a step towards that elusive 'Brown' sound. If you own a quality valve amp and want to push it a little - or a lot - harder, you should try one out right away.

Pros

  • +

    Great tone, cool battery compartment, easy to screw to your pedalboard.

Cons

  • -

    Not an unfair price for this amount of quality, but it's still a lot for a booster pedal.

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The man behind the TwinStomp Booster, Adam Betts, did what many players feel forced to do when struggling to realise the tone they hear in their heads: he built a pedal himself.

Using a widely available design based around Mosfet circuitry, he simply constructed a stompbox and went from there. However, as a commercially available clean booster with two switchable settings proved difficult to find, he decided to incorporate that into his design and create something new. There is a swathe of technical info on the TwinStomp site if you'd like to really get to grips with the innards of the pedal.

The pedal offers two settings. Pedal two offers a maximum of 22.5dB of boost and is slightly hotter than pedal one - with each possessing its own level pot. There's an on/off switch and a blissfully simple-to-access battery compartment: just tug on the ring-pull and it pops out for easy replacement. It's true bypass too.

Sounds

Reference

Boost 1

Boost 2

The TwinStomp does its job very well indeed. Remember it's a boost, not a distortion or overdrive pedal, so it works best with all-valve amps to push them to (and beyond) that magical sweet spot of harmonics and drive. As everyone within about five miles will attest, it makes our hand-wired Marshall 1959 roar like a pride of lions when gazelle school kicks out for the afternoon. Moreover, it doesn't change your amp's core tone or EQ to any great extent.

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