What are your four ‘must-have’ pedals? That is what we ask our guests to share with you in our Four On the Floor podcast segment. Balthazar makes some of the tastiest amplifiers out there. He also has great taste in pedals. If you are not familiar with Balthazar Audio Systems do yourself a favor and check them out. He gave us a fantastic interview too! You can hear the episode for yourself right here. Check out these choices for his Four On The Floor.
1. Catalinbread – Naga Viper Treble Booster
“I got really into treble boosters, but I always wanted a trouble booster that would do what a trouble booster did plus like maybe one other thing. Because you play with the treble booster and you kinda get where Brian May might’ve been going or where Black Sabbath was, how they were getting some of their tones or Mick Ronson’s parked Wah and then you realize it’s kinda like all it can do. The Catalinbread Naga Viper does just that, it does a little bit more in that. A treble booster is typically an ice picky, peaky treble boost on your guitar signal. So, what if you could make that boost not as peaky and not as wide. What if you could make it a little bit lower or higher in frequency? Make it a little more full range. And so that’s what this pedal does. And it’s kind of a sleeper cause I think because I don’t hear many people talking about it. But I think it’s a pretty great tool that takes a treble booster from a one trick pony to a Swiss army knife.“
Check out the Catalinbread – Naga Viper Treble Booster
2. Fulltone – Full-Drive Overdrive
“I was working in a guitar store at the end of the nineties, early 2000’s, and we had a box full of nonfunctional, semi-functional, weird sounding vintage fuzz faces. Fuzz Faces can sound Thin, they can sound thick, they can sound bright, they can sound dark, they can sound just totally weird. And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a fuzz face that sounded the same every time. Then along comes the Fulltone Full-Drive. It’s a great pedal which allows you to kind of dial in all those different kinds of fuzz face sounds. Whether you want to beef up chords or you want something that’s got that sort of classic nasal fuzz tone, it’s got that.”
Check out the Fulltone – Full-Drive Overdrive
3. Strymon – El Capistan Tape Echo
“I worked for many years for the smashing pumpkins and I was one of the things that I would repair for them where these, these vintage Binson Echorec, with a rotating drum delay, which is a whole different sound, versus a normal tape echo. What I love about the El Capistan is you can dial in this sort of amount of wear that the delay drum is going to have unlike the original Binson Echorech, which you just had to live with as is.
This pedal also comes with this really strange reverb that I think is attempting to be a spring reverb but is kind of nothing of the sort. It basically just puts your guitar into a dark cave. And I mean, you know, who doesn’t love that.”
Check out the Strymon – El Capistan Tape Echo
4. ProCo – Rat Distortion
“The rat is so right the way that it is. Like, what’s up with the weird filter that allows you to totally tame the high end of the screechy guitar or boost a little bit of high end on a Les Paul if you want a screaming lead out of that? This is an early version and it’s been with me for a long time so it’s is not gonna break anytime soon.“
Check out the ProCo – Rat Distortion
Huge thanks to Balthazar for being a guest on our show and please check out Balthazar Audio Systems We wish him continued success!