“These $99 pedals are excellent not only for their price, but also their sounds”: Keeley x Sweetwater Soft Reverb, Super Bass Overdrive And Distortion and Suns Ultravoid Fuzz review

What is it?

The Suns, Super Bass and Soft are three new pedals from legendary boutique builder Robert Keeley. They’re affordably priced and available exclusively via Sweetwater.

The effect pedals are a limited edition, and come in three distinct flavors. The Suns is a fuzz pedal, a development of its existing Moon Op Amp fuzz.

The Super Bass is, as the name suggests, a Marshall-amp-in-a-box JFET overdrive pedal. The Soft is perhaps the most interesting of the three. It's a triple-mode reverb pedal that has more 'normal' spring and plate reverbs alongside an ambient 'soft focus' mode.

All three pedals are made in the USA, and come in at a very competitive $99 price point.

Specs

PRICE: $99 each
TYPES: Suns: op-amp fuzz | Super Bass: amp-in-a-box overdrive | Soft: reverb
MADE: USA
CONTROLS: Suns: Level, Filter, Fuzz | Super Bass: Level, Tone, Drive, Open/Closed switch | Soft: Dwell, Level, mode switch
CONNECTIVITY: Input, Output, Power in
BYPASS: Suns: True bypass | Super Bass: True bypass | Soft: Switchable
POWER: 9V DC centre-negative
DIMENSIONS: Width 60mm x Height 34mm x Depth 110mm
WEIGHT: 218g
OPTIONS: None
CONTACT: Sweetwater

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

These pedals are the usual bombproof build quality you'd expect from Keeley, with a neat on-board wiring job on the inside. The enclosure is compact, but not quite micro-sized, comparable to a BOSS pedal or most other boutique units you could name.

The Suns has a gratuitous, but fun, LED that shows the pedal clipping. Does it change the sound? No, but it does add to the vibe of the pedal. The other two pedals in the range have no frills, instead letting their sounds do the talking.

The looks are streamlined and as a result, elegant. They're not as loud or out-there as some boutique pedals, but you can't go far wrong with matte black and a pop of color.

In particular, the knobs are very satisfying and tactile. It's a minor point, but on a pedal this competitively priced, it's pleasing to see such attention to the look and feel of minor details.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

These pedals are mercifully straightforward, with only two or at most three controls on the front panel. The overdrive and fuzz pedals can be run off a standard 9V battery, but the Soft requires a pedalboard power supply to work.

The only usability issue off the bat is that some of the advanced functionality of the Soft, like trails and bypass is on internal dip switches. While this is understandable on a pedal this compact, it's always slightly annoying to have any functionality hidden away inside the pedal.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Keeley Suns Ultravoid Fuzz

The Suns is a development of Keeley's previous Moon pedal, which had complaints about its low end from certain quarters. The tone stack of the Suns has been redesigned to eliminate this problem and retain a resonant bass response.

At its core, it bears superficial resemblance to the quirks of a Big Muff. Chief among these is the tendency of that pedal to have one sweet spot for a given combo of guitar, pickup and amp.

The filter has a wide range, but I only found a couple of points that worked for each setup I tested with. I have a Russian Big Muff on the shelf that I've gigged with the same guitar and amp on-and-off since 2003, and it hasn't changed settings in twenty years. The Suns feels like it has the same 'set and forget' quality.

As that description suggests, it's a fuzz pedal that reacts differently depending on what I throw at it. It's very pleasing for leads with a neck single coil, but for my money sounds best playing rhythm parts on a Les Paul-style bridge humbucker. It rewards confident, legato playing, and any fluffs are painfully obvious.

Also like a Big Muff, in my opinion, it sounds fine through a Fender-voiced amp, but prefers to be run through a high-wattage amp with a more open voicing. It has a very different character, for example, on a Fender-voiced 50W amp versus a 100W Marshall stack, where it really rips.

The Suns is a multiple gain stage op-amp fuzz, and typically you would expect that a highly saturated pedal with multiple gain stages might not benefit much from gain stacking. That's the case here. A boost in front gives it a kick, but the Suns isn't lacking in either volume or gain.

Keeley Super Bass Overdrive And Distortion

The Super Bass is excellent. Even as a fuzz lover, I have to admit that it was this pedal of the three that caught my imagination. I'm a big fan of the recent Marshall reissues of the Drivemaster and Guv'nor, and this JFET amp-in-a-box is a wonderful-sounding, affordable and fun alternative.

It worked well into every amp I threw it at, with whatever guitar I chose to use. That said, it's a pedal with a decent amount of volume gain on tap and it comes alive when run into a real tube amp, pushing it with a level set past 1 o'clock. The end result is a punchy, tight mixture of saturation from pedal and amp compression.

There are low-gain sounds to be had from this overdrive pedal, but it does require a bit of tweaking. A little bit like a ProCo RAT, with the gain down it can be a bit 'scratchy', particularly with humbuckers. However, this is quickly resolved by pulling back the tone control, or adjusting the tone pot at the guitar end. In my opinion it performed better with single coils at low-gain settings, but that's a matter of taste.

Nevertheless, the most fun to be had with this overdrive pedal isn't low gain; it's with the gain as close to the max as possible, with the volume up at your amp. Everything from '80s rock to modern metal is possible, especially with a bit of gain-stacking. I found a punchy boost pedal in front allowed for even more articulate gain, whatever the voicing and wattage of the amp that followed.

Into my Marshall stack, the Open setting was more versatile, but with a bit of EQ tweaking, the Closed mode was heavier and more resonant for chunky riffing. Moving to a DAW amp sim, the Closed mode seemed to record better, giving more of the same magic feel that a stack pushing air in the room did.

Keeley Soft Reverb

The Soft is an excellent-sounding reverb, even if the spring reverb is a bit basic. Still, it sounds good and does the job. Indeed, I suspect the key audience for this pedal is players that want 'set and forget' spring reverb for a small amp without a reverb tank. Elsewhere the plate reverb mode is where it's at.

At lower Dwell settings it's subtle enough to be a stand-in for shorter, spring reverb tones. At longer Dwell settings, meanwhile, it has that unique, metallic, almost glassy plate reverb sound.

There's something about the timbre of plate reverb that can be perfect for the right part. I found that long legato lead parts with the Suns paired very well with the plate mode on the Soft. For busier parts, I pulled the reverb level back to about 9 o'clock.

This does reveal the only drawback of this reverb pedal. It would be nice if it had a tone control for the wet signal. Even for a shorter length reverb like a spring emulation, it can be useful to take the edge off the wet sound and allow the main part to cut through. Still, it's a minor complaint for a pedal at this price.

Though it's perhaps more a bonus than a selling point for many that will buy this pedal, the most interesting mode is the 'soft focus' mode. Several parameters are altered using the Dwell knob, making it effectively a single-knob ambient reverb. It's a reverb into two delay lines, recombined into a four-voice chorus. The end result is quite subtle given how maximalist that description sounds.

Verdict

The relative merits of each pedal are going to be subjective, based on the state of your current board. These pedals are excellent not only for their price, but also for their core sounds.

However, if you are already set for fuzz and drive pedals, then the Suns and Super Bass aren't likely to appeal. Elsewhere, the Soft is an excellent multi-function reverb pedal if you don't already have one. Though it has an ambient mode, it's most likely to appeal to players that need a simple reverb to make up for an amp that lacks a spring tank.

In our experience, while some players are happy with a 'simple' reverb pedal, aficionados often own multiple. Post-rock, shoegaze or ambient players may prefer a more esoteric reverb like a granular, reverse, or shimmer verb. Typically a high-end reverb unit will contain all of these options.

Guitar World verdict: All in all, the Super Bass feels like the biggest knock-out of the bunch. It's simple, sounds great through multiple amps and set-ups, and is cheaper than the competition. It's also a JFET drive, which isn't the most common drive topology, meaning players might not already have one on their board. The Suns, while excellent, is fighting a crowded market of op-amp fuzzes, while the Soft sits in an area where niche tastes are king.

• More info at Sweetwater

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