A little more to the right, just a little more...TOO MUCH! While some pedal builders aim to give you the most gain for your buck, Nunu Devices built the Tweedy Bird to let you really dial in that sweet spot just north or south of a medium overdrive.
With only two knobs, Volume and Gain, there’s not much to explain. The pedal runs on a 9-volt battery or an external power supply. True-bypass switching and hand-wired circuitry with a Germanium diode are included, but paint costs extra! OK, so the Tweedy Bird looks a bit unassuming, no big deal.
Cranking up the Volume knob and keeping the Gain low, the Tweedy Bird can double as a clean boost pushing out a good 10 or 12dB. This will help set apart a rhythm and lead tone if you’re using a single-channel tube amp. Bumping up the Gain really helped make my Fender Blues Junior sound a little meaner.
An interesting bit of info you don’t see in many pedal makers' description is, “Hey, we voiced this pedal to sound great with solid-state amps too.” Of course, I’m paraphrasing.
Clip 1 sent me straight to the garage to unearth my old Peavey Bandit. While this amp will surely outlive me, it’s tough to find a middle ground between an almost sterile clean and a lackluster overdrive channel. I start off with the Peavey’s clean sound, followed by the Nunu adding a little grit. The guitar is a Fender American Standard Strat with single-coil pickups.
Clip 2 is the same setup, except there's a bit more gain from the Tweedy Bird, and I switched guitars to a humbucker-equipped Les Paul Studio.
Clip 3: To prove the Tweedy Bird isn’t all soft, here it is with more gain, still with the Les Paul, but plugged into a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe.
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You can't believe everything you read on the Internet, but Billy Voight is a gear reviewer, bassist and guitarist from Pennsylvania. He has Hartke bass amps and Walden acoustic guitars to thank for supplying some of the finest gear on his musical journey. Need Billy's help in creating noise for your next project? Drop him a line at thisguyonbass@gmail.com.
