Add Nemphasis pedals to the list of handcrafted goods that come out of Italy. Unlike a Maserati, these pedals won’t affect your insurance premium or speeding-ticket collection.
I checked out three pedals in the Nemphasis line; the Liquid Mind Analog Chorus, The Muff Distortion and the VTComp Guitar Optical Compressor pedal.
All pedals share an easy-to-use, three-knob design, TrueBypass switching and a fully analog circuit powered by either a 9-volt battery or standard Boss-style power supply.
The Muff Distortion ... if you think about the name and the pedal’s artwork, it’s a souped-up version of exactly what you think it is! There are three knobs on it: Sustain, Tone and Level. If that’s not enough, there’s Fat Switch under the back panel, which offers a lower voicing. This is definitely my favorite pedal out of the bunch. Everything from nasty Deep Purple bass tones to a smooth violinlike Santana lead tone.
In the clip below; I’m playing a riff on a Les Paul twice; first with the Fat Switch on, then with it off.
Next up, the VTComp Guitar Optical Compressor. The three knobs are Compress, Attack and Level. It can boost or go from a soft dynamic squeeze to a full on stomp. Once your compression is set, the Level knob offers any volume boost or cut you’ll need to equal your bypassed signal level.
For the clip, I played a riff twice, first without the compressor, then with the compressor on a light setting. If you’re struggling to get enough out of your single coil pickups, try a compressor.
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Last up is the Liquid Mind Analog Chorus. The three knobs are Depth, Color and Speed. The Color knob acts as a tone knob to either darken up the effect or add a bit of chime on top. A complete Liquid Mind zenlike state can be reached if you set the Depth pretty deep and keep the Speed slow. You might begin to remember the '60s whether you were there or not!
My sound clip is just some steady chordpicking.
Nemphasis Pedals are still very new. Besides the pedals, I checked out they make plenty of other boosts, overdrives, distortions, buffers and power supplies for guitar and bass. As far as availability keep checking their website for new dealers.
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.
