The Catalinbread Tribute is the new low-gain overdrive from the Portland-based company and – if memory doesn’t betray us – the first device in their roster featuring a parametric EQ since the VariOboost, the very first pedal released by Catalinbread, a now-discontinued boost pedal that inspired this new model.
This new analog pedal perfects that old circuit adding to it an expressive, high-headroom drive engine. The parametric mids is a powerful sculpting tone, since it allows to select which frequency to boost or cut in between 70Hz and 1.4kHz, a crucial range for electric guitar sounds, saturated ones in particular. The chosen frequency can be cut or boosted by 12dBs through the Tone knob, which will remove the VariOboost component at noon.
The Drive control affects two parameters at once instead of just one: clean blend and overdrive gain.
At minimum you get your pristinely buffered clean signal with a gentle treble filter. Turned all the way up, maximum gain is achieved with no clean signal present. Anywhere in between gives you a carefully balanced clean-drive combo that lets your tone breathe at all positions.
Check out the sound of the Catalinbread Tribute in the videos below.
Catalinbread Tribute, Builder’s Notes
THE TRIBUTE IS AN ALL-GAIN PARAMETRIC OVERDRIVE
Ahoy ahoy, you’ve just accessed the lore of the Tribute, a pedal that literally every guitarist needs. Yes, even you, outlaw country fan, and you, person wearing indecipherable metal logo band shirt. You see, the Tribute is an all-analog circuit that combines an extremely expressive high-headroom drive engine with an obscenely powerful and flexible tone control. The back end of the Tribute pays—ahem—homage to one of our oldest designs, the VariOboost. This circuit gives you a supercharged one-band parametric EQ in lieu of a tone control for some serious studio-esque tone sculpting power. Playing rhythm? Dial in a low-mids grunt and boost that band for some fat chords. Playing leads? Flip that thing and inject some sparkle into your sound. Want to fake a cocked wah pedal to nail your cover of “Money for Nothing”? Want to simulate some Peter Green-esque out-of-phase pickups? Want your single-coils to sound like humbuckers? What about the other way around? Sure, why not? Want all of that and more? It’s time to play Tribute.
