The Cogmeister Dinosaural is the flagship drive pedal designed by Dan Coggins, the engineer best known for the now rare and sought-after Lovetone Pedals. Now working for Thoprpy FX, Dan described the Cogmeister as his “Gain Masterpiece.”
Having closed Lovetone in 2008, Dan built this model under the new business name Dinosaural, starting in 2012.
It consists of an overdrive circuit preceded and followed by two boosts, with each channel featuring a dedicated footswitch. Needless to say, the three circuits, named from left to right Push, Drive and Solo, were tweaked to perfectly integrate each other, in particular when it comes to their EQ knobs (all on the bottom row), which complement each other without too much frequency interference, with the Drive’s one also featuring a 3-way toggle to control the curve of the EQ.
On the other hand, the top row of control sets volumes and gains for each channel.
The Cogmeister is a cleverly designed gain pedal able to cover most needs of any guitarist into rock-related genres, providing three gain stages that can be mixed and matched to deliver and easily access a variety of tones, dynamics and levels.
Check out how it sounds in the video below.
Cogmeister Dinosaural, Builder’s Notes
In 1995 I co-founded and designed all circuits for the Lovetone® effect pedals brand. After leaving that business way back in 2008, I continued to carry out the very occasional servicing, repair and “stock” upgrades of those original pedals for another 15 years. However, that era has finally had to come to an end and I regret I can no longer help (nor provide any info) as it is frankly time for me to move on. Also, unfortunately, because of the greatly inflated values the used Lovetone pedals now sell for on eBay®, Reverb® and the like, it had become an issue to be able to insure them adequately in transit. Please note that I no longer have any connection or affiliation whatsoever with Lovetone®.
Regarding Dinosaural®: Between 2002 and 2019 I ran a manufacturing and repair business called Dinosaural®, and during this period several guitar effects were manufactured under the Dinosaural® brand name, which still exists as part of Coggins Audio Ltd®.
The new flagship product is the ‘Cogmeister’ (TM) triple boost/overdrive as seen in the main photo above, which supersedes both the earlier, now-discontinued ‘Tube Bender’ and ‘OPA-101’ pedals with a new ‘Drive’ circuit and goes much further by bookending it with an input treble booster (‘Push’) and an output midrange booster (’Solo’).
Through my company I have been working full-time (since August 2020) as the Analogue Design Engineer for Thorpy FX®, where we will continue to produce an expanded range including many new and innovative guitar effect pedal designs – please visit their site at www.thorpyfx.com
