British Columbia’s SFG Music Supply may be new to the boutique effect pedal scene, but their debut stompbox is a unique and great-sounding overdrive – the Howlerr.
A unit with versatile application, the Howlerr boasts a design based around a solitary transistor amplifier fed into the clipping section of the pedal. Said clipping section consists of a trio of germanium diodes and a single silicon diode to provide asymmetrical clipping. What sets this type of clipping apart is that it is more like the kind found in tube amplifiers; “natural” and “smooth”.
There are 3 controls on the pedal. ‘Gain’ affects how much distortion is present in the signal. The “Hi-Cut” pot is a passive tone control affecting the amount of treble, and the ‘Volume’ controls final output volume.
Ancillary features are a rock-solid enclosure, power filtering for noise reduction and pop filtering to eliminate noise when turning the effect on and off. The Howlerr runs on standard 9v, negative tip power.
With such a well-designed and versatile initial offering, it will be interesting to see what other designs SFG Music Supply will cook up in the future. – Brandon Stoner
