We are happy to learn that our ex-fellow NYC citizen Tom of TomKat pedals is still churning out pedals, since this new Super Heavy stompbox appears to be his first release in five years. Alas, at first glance, it looks and sounds like something that would take a long time to develop: it’s a rather complex stereo digital delay>drive>reverb device inspired—to quote the builder—”by the most powerful rocket ever launched by humans.”
The reverb is the most important and therefore tweakable effect in this circuit, while the delay (up to 500ms) and the overdrive are rather straightforward.
Turning the Central knob allows you to select and edit one of the three effects or the parameters affecting the entire output, with color coding helping you figure out which one you are tweaking – which is a rather original and unique way to organize the user interface. When pressed, the knob will enter the mode dealing with Presets. The pedal stores 7 factory and 7 User presets.
Reading through the functions printed around the six knobs gives you a pretty clear idea of the parameters that can be adjusted, including a separate Mix control for each of the three effects.
The least intuitive control is the Chain Mix, which is an overall parameter that sets the amount of dry signal sent to the entire effect chain – basically a master Mix knob.
The 7 color-changing knob system is a treat for the eye but represents a crucial aid in navigation, indicating two things:
- The actual color means which setting you are tweaking (matching the color of the labels around each knob)
- The color intensity shows the value the knob is set to (the more intense the color, the higher the value)
Finally, such a pedal couldn’t miss a momentary Freeze funcion, triggered by the left footswitch. Pressing it will “freeze” the wet signal, with results ranging from the ambient to the chaotic depending on the pedal’s settings.
We added this pedal to our category of Creative Stompboxes – check out how it sounds in the videos below!
