NAMM 2018: Lunastone to launch four natty new boutique drive pedals
Four new gain effects from the Danish boutique pedal builder
Lunastone Distortion 1,Red Fuzz 1, Smooth Drive 1 and Blue Drive 1 effects pedals · Source: Lunastone
Ever since the release of the True Overdrive Pedal and its successor product, Lunastone has had a pretty good reputation in the effects pedal sector. That design was adopted for the three new pedals to be featured at the NAMM show this week: Red Fuzz 1, Distortion 1, Blue Drive 1 and Smooth Drive 1 – all have three pots, the big LED in an elegant case.
Red Fuzz 1
This fuzz is in the style of Jimi Hendrix, apparently, with echoes of synth-like tones. That sounds to me like tjhis might be a gated fuzz or one with an octave up. More details haven’t as yet been released by the manufacturer and so we’ll have to keep on guessing. The knobs are labelled Volume, Fuzz, and Low Cut – that kind of sounds like an extended FuzzFace pedal to me.
Lunastone Red Fuzz 1 · Source: Lunastone
Distortion 1
Shredding à la Van Halen should be possible without any problems using the Distortion 1, if Lunastone has hit that classic ‘brown sound’. Hopefully, it will respond dynamically enough. The colour suggests a DS-1 clone, but Lunastone haven’t mentioned that pedal as an inspiration here. Maybe that’s just psychological marketing, using a colour tone reminiscent of the Boss classic. After all, Orange = Distortion!
Lunastone Distortion 1 · Source: Lunastone
Blue Drive 1
Blues in a box. Is this unit blue because it’s inspired by Boss’s Blues Driver pedal? Words in the marketing for this one like “Crunch” and “Clean Boost” sound a little like it could go in that direction. But on the other hand, the BD-2 is not really “glass-like”, a phrase Lunastone uses to describe the Blue Drive. We will see or hear.
Lunastone Blue Drive 1 · Source: Lunastone
Smooth Drive 1
With adjectives like “silky” and “smooth”, and telling us about its “little edge”, the Smooth Drive 1 sounds rosy and usable. The overall style here, aparently, is BB King, Larry Carlton and the Gibson 335, so blues and jazz crunch. It’s a subtler drive that the True Overdrive, Lunastone says. Hopefully that means you can add some gain without losing the character of your guitar.
Lunastone Smooth Drive 1 · Source: Lunastone
Price & launch
Expect these new pedal to become available the spring of 2018. The four should be on the shelves of dealers at 199 Euro each. If they are as good as Lunastone True Overdrive 1 and Overdrive 2 then they should do well.
RRP – USD 199/EUR 199
More Information
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