Effects Bay

First of all, I’m a huge fan of Rivera Amps. I’ve owned my Knucklehead 100w head for over 10 years now, and that thing is fantastic.  I’ve kicked around the idea of a new amp, but it’s so hard, since I’m generally very, very happy with mine. Because I’m so happy with that amp my energy level for looking for new amps is pretty much zero.

I was stoked and surprised to see that Rivera is now going into pedals. They would definitely be quite qualified to come up with something that works well with amps and maintaining transparency with the guitar’s tone. Rivera is currently offering three pedals – Blues Shaman, Metal Shaman and the Double Shaman.

Today, I wanted to talk about the Rivera Blues Shaman.

Here is the official description of the Rivera Blues Shaman:

The Blues Shaman emulates the tonal and dynamic range of a small Class A tube amp, with buttery warmth and soft clipping in its overdrive. Its Ascension footswitch delivers feisty gain boost, and its Tone control shapes highs while retaining beefy lows. Further tone shaping comes by flipping the Stack/ Combo switch, which emphasizes tones characteristic of compact, open-backed amps or large-volume closed-back speaker stacks.

Here is a great demo of the Rivera Blues Shaman by Pete Thorn (sinasl1)

As you can hear/see, the Rivera Blues Shaman is a pretty sweet overdrive.  I see it’s available through Amazon for $249.00 or you can purchase direct through their store for the same price. Rivera, if you stumble across this post, I’d love to talk to you more about your pedals! Please contact me!

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The ProCo ’85 Whiteface Rat is a limited  run reissue of the classic Rat of 1985. The folks at ProCo is not only ‘reissuing’ the pedal but replicating it to exact specifications (if parts were still available). The used the original circuit board layout and used the crucial LM308 chip. It’s housed in the classic “RAT” steel housing, and is built like a tank. Since I mentioned it is a limited run, they are only producing 2000 units total.

The pedal has three settings – Distortion, Filter and Volume. There is no LED indicator on this model staying true to the original design. Distortion controls the level of distortion to the pedal. Filter smooths out the break up, counter clockwise it will deliver more aggressive top end break up while moving it full clockwise will smooth it out and darken the tone. Volume will be the overall pedal gain. Unity gain appears to be around 2-3 o’clock.

This pedal definitely falls in the ‘fuzz’ family. You can get some nice break up, crunch to fuzz. The mid-range is scooped, and has the classic RAT sizzle/fizzle tone.

For this pedal review.. yet again, we go to my long time friend.. Jimmy Rolle. For this demo he is playing a Rivera Knucklehead 100W head through a Marshall 4×12 cab with Greenbacks and G12H30 Anniversary speakers. He is playing his Les Paul Elegant Custom Shop guitar. Audio was captured using Shure SM57 microphones to laptop.

This first demo Jimmy is using ‘slight breakup’ settings on the amp and demonstrating what it can do.

Hight quality MP3 audio is also available:

The second demo Jimmy is playing the Rivera with high gain settings.

High quality MP3 audio is also available:

The fuzz is not as creamy as a classic fuzz, and has a more ‘muff’ like fuzz, but with the classic RAT tone. This pedal can be used in many applications, but could be great with a medium gain amp, such as a Marshall JCM800, for aggressive classic rock to metal tones.

You can pick up the ProCo Whiteface RAT Reissue from ProCoWhitefaceRat.com (via Direct Pro Audio). It’s is available for $199.99. Also be sure to follow ProCo on Facebook and Twitter. They’re giving away a lot of gear these days, so you’ll want to be tapped in for those.

I wanted to send a special thank you to Stephanie at ProCo for sending the pedal our way. If you’re interested in having any gear demo’d, please contact me.

Remember, if you like reading about these pedals and seeing videos reviews from others, please subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified via email when there are new postings!

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This morning, a friend of mine from high school days sent me a link to this interview of Paul Rivera Sr. of Rivera Amplifiers. I’m a big fan of Paul Rivera and his company. I currently own a Rivera Knucklehead 100 head (vintage grey model). Love that head, it’s too freakin’ loud, but sounds great.

Rivera definitely make some great stuff. That Clubster Royale sounds awesome! Any other Rivera owners out there?

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So, I’m going off on a tangent this morning. This has NOTHING to do with pedals, but has to do with our guitar tone. Why I wanted to post about this, because I wanted to illustrate how the variance in equipment can drastically change your tone. Somethings that can change your tone you can easily take for granted, for example guitar instrument cables, pedals, etc. Other things you have to settle with like guitars and amps. But with amps and cabinets, you have the luxury and the ability to change the speakers without breaking the bank. Another factor, that someone could end up writing a book on is changing tubes as well.

I’ll talk with people about speakers, and often it’s perceived that a speaker is a speaker and is ‘neutral’ when it comes to guitar tone. The amp creates the color and the speakers make it audible. But it’s very important to note that amp manufacturers pair up their amplifiers with speakers that compliment the tone that they were going for. This is especially true with high-end boutique amps (Matchless, Rivera, etc, etc).

I came across this great speaker shoot out video produced by Rivera. It compares the Celestion Vintage 30, G12H30, G12T75 and the K100 speakers. Same amp, same amp settings, same guitar, same riff. When you see them side by side, you clearly hear what each speaker provides or lacks, which you would normally need to compensate with EQ or settle with. I really with Green Backs were included in this shoot out.

My rig (using a Rivera head) is a Marshall 4×12 cabinet with Vintage 30s and a Avatar 2×12 cabinet with 1 Vintage 30 and 1 G12H30. The Vintage 30/G12H30 is a very popular combination these days. Do you have any thoughts about speakers with your gear? Please comment. Let me know what you think!

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