Fortin Amps and Fredrik Thordendal issue the ’33’ clean boost pedal
A new clean boost for some heavy dirt
Fortin Amps’ new 33 is a clean boost pedal designed to push just about any amp into some serious metal territory, even though the pedal’s sound is ultra-clean. Designed for Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah, this pedal begs the question: how does clean get you heavy as hell?
Holy Grail
Mr Thordendal has teamed up with some other makers in the past, including the this 8-string guitar designed with Ibanez. The new 33 has +22dB of clean gain on tap and can push your tube amplifier or modelling amp into high-gain territory fast, getting you to that ultra-tight heavy tone yet maintaining your guitar’s core tonality.
Like all clean boost units, it doesn’t add anything unwanted to your guitar’s core tone but amplifies what you have already. This means it won’t detract from the original signal. So that 22dB of boost just kicks the front end of your amp hard, which in turn, makes it perfect for the job of ‘adding more’.
Simple control
Ola Englund‘s official video demo gives you a great overview of the 33. He then goes on to explain how it works in conjunction with your amplifier’s channel switching, with a side remote 1/4” jack for channel switch control. This means that by engaging the 33 pedal, it can also switch channels on your amp at the same time, thus saving you a ‘tap dance’ and allowing you to smoothly go from your clean channel (with no 33 effect applied) into your gain channel, though this time it engages the 33 at the same time or vice versa.
The pedal has top mounted jacks for input and output, runs from either a battery or an external 9V DC power supply.
Heavy tones
Fortin Amps are renowned for making high-gain amplifiers for players like Kirk Hammett, Ola Englund and Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah. They say they spent two years developing this pedal, so it should be a pretty serious bit of kit.
This is, however, reflected in the price: it’s listing just shy of USD 250. For a single-knob pedal. But it will probably do exactly what they say it will. Check out Ola’s demo below, as he gives a great example of it at work.
RRP – USD 249.95
Fortin Amps 33 product page
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