The good folks at PastFX over in Australia have tried their hand at recreating another legendary vintage modulation...the 18v Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger. It's one of my all-time favourites, and quite a few manufacturers have had a stab at nailing its sound over the years. But it's a tricky circuit to both get right and please the masses, as it's fundamentally noisy....the lack of top end filtering gives it a lovely sparkle, but it also means the chirpy flanger noise comes through loud and clear. So pedal companies have a choice: leave it bright (and risk people complaining that their expensive boutique pedal is noisy) or filter the noise out (and risk people complaining that their Mistress-alike is too dark compared to the original).
Verlie at PastFX thought of this though, and included a handy Bright switch. With it down, it's a touch darker than the original, but super-quiet. With it up, you can use the trim pot on the circuit board to dial in exactly the right amount of high end to please you....and then have both those sounds at the flick of a switch. As you turn the Treble trim up more noise will be let through, but you can set it exactly where you like it. Cool, eh?
You also get a blend knob - to bring your completely dry signal back in underneath the flanged signal for some more subtle effects. So you can set the pedal pretty wild, and then dial the blend back so that it isn't going absolutely haywire.
This runs on 18V like the original, but the noise floor is MASSIVELY lower (even with the bright switch up), and the footprint is much smaller too. It doesn't use the original SAD1024 BBD (simply because they're essentially non-existent nowadays) but it still houses a NOS MN3007 chip.
Instead of shooting a 'normal' demo of the Mattress, I decided to answer the question that most people want to know when buying a boutique Mistress clone....how does it compare to the OG? So I'm going to be putting it alongside my big-bucks V3 EHX Mistress to see how close we can get the two sounding.
What do you think? Almost indistinguishable? Or significant differences to note? Comment below!
Guitars are:
- Gronlund R16 Redeemer Jr. w/ TV Jones Ful-Fidelity Filter'Tron
- Gibson Memphis ES-330 '61 VOS Reissue w/ OX4 P90s
- Fender Partscaster Strat w/ Fralin Real '54s
- Nathan Sheppard NSG1 w/ Bare Knuckle Knuckledusters
- Gibson Les Paul Standard w/ ThroBak SLE-101 PAFs
Amp is a Dr Z Z-Wreck running into a Zilla Studio Pro 2x12 cabinet loaded with Scumback S75-PVC AlNiCo and Celestion AlNiCo Gold speakers. Recorded with Aston Spirit Condenser, '70s Sennheiser MD441 and sE RNR1 ribbon mics, with a Schoeps CMC6 room mic.
joeperkinsmusic
jp@joeperkins.co.uk
0:00 Intro
5:52 Noise Comparison
6:07 Clean Playing
11:16 Flangers Into OD
12:29 Flangers After OD
14:09 Outro
Vector images by freepik.com
4 авг 2024
