sounds with routing options
that are truly special. But
in my extensive testing,
what blew me away wasn’t
running the Sunset into
a clean amp, but rather,
stacking it into a platform-
style pedal. (In my case it
was a Catalinbread Dirty
Little Secret MkIII in Super
Bass mode with the gain
and volume around noon.)
Now, of course, this
probably sounds obvious.
I mean—it’s an overdrive
pedal, meant to drive
another gain stage over
the top. But I feel it’s worth
mentioning just because of
how many “Oh yeah, this is
great” moments I had with
it set up this way.
And when you consider
the Sunset’s place in the
Strymon lineup alongside
the Riverside Multistage
Drive, it makes a lot of
sense. (Even more when
you learn that the company
had originally planned a
simultaneous release of the
two pedals, before running
into delays that pushed the
Sunset back a bit.)
To be sure of this, I asked
Ethan Tufts, Strymon’s
resident noisemaker and VP
of Marketing.
“Yes—our plan was to
do a side-by-side roll out
of Sunset and Riverside
in 2016,” he said. “We
had been thinking about
and playing around with
overdrive/distortion ideas
and prototypes for several
years, and we landed on
the multi-tiered approach
because we wanted to
explore the several unique
ways to approach these
sounds.”
As a result, the Riverside
is less about driving a later
gain stage and more about
functioning as an “amp-in-a-
box” type of pedal, whereas
the Sunset is best when
traditionally implemented,
pushing another circuit and
shining the way single-stage
drives often do.
HANDS ON
As I mentioned earlier, the
Sunset feels right under
your fingers. It’s responsive
to both your playing
dynamics and changes to
your volume knob. And the
sounds are expansive.
Channel A features a
gritty, low-medium gain
germanium-inspired drive
with plenty of punch in
the low-mids. It also has a
smooth and singing upper-
mid boosted Texas-style
drive and a treble booster
that doesn’t have a ton
of gain, but works best
to shave off as much low
end as you want to tighten
things up.
Channel B ups the ante,
combining an extremely
flexible two-stage drive
with enough range in the
gain section to make it an
immediate favorite with a
gainier, more intense hard-
clipping distortion that
plenty of girth and sizzle
to punish the front end of
any amp or platform pedal.
Finally, you get a JFET style
boost for taking your base
sound to the next level
with more grit, volume or
combination of both—or for
using as a primary low gain
drive.
Both sides can be stacked
and blended for a myriad of
tones and textures that are
sure to please.
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