CORNISH
TES
Cornish Kool-Aid sippers
often treat ownership of
these pedals like some
kind of nerdy yacht club
with an unofficial mantra akin to “if
you can’t afford them, you wouldn’t
understand.” Of course, this is
fundamentally bollocks, and there
is perhaps no greater pedal that
espouses this bollockshood than
the TES, or “Tape Echo Simulator.”
At one time, and perhaps even to
this day, paying for a TES required
a hefty up-front payment, plus a
Boss DD-2 of your own. Yes, that is
correct. And the early versions made
no bones about this fact, as the DD-2
control panel was plainly visible atop
the enclosure. Of course, newer
versions don’t feature the visible
control panel, but the guts are still
there, with the Boss potentiometers
desoldered from the main board and
mounted on the face of the unit.
Cornish pedals feature the distinct ability to be powered by an AC plug, which means
there’s a transformer inside. This could potentially make quite a difference in sound
on any analog unit, but if the digital brain needs to see a certain specific voltage lest
it fail, a transformer array is wholly unnecessary. And because most of the auxiliary
knobs and switches on the TES are simple mods to swap out resistors and capacitors
and such (remember, this is a digital pedal with uneditable code), what’s left to pay
for is a genuine head-scratcher.
ToneReport.com
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