Way Huge Red Llama
Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, a fella by the name of Jeorge Tripps picked
up a copy of Craig Anderton’s Electronic Projects for Musicians and was bitten by
the pedal building bug. We’re all lucky because of this. Jeorge played around with
Anderton’s Tube Sound Fuzz circuit and developed a tweaked, and slightly lower
gain (overall) version of his own. He named it the Red Llama. Sometimes, it even
existed alongside the Green Rhino (Jeorge’s take on the Tubescreamer) in a dual
pedal called the Camel Toe. Here’s where things get interesting: Mike Campbell
of the Heartbreakers (you know, the Tom Petty ones) has used a Camel Toe for
years. He may or may not use the Red Llama side for a fuzzy boost. It doesn’t
matter—99.9 percent of people reading this will never play or sound even half as
good as Campbell; it’s not gonna happen. That also doesn’t matter. What matters is
that the Red Llama is a fun little pedal that runs from (almost) clean boost to (almost)
fuzz and has pretty serious output. It’s not transparent by any means. It certainly
doesn’t boost the mids, yet it isn’t what most would call scooped. It firms up the lows
without shelving them and adds a pleasant high end that is bright but never shrill. At
low Drive levels it’s clean(ish), then it gets “tweedy,” and finally it lands somewhere
between Neil Young and a Fuzz Face. At every step of the way, it’s awesome. And
it stacks like a dream both before and after other dirt pedals (thus that whole dual
pedal Camel Toe thing). It’s a tool that should be in every guitarist’s shed.
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