Gear Review: Lovepedal Redhead

    The Redhead is a limited run pedal which re-releases an older Lovepedal design, the Superlead, in a new shell and with a tweaked EQ/Tone control circuit. The circuit isn't completely original, it is said to be derived from something like an old Marshall Guv'nor circuit, but with simplified tone shaping controls. Some would question why you would pay the kind of money you do for boutique effects, when you could effectively build them yourself for a fraction of the cost; I say who cares. This thing looks good and sounds great, and it wasn't built by me, a second rate solderer at best.

Features
- 4 main controls
  - Volume
  - Sustain (Gain)
  - Tone
  - Mids (a mid boost switch)
- True Bypass
- 9v DC mains power or 9v battery

    This is a high gain pedal, with a very pronounced midrange boost, it cuts through the mix as a lead tone over pretty much any blues or rock style tracks, maybe even some metal stuff. The pedal is designed to go ahead of the clean channel on a tube amp, but sounds just fine ahead of digital or solid state pre amps too. In front of my HT-5 it sounds pretty brutal as rhythm tone with the low frequencies and low mids breaking up in a nearly fuzz style, but with crisp soaring lead tones flying off anything else. The Redhead doesn't clean up all that well though. Rolling off the volume on humbucker guitars results in quite a muddy tone which isn't all that pleasing.

    With my single coiled strat it does get cleaner and clearer but this pedal isn't really for that kind of clean performance, where something from Wampler's range might be better. If you want it clean turn it off where it will true bypass into whatevers next in your chain. As a true bypass pedal, it is suited to being in the fx chain between buffered pedals; especially on the longer cable runs you might get in live perrformance scenarios. Noise performance is pretty admirable though. With the gain more than three quarters up, the Redhead stays pretty silent with the volume rolled down. No latent humming noises going on, like some other high gain pedals I've eperinced in the past. At full gain this pedal is a screamer though so if your too close to your speaker you're likely to find yourself with an earful of feedback unless you are protected by a noise suppressor pedal.

   The fact is that all said and done this pedal will react differently to different amps with different input stages and different headroom in the output. For me, in front of my Blackstar HT-5 it is a superb pedal which gives me a very different, and very pleasing, set of tonal possibilities to those available straight out of the amp.


    As usual, there is potential for a audio/video review at some point, when I've worked out the best way of producing them!