SPECS Made UK Price $369 ■ Controls Drive, Fatness, Output, Bypass ■ Outputs 1 Hard wire, 2 buffered ■ Power 9v battery (50 hours battery life) or 9v AC adapter (not supplied) ROGER MAYER ■ Size Width 170 x Depth 112 x Height 57mm. ■ Weight 640g with battery. CONTACT VOODOO-BLUES Guitar Toyz GUITAR FX PEDAL info@guitartoyz Hendrix used ‘em. Page used ‘em. Clapton used ‘em… so they must be doing www.guitartoyz.com.au WHAT WE RECKON something right! By Peter Hodgson PROS ▲ Flexible tone options THE LEGENDARY Roger Mayer has been making pedals since 1964. A former British Admiralty technician involved in acoustic research, Mayer was ▲ Multiple outputs trained to approach sound as a riddle to be solved in unique and original ways. Soon his fuzz pedals found their way under the feet of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on the London session scene. CONS One day Mayer met Jimi Hendrix in a club, and before you could say,“Scuse me while I kiss the sky,” Mayer was in the studio with Jimi as he tracked ▼ Small, finicky controls the “Purple Haze” solo using Mayer’s Octavia pedal, a device which doubled the original note an octave higher. The Octavia would also be used by Jimi on tracks such as “Little Wing”, “Fire” and “Machine Gun” and eventually he was asked to come on the road with Hendrix to keep his amp and effects in line during his nightly shenanigans. Mayer’s travels eventually took him to the US, where he helped Jimi establish Electric Ladyland studio, and was largely responsible for the analogue synth used by Stevie Wonder on several of his classic albums. During this time, he would build the occasional pedal for his rock star buddies, but there was no way for non-famous guitarists to get their hands on the prized pedals. 5,4,3,2,1 By the late ‘80s, Mayer had decided to move back to the UK. There, he began producing his designs for the average consumer, adopting a distinctive space ship casing for the Rocket series, and a more workmanlike black box chassis for the Voodoo series. The Voodoo-Blues came about when Mayer started hearing calls for an overdrive pedal that could also be used as a clean boost. Mayer describes the pedal as his take on Tube Screamer-style overdrive but in keeping with his problem-solving nature, it does away with what he considers to be a nasal tone and a lack of detail and dynamics. He also wanted to design an overdrive that could maintain note separation in complex chords. The Voodoo-Blues is housed in the smallest of the Voodoo series boxes – a very sturdy black die cast metal casing with a chunky switch and tough, hard-wearing rubber control knobs. The distinctive white line motif tells you right away that it’s a Roger Mayer pedal, but more importantly it makes the unit very easy to see even on a dark stage, or when you dim the lights in the rehearsal room to get all vibey. PICK A STYLE, ANY STYLE! Aside from the single guitar input, the Voodoo-Blues has a hardwire output and dual buffered outputs. The hard wire output is fed by a true bypass switch, so when the effect is turned off, the signal is diverted away from the unit’s circuit and straight to the output, avoiding the hassles of background noise or signal degradation. Essentially, when the pedal is turned off it’s like you’re plugged straight into the amp. The dual buffered outputs can be used to drive two signal chains without degrading the sound quality, even over long cable runs. This is especially helpful if you want to run a stereo rig on opposite sides of the stage, but have been put off in the past by the woes of cable capacitance eating into the cleanliness and dynamic range of your signal. But putting aside this technical voodoo, let’s not forget the sonic glory of plugging into multiple amps at once, SRV-style. The casing includes an ingenious sliding battery compartment which completely eliminates the chance of losing a battery cover, having to fiddle around with tiny thumb screws, or any other of those finicky battery concealment methods players have had to deal with in the past. Simply slide the cover from left to right and there’s the battery. Controls consist of Output, Drive and Fatness, while a purplish blue LED lets you know when the effect is engaged if your earplugs are in too tight. With the Drive and Fatness controls turned all the way down and the Output cranked, the Voodoo-Blues functions as a clean boost pedal. It’s not completely transparent like some other boosts, but close enough that if you set the Output to match the unaffected level, you have to listen very carefully to hear the slightest alteration to the original sound. Turning up the Output will push the preamp stage of a valve amp into natural overdrive. I tried the Voodoo- Blues with a Marshall DSL50 half stack, and the crunch channel, which normally has a pleasant but not particularly high gain “Whole Lotta Love” bark, took on a fire-breathing, Zakk Wylde type of character. Switching to the amp’s clean channel, the same clean boost setting beefed up the body of the notes in a way that reminded me of that other Mayer, John. Gradually increasing the Fatness control brought more toughness and roundness out of my Telecaster’s single coils, while maintaining the natural cut and presence of the pickups. Turning up the Drive control and backing the Fatness down to 12 o’clock, the Voodoo-Blues jumps to life as a Stevie Ray overdrive, still pushing the preamp like a boost, but adding its own overdrive character and tonal stamp. The Fatness control can be turned up to increase the Eric Johnson harmonic mush factor for thick single note lines, or reeled back to reveal increasing levels of note definition and separation for complex chords. I even tried the Voodoo-Blues with an Ibanez Universe seven-string to see how it handled a low B, and it didn’t break a sweat unless I wanted it to. The key, again, is using the Fatness control to dial in the optimum tone for chords, single notes, or a carefully balanced combination of each, depending on what you’ll be using the pedal for. THE BOTTOM LINE The Voodoo-Blues is a simple yet elegant take on a classic overdrive design, with great note separation and a lot of flexibility. Besides, it’s just fun to look down at a pedal and see ‘Roger Mayer’ like Jimi did all those years ago. AUSTRALIAN GUITAR II 83.