Throbak Electronics Flash Drive

Styled and named after the guitar sounds incorporated by Brian May in the Flash Gordon soundtrack, this simple pedal may well have crept under the radar in your ever elusive search for tone for two reasons: Firstly you may not have heard of Throbak Electronics and their creator Jon Gundry, if this is the case then this writer cannot urge you enough to go and check them out as the pedals and pickups (wound on original vintage Gibson pickup winders rescued from the Kalamazoo factory building) on offer can help any guitarist to achieve an enviable tone arsenal. Secondly, in the modern world of multi-channel, and high gain overdriven amps the concept of driving your amp with a simple treble boost pedal may have seemed unnecessary.

The original treble boost devices of the '60s may perhaps be considered a bit too cumbersome for the modern guitar player (although strangely desirable for vintage addicts), they only ran from batteries, didn't have an on/off switch (many were either so large they would just sit on top of the amp, whilst others would be plugged directly into the guitar and then out to the amp, and in either case would always be on) let alone an led and if your amp signal was too clean the boost would achieve very very little.

The Flash Drive, however, despite being the most basic pedal in Throbak's range (and cheapest retailing at approx. £99), overcomes all of these issues and presents the player with a very usable and surprisingly versatile pedal. Definitely aimed for those who like simplicity in their guitar rig rather than racks and racks of effects and hundreds of controls to tweak, the Flash Drive features one retro style chickenhead knob to set the drive level and one selector switch to choose between treble and all-out boost modes (very helpful for balancing out the differences between single coil and humbucker guitars), on/off footswitch, green led and the options of either battery or mains power. Inside, the use of a TO-18 silicon transistor rather than the fabled germanium OC44 means the pedal has a higher gain range and tighter response than most other treble boosters on the market currently, but this can of course be tamed with your one control!

Treble boosters are, by design, noisy pedals and tend to hiss. Strangely enough the Flash Drive seems to work best with standard cheap 9V batteries rather than more expensive alkaline equivalents, but there's still a distinctive noise in the background when the pedal is kicked on if there's already some gain present: but this is surely the whole point of a 'boost'. With the drive control set from about 12 o'clock onwards is when the pedal offers a clear boost in both volume and gain. Thanks to the silicon transistor even running the pedal into a clean amp at low volume you can get a blues tone that would make B.B. jealous. Then as the volume and gain are lifted on both pedal and amp you can pass through crunchy southern styled rock rhythm territory to full on searing lead tones (a les paul proved especially adept at this). Frankly for something that looks so simple this is a pedal that has to be considered in any guitar player's search for 'that' sound, it is a fantastic way of breathing new life into in amp, adding sparkle to the tone and boosting the general note clarity and definition across both chords and solos. Beyond that it simply makes the guitar seem much more touch sensitive and dynamic highlighting every nuance and phrase. If you want your notes and tone to stand out, try a Throbak.