The Tribute is
an all-analog overdrive circuit that combines an extremely expressive
high-headroom drive engine with an obscenely powerful and flexible tone
control.
Ahoy ahoy, you’ve just accessed the lore of the Tribute,
a pedal that literally every guitarist needs. Yes, even you, outlaw
country fan, and you, person wearing indecipherable metal logo band
shirt. You see, the Tribute is an all-analog
circuit that combines an extremely expressive high-headroom drive engine
with an obscenely powerful and flexible tone control. The back end of
the Tribute pays—ahem—homage to
one of our oldest designs, the VariOboost. This circuit gives you a
supercharged one-band parametric EQ in lieu of a tone control for some
serious studio-esque tone sculpting power. Playing rhythm? Dial in a
low-mids grunt and boost that band for some fat chords. Playing leads?
Flip that thing and inject some sparkle into your sound. Want to fake a
cocked wah pedal to nail your cover of “Money for Nothing”? Want to
simulate some Peter Green-esque out-of-phase pickups? Want your
single-coils to sound like humbuckers? What about the other way around?
Sure, why not? Want all of that and more? It’s time to play Tribute.
TONE: After dialing in the
Freq[uency], use this control to
boost or cut the selected frequency
by 12dB. This control is equipped
with a center-detent potentiometer;
just click it to noon and the
frequency is flat; this means that
nothing is boosted or cut regardless
of Freq position. Clicking the Tone
knob to noon effectively removes
the VariOboost component.
VOL: You like it loud? Good thing!
The Volume control gives you plenty
of the good stuff.
FREQ:
This control is part of the original VariOboost circuit, and Freq and
Tone work in tandem. Freq selects a frequency between 70Hz and 1.4KHz,
which is then cut or boosted by the Tone control. See diagram on the
next page if thismakes no sense right now.
DRIVE: The core of the Tribute is an exacting buffer followed by a
drive circuit that is governed by a dual-gang potentiometer. Wait,
what? All this means is that turning the Drive knob affects two
parameters at once instead of just one. In the
Tribute, those two controls are clean blend and overdrive gain. When
Driveis rolled all the way down, you get your pristinely buffered clean
signal with a gentle treble filter. When it’s all the way up, maximum
gain is achieved with no clean signal present. Anywhere in between gives
you a carefully balanced clean-drive combo that lets your tone breathe
at all positions.