Roger Mayer

The Roger Mayer pedals are very funky looking because they look like something out of the 60s futuristic television show. It looks like the flying saucer that the Jetsons would ride or even some half broken surfboard of some kind. Many of Roger Mayers pedals carry This unique and stylistic look that makes them very iconic. This is a very basic pedal and there's not a whole lot to it. You basically just control the volume and distortions and kick it on when you're ready to go. It is somewhat rather of a bigger size pedal compared to a boss or Ibanez pedal. It's a pretty large pedal compared to a Electro Harmonics Big Muff type pedal. You know it's a different shape it takes up a lot of room on your pedal board. UTILIZATION This is a very easy pedal to dial in and you basically have a couple controls to give you your overall volume and distortion. It's not a whole lot of experimenting as far as different types of versatility. Even a monkey could probably find a good sweet spot on this pedal with the current rack SOUND QUALITY This is basically a Jimi Hendrix style distortion tone in a box. This is actually the pedal that was built for Jimi Hendrix back in the 60s and was used on band of gypsies and was also the reference for his song called axis bold of love. So this is the tone that you want to get if you're looking for that nice 60s Jimmy styled fuzztone. So if you're trying to sound like Jimi Hendrix and this is the pedal tone plus if your other pieces of gear. First you need a Fender Stratocaster guitar, the actual sound that you can only achieve that Hendrix tone with. Next you need a Marshall Plexi style amplifier basically cranked to 11 so you're going to need an attenuator to keep the volume levels down as well. After that you need to have the style feel and approach the Jimi Hendrix has other than after that you never got a sound like him. It doesn't matter what piece of gear you own most of his tone and pretty much all of his feel and style comes from his hands. OVERALL OPINION These pedals come in at new price right around $290. That's a pretty expensive price for simply a fuzz pedal. However you have the Jimi Hendrix name associated with these types of pedals that drives up the price a little bit more. Honestly this pedal doesn't do anything more or better than some of the pedals that I've heard for 70 or $80. If you really want to get a good fuzztone then I suggest going with a simple old Electro Harmonics Big Muff.

This is all-analog technology, created by Roger Mayer, the guy that build Hendrix's pedals for him, so you know it's going to have some great sounds. Vibrato,Chorus, Tremolo, and Univibe tones all live in this box. Most people will use it for the Univibe tones, which it frankly nails, but the other sounds are great as well. One nice perk on this box is that it has two outputs, so the signal can be split to multiple amps. UTILIZATION This is either a tone tweaker's dream or worst nightmare - it's a DEEEEEP box. There are SO many sounds in this. Each knob is highly interactive with the others, so moving one a millimeter over can change the sound character drastically, or change the way the other knobs function. The manual is very good at explaining each function, but the only way to know how to dial in the sound on this pedal is experience. Incredible tones await inside, but one might consider marking their box to retain favorite settings, or take pictures with a camera phone for easy recall. SOUND QUALITY I mainly use this pedal for Univibe purposes, to cop a Jimi Hendrix "Band of Gypsys" tone, or a Robin Trower tone. I have yet to play a Univibe-style pedal that sounded as close to those two legends as this pedal does. My favorite guitar tone of all time is Hendrix's "Machine Gun", and this pedal can do that nice, chewing warble to a T. The other effects are great, but I don't see someone owning this box just for the tremolo or chorus type effects. The Univibe tone is where the magic lie in this unit. OVERALL OPINION I LOVE the Univibe tones. The drawbacks to this pedal are the massive tweakability (I know, it's a good thing, but not easy to get "the" sound right away), and the sheer physical size! This thing takes up a third of my large pedalboard! I have honestly never opened it up to look at the guts, but I hope they are using all that space, because the box itself is just massive. The pedal isn't made anymore in this incarnation, so they are a bit hard to find, and pricey when one is located. But for Univibe glory, this pedal is king. If you need to get the Jimi vibe down, this pedal is the real deal.