We recently had the opportunity to spend the day at Truetone Music, one of our newest dealers in the So Cal area. What a great shop with a excellent stock of almost everything any guitar player would want to get their hands on. A definite stop if you are in Los Angles. While at the shop we demo’d our killer line of tone-tools and were reminded just how amazing the FILTER is. We believe the FILTER (or FILTER Deluxe) is the best foot pedal based EQ on the market!
I remember when Stephen was first thinking about making an EQ. He had stopped by a shop I was working at and picked up what most players would say are the most sought after EQ pedals that were available. One goal was on Stephen’s mind… to make the best EQ pedal any player had ever tried. There were some main goals from the beginning; make it quiet, make it clean and make it as transparent as possible.
The result of hours of study and design was the FILTER: a 3 band, semi-parametric EQ in the humble footprint of our Foundry Series pedals. The FILTER’s incredibly high headroom provides a low noise, low distortion performance with the transparency and musicality of an analog recording console EQ. 12db of Boost or Cut help to dial in the exact tone you are looking for.
The layout is simple to use and easy to understand.
The Low’s on the FILTER have the ability to be pushed and not get saggy or muddy. A mini toggle provides a bell filter for the Low’s at 150 Hz or a low shelf at 100 Hz. The same mini toggle sets a bell filter for the High’s at 4 kHz or 6 kHz. The articulation and character that can be dialed in on just the High and Low knobs alone is incredible. Thickness that doesn’t fluff out on you. Articulation that grabs your attention from the moment you turn the unit on.
The Mids section is based on some of the most sought after console EQ’s ever made. A premium inductor drives the bell filter for the mids and can be set at 460 Hz, 780 Hz or 1.8 kHz using a mini toggle. By simply setting the bell and turning the Mids knob one can discover worlds of different character from you guitar’s pickups or any pedal you might have in front of the FILTER.
While at Truetone Music the big hit was running the FUZE (distortion/fuzz) in front of the FILTER and simply turning the knobs while someone was playing. Sculpt-ability like you have never used before! Being able to take a wall of harmonic distortion from the FUZE and basically turn it into anything we wanted was incredible. Everyone from shop employees to players that had stopped bye couldn’t get enough of the FILTER’s dynamic tone shaping.
Have you tried a FILTER yet??? Want to change your character without coloring your overall tone? Need a pedal to tighten up everything at the end of your chain? With 20Hz – 20kHz of dynamic range, the FILTER is everything you could ever need in a sweet little package.