LIFT: Complete Your Tone

We talked recently on ways to use the LIFT with a myriad of different instruments. Today we are going to take a closer look at how to use the LIFT with an electric guitar and where to place it on your pedalboard. It seems that every pedal has a respectful place & purpose on our pedalboards and this is very true about the LIFT, too!

So, where does the LIFT go? The short answer: Anywhere.

That’s right, the LIFT is a fabulous tone tool with high quality, studio-grade parts that can fit anywhere on your board. Here are a few suggestions to help you discover how you can put your LIFT to use.

The Cornerstone: Buffers, Boost and EQ; these are the foundations for getting a firm grip of your tone. How long is that cable running from your guitar to your board? If you said longer than 18’ you have a problem and that problem is called “tone suck”. We all love being able to walk across the stage to rock out with the bass player, keyboard player or even the other guitarist but have you ever considered what a cable that length does to your signal? Placing the LIFT at the very beginning of your signal chain is a great to bring the life back into your tone. The foot switchable boost is also perfect for pulling every last bit of energy and punch out of your drive/dist/fuzz pedals when it is slamming into the front end of them. Is the initial tone from your guitar to squishy, muddy or muted? Use the onboard active EQ to dial in the exact attack and character you need to rock.

The Polisher: The LIFT is perfect at the end of your signal chain, too. Don’t forget the basis of the LIFT is to be a buffer. A lot of pedals stacked up adds a good amount of cable length/extra signal path that can weaken your tone and response. Sure all those pedals can add a world of different nature to your tone but they can also suck it at the same time. Putting the LIFT at the end of your signal chain (yes, even after your delays and reverbs) will tighten up your overall tone. Don’t forget the LIFT has an onboard active EQ that runs from 20Hz-20kHz so you won’t cut out any frequencies your signal is producing. In fact, you will probably get more out of your signal chain. Just ask Stephen, he runs a LIFT at the end of his board… and so do I.

The Booster: Perhaps the pedal game isn’t for you and you run straight into your amp. However, even though you may love your amp and the tones coming out of it, maybe there are times that you wish you had just a little (or a lot more) of your amplifier pumping through that speaker. LIFT is here to help.

When I worked at Rogueguitarshop.com I had a customer who went through four or five different drive pedals because there was just something missing from his amp. After a few pedal trials nothing was coming up a winner. I asked, “what amp do you play?”. My reply was met with a simple, “Friedman Dirty Shirley”. “Oh man! that’s a great amp with a great tone”, I said and sent him home with a LIFT. 24 Hours later I got a phone call. The LIFT was everything he needed to get that last bit of magic from his circuit. No extra color, no shift in tone and with an added foot switchable boost the LIFT can take any amp into audio oblivion, easily.

I hope you enjoyed this closer look at one of our amazing tone-sculpting tools. Top shelf tone is our goal at Pettyjohn Electronics and the LIFT is as top shelf as it gets for a Buffer/Boost/Active EQ. For any questions or to get a LIFT of your own reach out to nate@pettyjohnelectronics.com and I will hook you up.