Super Chili Picoso

We’ve been building the Super Chili Picoso for the past 10 years solid. For good reason, based on the famous Jack Orman MOSFET boost it is highly regarded by musicians worldwide. Needless to say, it has a running start in terms of sonic quality. It doesn’t suffer from the hashy unmusical qualities of an opamp boost or brittleness of a poorly tuned bipolar boost. We refined Orman’s circuit employing top notch components, but not just because the parts were expensive, but because they were the RIGHT parts to our ears. Thus the Super Chili Picoso is a satisfying to play musical device that enhances your playing without getting in the way of creativity.

The Super Chili Picoso is a deceptively simple pedal that performs so many duties and solves so many problems that it is a must have in every self-respecting musicians’ arsenal. Let’s go through a number of these, shall we?!

- Buffer. Have a lot of pedals and/or long cable runs on stage? I don’t care how “low capacitance” your cables are, they are going to roll off high frequency detail and signal strength. The Super Chili Picoso’s high input impedance (something like 10M ohms) and ultra low output impedance (around 3K ohms) doesn’t let a drop of your tone escape. Just turn the big knob counter-clockwise and go! The Super Chili Picoso is your buffer!

- MORE! Ever finding yourself needing a clean, uncolored volume nudge? Say you have your fuzz set just right and need to make your entire soundstage louder? The Super Chili Picoso delivers from a few decibels to upward of 35dB unadulterated clean boost! (Provided any gear that you have down stream has headroom to spare.) The Super Chili Picoso is your MORE pedal!

- Overdriver. Ever want to push your slightly self-overdriven amp into a satisfying crunch at the click of a switch? Say you have a lower wattage amp (or you are lucky enough to play a big ole amp LOUDLY) on the edge of breakup and need push it even harder without messing with your amp’s overall character, the Super Chili Picoso is your overdriver!

- Balancer. Do you have an old Danelectro U2 with low output pickups and a Les Paul with hot humbuckers and have a tough time achieving an equal volume level between the two while maintaining the sonic qualities of the two instruments? Set the Super Chili Picoso’s knob to make up the difference! There we are, nice and balanced!

Naga Viper

The Naga Viper is a booster in the grand old tradition of the Dallas Rangemaster "Treble-Booster".  The Rangemaster has been used by many influential British guitarists including Tony Iommi, Brian May, Marc Bolan, and KK Downing and Glen Tipton of Judas Priest.  These guitarists, while completely unique in their styles, share the Rangemaster secret of boosting their cranked tube amps into a juicy, harmonic-laden rock tone that always cuts through the mix.

The Naga Viper is our version of this famous circuit and it enhances the classic circuit with the addition of two extra controls - Range and Heat.  The original Rangemaster had just one control - Boost.  The Range knob is a continuous control allows you to go from classic treble-boost to a full-range boost and anywhere in-between.  The original could only function as a "treble-booster".  The Heat knob gives you control over the gain level, unlike the original which was fixed at maximum gain.

Why a "treble-booster"?  Well, it is not like merely turning up the treble control on an EQ pedal.  Besides enhancing treble response, it adds its own subtle harmonic distortion and gives you a lot of "push" to really saturate the front-end of your tube amp.  But remember, the Naga Viper has a Range control that allows you to dial in exactly what frequencies get boosted.

The traditional way to use a treble-booster is to plug it straight into an already cranked and overdriven tube amp like the Marshalls, Laneys, and Voxes the British guitarists used.  Since the amps were already cranked up, a full-range boost would result in a muddy sound with no definition.  That is why we want to boost "treble"!

But in this modern era of electric guitar, many guitarists use overdrive pedals that emulate the sounds of cranked big amps into their smaller combos.  The Naga Viper is carefully voiced to allow you to boost your "amp-in-the-box" pedals too to get those famous juicy, saturated sounds at "reasonable" volume levels!  In particular, the Naga Viper was made to go with our Dirty Little Secret MkII and CB30 overdrives.