ohn Suhr’s talent as a guitar builder is in no doubt whatsoever – every one of
his instruments we’ve tried, we’ve wanted to keep.
Expectations are high, then, for this trio of gain-based
stompboxes bearing his name. Can they possibly live
up to the standards set by the company’s guitar output?
If the buzz is anything to go by – you can’t move
on the Internet for people fawning over the Riot in
particular – these pedals should have no problems
fulfilling our expectations. Let’s have a look… |
Construction & Features
Taking all three effects out of their fancy foam-filled boxes, our first impression
is that each of them has been overengineered to
an incredible degree. Rather than your regular die-cast
metal boxes, the enclosures of these Suhr pedals
have been milled by from solid aluminium billets,
and the marks of this process can clearly be seen
on each pedal’s top. The enclosures have been given
a smooth anodised finish that looks very attractive
and upmarket
– black for the Koko Boost, a royal blue for the Shiba Drive and a deep violet
in the case of the Riot. All three feature soft-touch
footswitches that are almost addictive in use and,
much like the rest of the construction, simply
|
|
| the enclosures of these pedals have been milled from solid aluminium billets |
ooze a sense of quality.
The Koko Boost is particularly straightforward. It essentially comprises a clean
boost with an additional footswitchable middle-frequency
boost. The left-side footswitch activates the clean
boost, with the associated control sweeping from
unity gain up to a massive 20dB of extra output,
while activating the mid
|
 |
|
 |
boost adds between three and 12dB of gain to the mids. This part of the circuit
also features a three-way ‘freq’ switch, selecting
whether the mid boost affects the lower mids, the
upper mids, or the frequencies in between. The Koko
Boost can also be switched to buffered, rather than
true bypass, operation via an internal DIP switch,
making this pedal even more useful.
The Shiba Drive is also a very straightforward proposition. Joining the usual
drive, level and tone controls that so many overdrives
share is a three-way switch labelled ‘smooth’. This
affects the pedal’s mid-range voicing, allowing
for easier integration into your rig. This pedal
has been designed to supply some smooth blues tones
with clean amps, as well as boosting an already
driven amplifier ‘over the edge’.
|
|
The Riot Distortion opts for the customary three-control distortion, tone and
level layout, again with a three-way mid-range switch,
which is here labelled ‘voice’. This is a high-gain
distortion pedal that has also been specially designed
to work with cleaner, high headroom amps
– something few distortion units are capable of doing well.
- All three pedals also include an‘FxLink’ feature, which allows the pedals to
be operated remotely
- – in a rack, for example – as well as a 9V DC input. Each is also capable of using
a 9V battery and the LED indicator will even flash
when the cell’s voltage has fallen below optimum
levels.
|
Sounds
Starting with the Koko Boost, we receive all we were hoping for and more. The clean boost has an incredible amount of volume on tap and it’s all wonderfully free of tonal colouration. Our playing dynamics are not hampered in the least,making this the perfect pedal for a volume lift when soloing, orjust to drive a valve amp that bit harder. Activating the mid circuit brings a wonderful fatness to the boosted tone which, in combination with the correct ‘freq’setting for your rig,never becomes nasal or annoying,nor does it attenuate the highs or lows.
|
|
KOKO BOOST,
