wakemeup music overdrive pedal

by 44ofjuly

Blame it on SRV if you must. With so many overdrive pedals in the market based on the one that made up part of his famous tone, one might wonder if there’s a need for another Ibanez Tubescreamer based overdrive.

Well, each one of them has got its own character with added features, further improvements or a 100% true clone of the original. As long as it can provide the player with what he/she needs in tone pursuit, just bring it on and let the guitar player decide for himself or herself.

The Wakemeupmusic (WMUM) overdrive ( www.wakemeupmusic.com/pedal), like the name says for itself, is an overdrive pedal. So if anyone is looking for something that gives ten tonne sledgehammer skullcrushing distortion, this is probably not a good one to start with.

On the first look and touch, the pedal gave me a raw feeling, probably due to the details of the paintjob, drawing and the circuit board in the pedal (handmade/drawn by 2 individuals). It might not be as sleek looking as other pedals, but the tone certainly didn’t disappoint me!

The 4 knobs on the pedal are as follows:

Gain: Can be from boost to crunchy overdriven tone

Tone: Can be from fat, warm and smooth too trebly

Volume: Self explanatory, loud/soft

Pre gain: Before anyone got misled, thinking this knob is going to add massive amount of gain on top the gain knob. Well, it’s NOT for that.

With the normal gain knob at minimum setting, turning the pre gain knob up, the difference is an increase in presence, making the tone brighter and tighter sounding with additional crunch. It will respond to playing dynamics, clean sounding for normal playing strength and when you are digging in hard on the guitar strings, it brings out the crunch in the tone. Kind of like a fierce clean tone on steroid. To put it in an easier way, it’s like having more “muscle” than just ‘fatness” to the tone. On the other end, turning up the normal gain knob with pre gain all the way down, the tone is more wide open sounding

This pre-gain knob is a good feature of this pedal, which give it an advantage over overdrive pedals in the vein of the Tubescreamer family. Set the normal gain knob set to moderate (12o’clk position and beyond) and turn up the pre gain knob. Not only will it add in a right amount of gain and crunch on top of the original gain setting, it will bring out the tightness and sound as if the overdriven tone is pushed to the front. Using the neck pickup, the tone can be similar to a fat, smooth overdrive and fuzz tone ala Santana’s sweet tone.

As like other Tubescreamer based pedals, there is a certain amount of mids added to the normal tone when the pedal is engaged. For this WMUM overdrive, I think it has a right amount of it without making the tone too “nasal”. The treble knob can be used to dial out some of it. Having tested the pedal with guitars with maple and rosewood fretboards, I feel the tone really shines through for the one with the maple fretboard. For the guitar with the rosewood fretboard, I have to lower the mids on my amplifier to get a similar tone to the maple fretboard Fender Telecaster.

For the testing, I have tried out the pedal through various guitars with single coils, humbuckers, Teles (one having rosewood fretboard and the other with a maple fretboard) and P90 pickups. Personally, I really love the tone through a maple fretboard Tele the most. The distinctive tonal characteristic of the Tele blends in really nicely with the pedal, giving the player the range from a clean boost to heavy* overdriven tone. *(This might vary with others’ definition of “heavy”, so just use your ear to decide whether is the tone for you or against you when testing this pedal.)

With the Tele bridge pickup, setting the pedal gain knob on 3o’clk, pre-gain at 12o’clk position and beyond, treble to 3o’clk and beyond, the overdriven tone is really tight sounding, clear and crunchy thick sounding. Even with the gain knob turned all the way up, the tone remains really punchy, still having the clarity. One thing which I like about this pedal is that there is not much of buzzy, fuzzy sounding overdrive which can be found in some other overdrive pedals when the gain is turned all the way up. Switch to the Tele neck pickup and use the same setting as above. The sound is of another form. Fat, smooth and warm.

Through a humbuckers-equipped guitar, the tone is similar to the Tele but much fatter sounding. With a slightly milder setting on the pedal (both gain and pregain between 9-12 o’clock position) and through the neck humbucker, the tone is almost like the normal clean neck pickup sound, with added fatness, sustain and responsiveness to the playing dynamics. Instead of overdriven tones, it just sounds like an “extension” of the usual neck pickup tone.

The good points about this pedal are as follows:

- Clarity, definition of notes is clear even with gain turn up

- Tight sounding

- Overdriven tone cleans up well when volume knob on guitar is turn down

- Responsive to playing dynamics

- Useful pre gain knob to shape tone according to player’s taste

- Good crunch sounding tone, less of a cheap buzzy fuzzy sounding overdrive

- Super bright white LED light. It can be used as a mini torch to find your way in the dark!

Ok, the last point might be a bit wacky. But hey, the LED light is really damn bright; so don’t look too long into it. It can blind the eyes.

And since there are good things, there will be bad things about the pedals. But in this case, it’s not really bad, I must say. It’s just my personal preference and something else that I have noticed.

The treble knob. In order to match the treble of my clean guitar tone before and after engaging the pedal, I have to turn up the treble knob to about 4o’clk position or more. If I use any setting before this, the tone seems to be slightly dark sounding. Not that it doesn’t sound good, it just that I prefer the overdriven tone to be slightly brighter so that I can use the guitar tone knob to lower the brightness of the tone when I need to.

Another thing is on the pre gain knob. Although earlier in the review, I have mentioned that it’s a good feature of this pedal, I notice the trade off in bass response for the increased brightness and the tightness in sound. With this pre gain knob turned up, that is. Ideally, I would prefer an additional bass knob on the pedal to cater to the low end.

For anyone reading this so far, if you want to ask whether this is the best Tubescreamer based overdrive pedal around. Then I will tell you, NO! Because in the first place, I don’t believe in best of series pedals and think that there is no such thing at all. This is a rather nice sounding overdrive pedal that is of comparable standards to some of the more expensive and so called “boutique” overdrive pedals that are available. Most importantly, it fits in nicely through my set-up. It has done for me, but it might not be for all.

And so, if anyone who has tried the pedal but didn’t like it, well, move on then. It’s just a pedal after all. You can have your choice to search for the best pedal ever and I will still go on believing that there is none! Have fun and till the next time.

Interview with the Maker

Aging Youth grabs the man behind the WMUM OD pedal, Edwin Tan (and fellow beer whore) for a quick chat and finds out more about the pedal and what he has in store for us this year.

You made quite a couple of different pedals in the past. Why did you start with an Overdrive pedal as your mass-produced pedal?

Edwin :For a variety of reasons, really. It’s the mass appeal as almost every guitarist would need an overdrive pedal in their arsenal. And I’m also familiar with overdrive pedal designs. I've been modding and building a variety of overdrive pedals for years and so "mass producing" an overdrive pedal seems like the next logical step. "Mass produced" is an understatement here. I'm a one-man sweat shop handling almost everything from procurement, etching boards, drilling, painting, assembly, quality control... WMUM handles the marketing and artwork designs; something that they're very good at.

What was your reference point while creating this pedal?

Edwin :Little green and yellow boxes with Mushroom Stroganoff from thesoupspoon.com and plenty of Munich Dark from paulaner.com.sg. Actually, I use tons of MOJO components, using carbon composition resistors, tropical fish caps, NOS military grade germanium transistors, silver solder, silver hookup wires and most importantly, the ultimate top secret military space grade hifi audio lacquer that I marinate my components in for 7 days 13 hours. Not a minute more, not a minute less. The presence of the pedal is all from there, baby... hur hur hur.

How did the deal with the Wakemeupmusic shop take place? Why did you decide to take up their offer?

Edwin :*emo mode on* WMUM have been most accommodating to me from the very start, allowing me a permanent space to work freely and peddling my gear. Words can't express how much gratitude I have to them. *emo mode off* The only natural thing for me to do is to collaborate with them to produce a pedal that can hold its own, compared to other boutique pedals.

I heard that you guys have gotten quite a number of orders from overseas.

Edwin :The Japanese market has been very encouraging and we're steadily getting orders from the rest of the world. We just need to build enough to meet the current demand!

What are your plans this year? Are we seeing any new WMUM pedals? How about some tape echo love from you?

Edwin :I do have plans for a booster as well as a heavier distortion. Modulations and delays will not be in the program yet as I've yet to build a better modulation/delay pedal compared to the ones in the market. Why release a half baked pedal?

Which is tougher: pedal making or beer brewing? Be honest here.

Edwin :Pedal making cos beer brewing is done by the Brewmaster at Paulaner Brauhaus.