inside. A bonus is the 9-volt battery compartment on the back of the pedal that flips
open to allow immediate access to the battery without requiring a screwdriver. Thank
you for that! Rounding out the pedal is a
9-volt adapter jack and a hardwired true-bypass stomp switch.
able to jump right out of the mix without
additional EQ, which is pretty remarkable
considering how much gain was going on
these things tend to get lost fairly easily.
In addition, it played nice with my guitar’s
volume control, cleaning up to a respectable
level and still letting all the goodness of the
guitar and amp through. Nice.
The Coily Fuzz was begging me to plug in my
Strat and give it a whirl, so that’s just what I
did. Setting my amp to a generic clean tone,
I dimed the controls on the Coily just to
hear the most extreme side of the spectrum.
To my surprise, when it kicked in it didn’t
have nearly the amount of noise I expected.
Tonally, it harkened back to the late ‘60s, but
it definitely had more bark. Of course, in this
setting there was both a wallop of gain and
fuzz getting angry and snarling—in a good
way. Because the boost was quite extreme,
I backed off the Midnight Lamp (volume)
control, which brought the volume down to
a more reasonable level and let me begin to
hear the subtleties of the pedal. After a good
amount of time fiddling with the Midnight
Lamp and Electric Ladyland (fuzz) controls, I
was able to conjure up striking, Hendrix-like
tones and go all the way to “Spirit in the
Sky”-like broken fuzz sounds. The Coily had
everything I like in pedals of that era, but
with more thickness and bite at the same
time. Those aren’t usually things that go
together, but in this case they do, and they
do so very well. Recording a few tracks, I was
Rating:
Betty Boost
The Betty Boost is described as a clean boost/
overdrive. I don’t normally get too excited
about that category of pedal but this one stood
out right away with its obvious allusions. The
controls couldn’t be much simpler, with a single
Voluptuousness knob for volume/gain and a
mini-toggle labeled Cup Size to engage the
overdrive—double D! It shares the same craftsmanship as the Coily Fuzz, as well as the same
case size and nifty 9-volt battery compartment.
groovy fuzz is your aim.
Buy If...
Skip If...
you’re thinking, “Fuzz? I don’t
need no stinking fuzz!”
Freekish Blues
Street $185
freekishblues.com
geargasstore.com
or use a mobile
device to read
this QR code
to hear sound
samples of this
pedal at
premierguitar.com
CLICKHere…
www.premierguitar.com
PREMIER GUITAR MAY 2010 163
