PRODUCT REVIEW
many features and possibilities and it can be
easy to feel a little overwhelmed. In a nutshell, it features two channels and a bunch
of controls that can be assigned to work with
three internal effects modules—one that
offers the tones from Z. Vex’s Super Hard-On
booster, one that serves up the company’s
famous Fuzz Factory sounds, and a Marshall-voiced tone stack with a three band EQ—in
innumerable ways. But that’s just the beginning. You can also quickly and easily modify
the circuits of included modules with individual electronics components to tweak tone
possibilities almost beyond imagination.
guts, you remove four black thumbscrews
from the upper section’s front panel and pull
it up. Then use the two convenient metal
rods to prop the plate open while you make
component changes on the fly. Inside, you’re
treated to a clean view of a modular design
that uses a master “breadboard”—a solder-less, plug-and-play circuit board commonly
used by DIY enthusiasts to experiment with
rough circuit designs. The Inventobox comes
with three tiny, proprietary circuit boards for
the aforementioned tone modules already
plugged into the breadboard.
The Inventobox was designed to be both
resilient to little component misfires and
roadworthy. Initial press releases about the
pedal seemed to indicate that it shipped
with a diverse variety of loose components
that you could place at varying spots in the
circuit, but to get the full gist of what the
Inventobox could do I had to make a trip to
Radio Shack to pick up a variety of capacitors to experiment with.
The Inventobox is housed in two standard Z.
Vex casings joined together, and it features 16
(count ’em— 16!) knobs, 17 LEDs, two three-
position DIP switches, and two footswitches.
And that’s just on the front panel—there’s way
more going on inside. To access the pedal’s
As you’ve probably figured out by now, the
key to the Inventobox’s coolness is that you
can alter the circuit to your heart’s content,
and no soldering is required. Just push the
component in firmly, and that’s that. If it
doesn’t work as intended or sounds bad, just
replace it with a different one.
Another speed bump we encountered
was that, although many procedures are
explained well in the included manual,
some of the terms—like “wiper,” “CW,”
and “CCW”—might confuse novices. Those
of us who have worked with circuits before
understand this language, but for everyday
guitarists they’ll prove a bit perplexing. (The
company informs us that a glossary is in
the works.)
