LOTUS DESIRE BOOST,
PIGTRONIX CLASS A BOOST,
CAROLINE GUITAR COMPANY
ICARUS BOOST,
AND WHIRLWIND
THE BOMB
BY JORDAN WAGNER to hear audio clips of the pedals at premierguitar.com/apr2012
CLICKHere…
Agood boost pedal can be one of the most indispensible tools in a guitar- ist’s arsenal. Some amps, after all, have only so much to give. And even if
your amp has channel switching, second channels can have completely different
gain structure and voicing. Sometimes you just want a little more of the sound
that you’ve worked so hard to perfect, with a little attitude on top. That’s where
boost pedals come in.
Some boosters are designed with the intent of adding, say, a sharper edge to
the high end, or darkening the tone to create a bluesier, softer tonality. Most,
however, are designed to make you louder without sacrificing any of your tone’s
original voice in the process. We decided to test out four of the newest boutique
booster pedals on the market to find out what they can add to the sonic brew.
To give the pedals a proper shakedown, I used a combination of a 2011
Fender American Telecaster—a real workhorse with a clear and biting voice that
works well with boosters, and the clean, detailed tone of a Mesa/Boogie Royal
Atlantic, which provided a great canvas to hear just how these pedals work.
Lotus Pedal Designs
The Desire’s circuit employs a JFET gain
stage, which is there to add a little grit and
muscle to the boosted tone. While most
boost pedals strive to provide the same origi-
nal tone with simply more volume and clar-
ity, the Desire Boost dirties things up a bit.
Lotus also designed the Desire Boost to have
an extremely high input impedance, which
makes it handy for taming noise from noisy
cables, and preserving a guitar’s signal at the
front of a line of buffered effects.
The Desire Boost added a lot of bounce
in the low end, a quality that got more
pronounced the harder that I hit the strings
with my fingertips. Running through some
standard country progressions, you can hear
the natural feel and warmth of the Lotus.
It infused the Mesa’s beautiful cleans with a
bubbly low end and crisp highs, that actual-
ly found me dropping the amp’s treble knob
a bit to get it under control. As natural
and rubbery as the lows become, the highs
retain a very hi-fi quality that makes arpeg-
gios dazzling with a touch of extra sustain.
With the capacity to boost, enhance clarity
and harmonic content in clean environ-
ments and add a little dirt, the Desire Boost
is a well-rounded slice of simplicity.
Desire Boost Pedal
The Desire Boost one of the more functionally simple devices in this roundup.
It’s also one of the most sparse-looking.
Lotus strives for simplicity with and this
single-knob booster makes do with a little
red paint and a plain black label, bearing
the make, model and country of origin (the
good ‘old US-of-A). The Desire Boost looks
low-key, but there’s more to this circuit
than what meets the eye.
RATINGS
Lotus Pedal Designs
lotuspedaldesigns.com
Desire Boost Pedal
Street: $169
Tones
User Friendliness
Build
Value
Pros
Outstanding clarity boost. Fantastic low end.
Cons
High end can be pretty sharp.
