aggressive settings, the distortion can border on fuzz, but it retains plenty of harmonic definition. The tone and distortion
knobs are very interactive, and the former
generates a lot of harmonic content in the
high end, which can become very exaggerated when you crank the gain.
With a neck pickup, rolled-off tone,
and delay disengaged, you can get a fine
approximation of Robert Fripp’s sound
on King Crimson’s “Starless.” The nicely
compressed distortion, which blunts the
sound of pick attack in a really cool way,
can be so smooth in these settings that it
nearly sounds like backwards tape. At these
settings, the silky but aggressive tones of
Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin’s
Love Devotion Surrender album also come
to mind—and the pedal is as ideal for fast,
defined, single-note flurries as that associa-
tion would suggest
The delay knob brings in a solid-sound-
ing, tape-like echo that found me indulg-
ing in ripping, ethereal solos much more
than I ordinarily would—it’s real easy
to find the “Comfortably Numb” zone.
RATINGS
Pros: Awesome lead tones in one pedal. Cool ’70s-style
atmospheric possibilities.
Mad Professor Golden Cello, $199 street, mpamp.com
Cons: Possible reliability issues. Limited flexibility due to
internal delay controls.
Tones
Ease of Use
Build
Value
Though the factory-preset delay tone was
perfect, tweaking the internal trim pots
expanded its range in cool ways. I got nice
doubled sounds with the delay trims and
repeat pulled down, though my favorite
was bringing out heavy delay and murky
lo-fi repeats by cranking both delays pots
all the way.
The Verdict
With singing sustain and emotive, atmo-
spheric delay, the Golden Cello is a lead
guitarists dream machine. Many players
like several distortion pedals and delay tex-
tures on tap, but this pedal is a one-stop
shop for guitarists looking for saturated
and delayed lead tones that can flow and
blur into the infinite. The overdriven tones
have a foot in the ’70s, to be sure. If you
want to recreate the shag-era sounds of a
big amp driven to saturation, the Golden
Cello gets you mostly there for a lot less
dough (and in a lot less space) than a
raging Marshall. The tape-delay tones
are beautiful, too, although if you like to
tweak settings often or need more focus,
they may feel limiting.
