Past Song Fighter State Shirt releases world's smallest pedal

[Lunkhead]

State Shirt, who entered many Song Fights and attended some Song Fight Presents shows, has started a new company "Olinthus" with a friend of his. They've just launched their first product and it's the world's smallest guitar pedal, a teeny tiny Tubescreamer clone not much bigger than a guitar pick! They've managed to get a lot of the popular pedal/gear YouTubers to review their pedal and folks seem to love it.

State Shirt worked at Strymon and other music gear companies doing various things including marketing. Olinthus's marketing is pretty brilliant, and I think they're going to do well. Sounds like they'll follow this up with a few more micro pedals then a micro pedal board, then on to better and literally bigger things most likely. Pretty cool!

Sizzle reel:


Talk-y intro and details:


Apparently it's $99, so the price is not as tiny as the pedal. And you have to have a funky breakout cable that it comes with which probably won't be fun or easy to replace. But it sounds like a Tubescreamer and is comically small.

[jb]

They seem to indicate it's a Tubescreamer clone, but the audio samples sound way better to me than a TS.

It feels to me like in practice you'd want this mounted on your guitar and maybe always on or there as basically an additional set of tone knobs-- hey there's an idea--- mod this little guy directly into a guitar body.

[mo]

I mean on the one hand, does the world really need another tubescreamer? On the other hand, I bought one right away

(partially just to support Ethan, but also because I have been getting back into TS-style overdrives the last month or so, after a couple of years of using pretty exclusively fuzzes. While it is not true that every overdrive is a TS, it is true that much of the market is really just a TS variant with slightly modded component values. I traditionally haven't liked the characteristic mid hump of the TS, which is really mostly a low end shelf and a high end shelf, centered around 650-750 hz depending on the circuit, but it is really useful for getting that smooth solo tone, or for a little bit of boost that tightens up the tone. That said, the sound samples sound like a pretty good TS to me. What I'll really be looking for when I get mine is the noise floor, pretty much everything else seems like pretty standard good tubescreamer to me. I have an EQD Plumes that has been my TS-esque pedal with options, and it is a pretty good pedal, and extremely, extremely quiet even at higher gain levels. My issue with it is mostly that it seems to prefer dark amps, as it has a certain brightness that cannot be usefully dialed out without losing some other things. I also have another boutique TS that allows me to change op-amps whenever I want, but honestly after playing with it for a while I just settled on the regular classic JRC4558D. My issue with that one is that I think it's a little too noisy, which is probably indicative of inconsistent component tolerance/wiring.)

In any case, I will play with the Cicada and report back (I'm also contemplating SOGF-ing it, even before I get it)

[mo]

They seem to indicate it's a Tubescreamer clone, but the audio samples sound way better to me than a TS.

It feels to me like in practice you'd want this mounted on your guitar and maybe always on or there as basically an additional set of tone knobs-- hey there's an idea--- mod this little guy directly into a guitar body.

you could probably clip it to a guitar strap too