Radial Texas Bones -’Top’ Overdrive
| Posted in Guitar
If you ever start a conversation with a guitarist about effects pedals, and in particular overdrive, you better make sure you have the whole afternoon put aside.
Even though it’s the most used pedal in the world and let’s face it, every guitar player has one, the subject is a massive one and debated endlessly.
When I started, there were about three makes of distortion pedal available, the Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, the Fender Blender, and the Colorsound Tone Bender. During the seventies, Boss, Ibanez and Electro-Harmonix appeared along with a few others that never endured. EH were a revelation, fun and cheap; who could forget their first Big Muff! Boss soon stretched their lead as the world’s most popular pedal and have now shipped over 10 million.
Overdrive pedals now? There’s hundreds, and the components and technology that go into their design and manufacture is state of the art and just like the ’boutique’ amps that are revered by their owners, there are the equivalent pedals. Expensive? Yes. Hard to get? Yup. Better? Not always.
Once in a while a company appears who seem to understand the whole concept a lot better than the competition. That company for me is Radial, and there’s one pedal that’s impressed the hell out of me. You’re looking at it, the Texas Bones. It’s a dual overdrive which means you can preset two independent levels of and toggle between them which is mega useful, and within the channel there’s three drive settings and tone knobs as well. Oh I forgot, it looks indestructible!
Of course it’s all in the sound and let me tell you, this thing delivers. It goes from vintage to hi-gain and all points in between. My current obsession with a certain Texas guitar player who hasn’t been near a razor in a while prompted me to get one of these and if you want that tone, this is it.
It’s Bad, it’s Nationwide.
Tags: Electro Harmonix, Radial