Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone CSD
User Reviews of the Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone CSD
- Submitted by Kyle from Rochester, MN (26 points) on Feb 28, 2011
- The Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone is one excellent tone box for guitars of all kinds. Complete with solid compression, silky sustain, and a nice soft clip distortion, the Philosopher's Tone is tailored to fit the needs of all players.
For straight up guitar playing, the Sustain and Blend knobs work wonderfully together to give the perfect amount of compression or sustain that is desired. You can compress your single coil to sound like a flat piece of metal or sustain your humbucker to sound like your normal picking style is an E-Bow. The treble control also adds a nice layer of EQ to assist in rhythm or lead playing. The Grit knob is the control for the amount of distortion coming out of the box. When rolled all the way off, the pedal is completely clean and distorts from there. Alone, the distortion isn't anything to write home about, but when mixed with other fuzz, distortions, and overdrivers, the grit adds a nice layer of subtlety that can help to bring your current set up to a new level.
For noise application, the compression and sustainer do not work terribly well with synths or noise generators. It takes too much away from what they already create on their own. But if playing noise guitar, it can help to enhance your playing. For example, with the sustain cranked on this and then into a Big Muff, you can get tones that will last over a minute without dropping off. Not bad for an all analog pedal. Perhaps the best use for this effect for noise use is it's ability to self-oscillate on feedback. When all the knobs are cranked to full power, the pedal starts to feedback upon itself, then adjust all the knobs at your will to change the feedback tones. Putting that through ring mods, filters, and delays really makes this a crazy fun time.
Overall, the Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone is a great all around pedal with great applications in many styles of playing. For a fair price of around 0, you get an all analog pedal that can enhance your tone to new levels of enlightenment. - Good Points: Great sustain and compression Self-oscillates itself or crazy noise tones Fair price All analog Treble EQ to match your playing style Distortion mixes well with other high gain effects 18V Adptor included Small for pedalboard space
- Bad Points: Not a ton for noise applicatios Distortion is not great by itself
- Price Paid: US$160.00
- Purchased At: LighthouseMusic
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