Galileo, Figaro...Magnifico!
Lemme just go ahead and tell this story. I almost never buy stuff anymore. I'm too busy trying to SELL stuff and I'm not really successful enough at that to feel like doing the disposable income thing very often. Usually everything I spend is on R&D-related stuff and so I talked myself into buying this for exactly that reason.
It's the original two-footswitch Catalinbread Galileo. The left side is a riff on the RunOffGroove, "May Queen" circuit that's supposed to emulate Brian May's Vox AC30 sound. On the right is a simplified version of the Catalinbread Naga Viper treble booster, modded to emulate Brian May's treble booster. They don't make this version any more. People were apparently confused by the controls, so they simplified it as a one-footswitch pedal, but I've really been curious about the version with the Vox tone stack and separate booster. I found this one used on Reverb and had to try it.
OK, first off, the booster section is really nice. I've never tried a Naga Viper, but now I want to try one. It manages a pretty righteous Rangemaster sound without resorting to germanium transistors in the process. Very mean and gritty. Me likey.
The Vox side is gainy as all getout. I mean, I understand that people are obsessed with gain these days, but a Vox isn't really a gainy amp. You can probably see here that I've got the Gain control turned all the way down and it's STILL distorting like mad. The manual says, "Go ahead and set the Gain at maximum and back off as much as you feel necessary (to compensate for hot pickups)." OK, I've been using my Junior with its humbucker. Maybe the gain won't be so egregious with single-coil pickups, but I was amazed at how distorted this was.
The voicing is really nice, though. It gets that kind of vowel-sound thing going that Vox amps seem to do sometimes. Like, the wah pedal was designed as a solid-state simulation of the Vox tone stack. It just happened to fall into devious hands with other plans. This has that odd Vox flavor, though. Just SO gainy.
Anyway, that's my testimony and you know it's true because I swore myself in on a 1959 RCA Receiving Tube Manual.
Galileo, Figaro...Magnifico!
Lemme just go ahead and tell this story. I almost never buy stuff anymore. I'm too busy trying to SELL stuff and I'm not really successful enough at that to feel like doing the disposable income thing very often. Usually everything I spend is on R&D-related stuff and so I talked myself into buying this for exactly that reason.
It's the original two-footswitch Catalinbread Galileo. The left side is a riff on the RunOffGroove, "May Queen" circuit that's supposed to emulate Brian May's Vox AC30 sound. On the right is a simplified version of the Catalinbread Naga Viper treble booster, modded to emulate Brian May's treble booster. They don't make this version any more. People were apparently confused by the controls, so they simplified it as a one-footswitch pedal, but I've really been curious about the version with the Vox tone stack and separate booster. I found this one used on Reverb and had to try it.
OK, first off, the booster section is really nice. I've never tried a Naga Viper, but now I want to try one. It manages a pretty righteous Rangemaster sound without resorting to germanium transistors in the process. Very mean and gritty. Me likey.
The Vox side is gainy as all getout. I mean, I understand that people are obsessed with gain these days, but a Vox isn't really a gainy amp. You can probably see here that I've got the Gain control turned all the way down and it's STILL distorting like mad. The manual says, "Go ahead and set the Gain at maximum and back off as much as you feel necessary (to compensate for hot pickups)." OK, I've been using my Junior with its humbucker. Maybe the gain won't be so egregious with single-coil pickups, but I was amazed at how distorted this was.
The voicing is really nice, though. It gets that kind of vowel-sound thing going that Vox amps seem to do sometimes. Like, the wah pedal was designed as a solid-state simulation of the Vox tone stack. It just happened to fall into devious hands with other plans. This has that odd Vox flavor, though. Just SO gainy.
Anyway, that's my testimony and you know it's true because I swore myself in on a 1959 RCA Receiving Tube Manual.