The Turbo Lover - Distortion
The aim here was to get a really chunky distortion, not an overdrive and not a fuzz but a proper distortion pedal with the perfect balance of thick yet tight low end and chunky as fuck mids. Perfect for chugging and soaring leads.
Given the name you can guess the inspiration in NWOBHM but also hardcore punk and death metal. We’re talking Judas Priest, Death, High On Fire etc. The Turbo Lover utilises multiple gain stages to keep the noise floor low while getting the gain levels up nice and high where we need them. It’s equally at home driving a clean high headroom amp or pushing a dirty or distorted amp right over the edge. On the surface it’s straight up four controls, gain sets the amount of distortion or gain. Volume sets overall volume. Treble and bass control high and low end respectively but also set the midrange. If both controls are below noon there will be an extra mid-range boost. Both above noon will start cutting mids and maxing them both out will give a huge mid scooped tone. Don’t forget though, mids are your friend especially in a dense modern mix. The distortion is achieved through a pair of low noise op-amps pushing a combination of three gain stages.
Internally we have some extra controls. If you want less mid-punch and grind and less gain overall you can dial back the gain trimpot as much as you like. The lower you go the less good it sounds. Then we have two sets of slide switches to set the clipping voice. These are described in the table below. The pedal comes preset with my personal favourite setting of both on position 2.
SOFT CLIPPING
BOTH OFF = LED
2 ON = ASSYM
1 ON = SYM SILICON
HARD CLIPPING
BOTH OFF = NONE
2 ON = LED
1 ON = SILICON