9 of the Best Steve Painter Buffalo FX Pedals

This is Steve's celebrated take on the Pete Cornish G-2 with an additional Contour Mids-sweep knob to go with the classic trio of Drive, Tone and Level. The provenance is something along the lines that Pete Cornish started off with a fairly conventional take on Ram's Head Muff before he added 4 Germanium Diodes and changed the circuit up somewhat. Some people liken the tonal character to that of a ProCo Rat, while for me it's kind of a clever mix of Plexi texture with long-tail Muff-like sustain. I like to call the G-2 derivatives / variants Plexi-Muffs where some examples lean more toward the Plexi-side of texture, while others like the Vick Audio V-2 lean more towards the Muff-side. This is currently my equal favourite Buffalo with the Patriot MKII.

So this is the one that got away and never was for most. 100 of us put in preorders for the limited run at the end of June this year, where the pedals were due to be delivered through July. In fact I believe less than 20 made it to their rightful owners and Steve disappeared from the face of this Earth. I am a huge fan of Flangers and have a number in my collection - none finer of course than Thorpy's Camoflange. I was hoping I could run these two head-to-head and the only way to do that was via acquisition as it was a limited run. I've heard a few indistinct demos of the Reticon to date, nothing though that sways me from believing that the Camoflange is the very finest of its type - particularly with those smart controls and high frequency sparkle. The Reticon would have made a decent almost-there alternative - and in fact that's how it goes down in posterity - an almost there Flanger which never quite fully materialised. I'm really not sure what the future path is here as Steve is wholly AWOL and no rationale has been been forthcoming - it would seem likeliest though that only a few units completed production before Steve took ill as such. This would have been a nice-to-have, but you won't really miss it if you have a Camoflange! There used to be one flakey demo on YouTube, but now even that has disappeared. I will load up further references if and when they materialise. Controls for the Reticon were Rate, Range, Color, Matrix Filter, Treble, Blend and Level - and it operated at 18V.

Steve has built a a number of Germanium Fuzz variants over the year with - essentially a more feature-rich take on a Fuzz Face, and utilising a variety of rare NOS transistors including 2SB175 and 2N404 varieties - earlier models has different names including Stiletto, while the most recent have been V1 to V3. Only a few batches are made of each, and then reproduced later on with different transistors and a new designation. For a Fuzz Face style Fuzz this is fairly unique in having a Pre-Gain control alongside Fuzz, Level and Bias. Each batch ovbiously sold out at the time - and I evidently had other concurrent priorities. As a Fuzz fan and a Fuzz Face fan - I would quite like to own one of these Germanium Fuzzes - not particularly bothered which - although it would be nice to own a V1 Matsushita 2SB175 variety if that ever materialises again on Reverb.com.

This is more of a Pete Cornish / Gilmour Hybrid derivative (P-1+) as its core tone and texture emulates a Ram's Head Fuzz being stacked with / juiced by a Power Boost. The obvious difference versus a standard Muff pedal is the distinct split of Tone function into separate Bass and Treble Controls - of course accompanied by the typical Sustain and Level. Generally I have a slight preference for the somewhat more tonally versatile Patriot MKII (more P-2 / Civil War Muff) where I somewhat weirdly tended to prefer Pete Cornish's P-1 to his P-2. These are not exact tone-replica matches but rather near-sound-matches with some distinguishing and different character in the tone.

This is somewhat adjacent to the Pete Cornish P-2 or smoother Civil War style Muff. Steve Painter has really upped the tone-shaping potential here with Tone, Mids and Lows controls, alongside the more conventional Sustain and Level. As mentioned - this is vying for my current favourite Buffalo FX pedal alongside the Evolution. They're pretty much running neck and neck in my preferences and on any given day I may name either one over the other - very much depends on mood. The combination of controls here gives you exceptional control over the tone and texture of the pedal - and it's one of the very finest of its genre.

This is of course Steve's take on that most essential David Gilmour pedal - the Colorsound Power Boost / Overdriver - here as an 18V edition. This is of course based on later Master Volume 4-knob examples - where that extra Master Volume dial was located on the right-hand-side of the pedal. So you have controls for Bass, Treble, Gain and Level. I of course included this in my Power Boost roundup a while back and is one of my favourite candidates of this genre. While I personally prefer the little bit extra that the Supa Driver delivers - that essentially being a slightly more gainier and extended range version of the Power Booster.

As mentioned, this was essentially an extended range version of the Power Booster with additional Preamp stage and control knob - otherwise the same Gain, Volume, Bass and Treble equivalents of the Power Booster. It really depends what application you are looking for here - if you want more headroom in a style that is more in line with David Gilmour - then the Power Booster is obviously the best choice for you, while if you rather prefer some more gain extension and texture (like me) then you would more likely want to hunt down a copy of the Supa Driver - which appeared in two editions - the former possibly a little too close to the Pete Cornish look-and-feel!

And finally onto the quintessential Buffalo FX Pedal - the TD-X, or Steve Painter's take on David Gilmour's other essential pedal - the BK Butler Tube Driver. The TD-X is the Buffalo FX pedal I have featured on this site the most, and is probably most people's first stop-off on the Buffalo FX journey. While I elected to go with the more mids-pushed Carrera derivation. I've mentioned before that the TD-X and Carrera are sort of two sides of the same coin - a very tube-amp-like preamp - where the TD-X is more vintage and scooped in frequency profile, and the Carrera is the more modern mid-pushed variant. Which you prefer will depend largely on what tones you seek, and which guitar/pickup combo you play through. I chose the Carrera, as I felt that would better appeal to me - while shortly after acquisition I also got the Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII - where the very first tones I landed upon were almost identical to how I'd set the Carrera - so however great the Carrera is - it was very rapidly subsumed and ousted as such by the Automatone Preamp. The TD-X in the meanwhile is the leading all-time best seller Buffalo FX pedal.