Hand-Made French-American Signal Cheyne Pedals are now available exclusively at Boost Guitar Pedals in the UK
My good friend Jim Button of Boost Guitar Pedals is impressively adept at unearthing cool and unique mostly undiscovered pedal brands. Brands such as Drunk Beaver, Kink Guitar Pedals, Red Noise, and StompNorth - while I would like to lay some claim on helping to bring Drunk Beaver to prominence!
Signal Cheyne is actually American abroad - Brian Cheyne, who has been based in France for quite some years now, and is resident of Yerres - actually a south-east suburb of Paris. Brian met his would-be wife in France back in 2008 and decided to stay on as such!
He started off as a hobbyist Pedal Builder in around 2016, making pedals initially for local musicians and friends, and built up to launching his official Signal Cheyne brand last year - in 2021. All the pedals are designed, engineered, hand-built, screen-printed and tested by Brian himself - using finest quality full-size Through-Hole parts / components - they are also very reasonably priced - ranging in this selection from £125 to £160!
Boost Guitar Pedals are launching Signal Cheyne in the UK today - where the following selection of 6 key pedals will be available at the start.
The ones that appeal to me the most are the versatile Nitro Drive, Odyssey Fuzz and Shelby High Gain Distortion - while the 2-knob Aurora Vibe, and One-knob Oberon RangeMaster and Sirius Mono Signal Blender are also of interest. Here follow the further individual pedal details :
Aurora Vibe - £149.99
Controls - Depth, Speed.
A really lush and simple 2-knob Vibe - capable of a pretty swirly and thick throb or as subtle as you like - couldn't be simpler really! I've recently developed a preference for Vibes before drives (or at least a phase I'm going through!) which sounds more harmonious to my ears! This is a really finely crafted and great sounding Vibe - which is the embodiment of elegant modulation - great price too!
Nitro Drive MKII - £139.99
Controls - Volume, Saturation, Tone, Gain, Internal Voicing Trimmer : Dark > Bright.
A cool and distinct really dynamic / touch-sensitive all-in-one Boost, Overdrive and Distortion pedal with smart 4th Saturation knob and internal Dark to Bright Voicing trimmer. The Nitro Drive is Brian's own design and has really cool dynamics with really decent guitar volume clean-up too. The Saturation knob adjusts the character of breakup / distortion and works in a similar way to Thorpy's Calibre control as far as I can discern. It would be cool to see a 6K DLX versions of this circuit with full 3-Band EQ - while it's already very capable as is.
Oberon Germanium Boost - £129.99
Controls - Boost, Range : Mid / High / Low, Internal Gain Trimmer.
Essentially a RangeMaster Boost using a fastidiously selected and perfectly biased NOS PNP Germanium Transistor. A really well priced glorious sounding full-range Treble Booster in short!
Odyssey 4K BC108B Silicon Fuzz - £149.99
Controls - Volume, Fuzz, Input (Pre-Gain), Bias.
A cool take on an enhanced / evolved Type II Fuzz Face derived circuit featuring 2 x BC108B transistors. In addition to the typical Volume and Fuzz controls we have an external Bias knob, alongside a 4th Input / Pre-Gain control which functions in a similar way to your guitar's volume clean-up. So you can set that on the pedal to a degree - rather than twiddling your guitar knobs. A really smart design of Silicon Fuzz Face type with obviously extended range - sounds really great. I would quiet like to see a Germanium version of this - utilising some of those Transistors Brian uses for his Oberon!
Shelby High Gain JFET Mu Distortion - £159.99
Controls - Volume, Distortion, Tone.
"Shelby is a hi-gain distortion pedal, all done with FETs! There are two pairs of JFETs in mu amp configuration - basically like a pair of tubes - which sound like a cranked amp. The distortion is real feeling and full of harmonics and beef. In total there are 3 stages of gain with 18V of headroom thanks to an internal voltage doubling circuit."
Brian reports that the Shelby pairs really well with a mid-hump boost say a Klon/e or Tube Screamer - or of course Brian's own Oberon!
Sirius Parallel Blender - 124.99
Controls - Blend : Dry to Wet, 180° Phase Inversion Switch.
Really smart utility pedal which can be used in a variety of ways - as a Volume pedal, A/B pedal, Summing Amplifier - and of course Parallel Blender to sum together the output of two pedals / signal chains. I've always been a fan of TheGigRig's Wetter Box - and this is a very stripped down version of that - albeit Mono only, i.e. no capability of using TRS Stereo cables. Really useful box though, and very well priced - most should be able to find good use for this!
All six pedals are available for order right now from the Boost Guitar Pedals Webstore!
At a time when pedal prices are rising significantly - it's always nice to find a new value-minded high quality brand and indeed affordable brand - and Signal Cheyne is exactly one such - I encourage you to check it out!
