KMA Audio Machines Launches Logan Transcend Drive with Switchable and Sweepable Pre/Post Parametric Mids

I must confess that although I’m a big fan of KMA Audio, I’ve still to add one of their many great pedals to my collection / Tone Library, even though a number have sat on my wishlist for quite a while. I’ve featured the majority of KMA pedals on this site, and indicated a desire to acquire at least the Dead Stag Muff-Style Fuzz/Distortion, Wurm High-Gain Metal Distortion and most recently the Tone Bender / Super-Fuzz -style Minos Germanium Fuzz.

The Logan fills in the Low-to-Medium-Gain range Drive that has hitherto been unrepresented in the KMA range - and as usual Enrico Preuß’s crew do things slightly differently. I am first of all delighted to see top-mounted jacks on this medium enclosure - which is an improvement over the Dead Stag and Wurm where these are are side-mounted. I also really like the Expression pedal application here - where you can sweep the Mid frequencies either as a sort of Phaser/Uni-Vibe, or as a pseudo-Wah. Jay Leonard J’s demo is my favourite of the ones included below as it best demonstrates this pedal’s capabilities and uniqueness.

Controls are as follows:

• Level - Volume
• Drive - Gain
• M-C/A - Mid Frequencies Cut/Boost
• M-Freq - Mid Frequency Focus
• Lows - Bass frequencies
• Highs - Treble frequencies
• Post/Pre - 2-way toggle switch for Mids EQ - either gain-boosted (Pre) or clean (Post)
• Q - Internal trimpot for adjusting the ’Q’ for the Mid Frequency
• Engage - Left footswitch On/ByPass
• Mids - Right footswitch Mids Active/ByPassed
• Exp - Expression jack for applying Expression pedal to sweep mids in Phaser or Wah -style fashion

The Logan Drive is €189 direct from the KMA Store or £175 from UK Dealers.

I of course would have preferred this pedal in a more compact CBA-style enclosure, but the dual footswitches, top mounted In/Out and extra expression jack go a long way towards justifying its form factor. This is a pretty distinctive drive pedal by functionality alone - which makes it worthy of consideration. It hits most of the sweetspots on my own preferences list - I love 3-band EQ with Parametric Mids - and the core tone here sounds warm and suitably articulate. This pedal allows you to do things that no other drive pedal currently offers - albeit you can combine different pedals to get similar. The application of the switchable mids here as a sort of boost totally brings to mind my Origin Effects RevivalDrive which deploys mids in a very similar fashion - albeit not positionally, and certainly not sweepably.

The Logan goes straight onto my wishlist - probably ahead of the other KMA incumbents as it offers scope that I currently don’t have in any of my existing drive pedals.