Pete Cornish's GC-1 Variable Soft and Hard Clipping Overdrive/Distortion Combines perfectly calibrated 3-Band EQ with a huge Gain Range of richly texture breakup tones

Readers will know that this is my first Pete Cornish pedal - and it seems fitting that I went with this 45th Anniversary Super-Versatile Edition which essentially covers 3 of Pete’e best-loved pedals - the Soft Sustaining SS-3, Crunchy sort of Plexi/Rat G-2 (G for Germanium Diodes?), and of course the textured saturation of the P-2 - Pete’s sort of evolved take on the Civil War Muff.

I ordered my unit on the morning of when I published my original article - on August 4th, and it landed on October 9th - so took a little over 2 months. Pete is a very busy guy - so please be patient!

I thought I would be able to fairly easily get CC-1 style tones out of this unit - and while you can soften the gain a touch by dialling down the 3 EQ’s - the actual Gain dial very much starts in prime SS-3 Soft Sustain territory - so you can only go softer by cutting the EQ. Fortunately there’s plenty of Volume on-tap to allow for such a scenario - while it doesn’t quite get into exactly that same lighter-touch Cornish Crunch territory. I acquired the Shnobel Tone Daily Driver specifically because it was the closest thing I had heard to the CC-1. While I may eventually have to bite the bullet on that one to satisfy my curiosity.

Key to all of these overdrives/distortions is how elegant the frequency profile sounds - with some really magical mid and high frequency content. Obviously Pete has chosen the 950Hz and 4kHz bands very carefully - while the 50Hz Bass frequency band delivers a vey significant depth and heft to the output.

The pedal pretty much goes from a moderate purr to a full-throated roar - and it does so in the most elegant ramping up of gain staging - switching seamlessly from soft-clipping to hard-clipping. The Gain taper really is a thing of wonder!

Controls - Active Bass (±50Hz), Active Mids (±950Hz), Active Treble (±4kHz), Volume (+20dB), Gain (+56dB - at max volume).

And while I have lots of overdrives which can deliver a similarly complex and richly textured breakup tone - the added secret sauce here really is in that elegant taper of Gain-staging, the seamlessness of Soft-to-hard-Clipping and how smooth that taper is. I also think there is something slightly magical about that EQ and those particular frequency selections which deliver such a distinctly musically accentuated output.

I’m currently still largely experimenting with the softer side of the pedal from 7 o’c to circa 10 o’c on the gain dial. I find a huge number of fantastic tones from 7 o’c right through to nearly 4 o’c there after the texture goes a little too dense for my liking.

Volume rarely goes above 2 o’c - so plenty in reserve, and as mentioned I tend to keep the Gain firmly in the left hemisphere, with EQ pretty uniformly at Bass at 2 o’c, Mids at 3 o’c, and Treble on Max!

Dimensions wise it’s around an inch longer on the height, while similar in width to a BB-size enclosure, I had no issue accommodating it in my rig - as you will see at the end of the month.

For sure it’s a pricy proposition at £548.51 and not quite as versatile as the rather larger and more expensive CBA Automatone MKII Preamp. While the GC-1’s tones are particularly distinct and distinguished in their own right and can wholly be justified running alongside the other.

Pete Cornish Pedals contain very special buffers, and some note that they can sound slightly different between different rigs - which is fairly par for the course. While I found it slotted in perfectly with mine and had no discernible impact or colouration of the core signal when bypassed.

Some will say the aesthetics are old-fashioned and slightly clunky, while for me this distinct white and black penguin style colour-blocking is a sign of quality.

This is for sure a truly magnificent wide-ranging Overdrive and Distortion - with plenty of sweet-spots and musical highlights. There are also subtleties and nuances here which won’t be discernible to all ears - while I must say I’m quite taken with this pedal and that it will be on the board for quite some while. It doesn’t replace the Shnobel Tone Daily Driver - not that that was every my intention. While I feel I’m going to need to spring for a CC-1 too at some stage.

I have one further key mid-size overdrive to try out - which is the Toneczar Dove - which will likely be one of the next candidates. The CC-1 will come a little later ...

Any Pete Cornish fans amongst you - besides the great Steve Mac of course!