Shawn Tubbs teams up with REVV Amps for Signature Vintage Style Tilt Overdrive + Boost Pedal
Veteran AAA Nashville Session Player Shawn Tubbs is a Tone Hero to so many of us - where I’ve actually always associated him most with Steven Pettyjohn’s Pedals - like the Chime Overdrive. For his typical Amp Selection he tends to favour Suhr, REVV and Friedman Amps - so the REVV connection is not unexpected - just that I typically associate him rather more with Pettyjohn on the pedal front.
The Blurb reads that this Overdrive is inspired by Shawn’s favourite Vintage style Tube Amp Head, but doesn’t mention exactly what that would be. Shawn’s current Amp roster consists of (in alphabetical order) - Divided By 13 FTR 37, Friedman BE-100 Deluxe and Dirty Shirley 40, Red Plate Blues Machine, REV D20 and Gen 7-40, and Suhr Badger 35, Bella and Hedgehog 50 Amps. Pattern-wise leaning slightly into Marshall inspired types.
Controls - DRIVE } Treble, Bass, Volume, Gain; BOOST } Boost, Tilt EQ, Tight : Half (Top Shelve) / Normal (Full Frequency Boost) / Full (Top Boost + Low Cut), Separate Footswitches for Drive and Boost, Internal charge pump doubling Volts to 18V from 9V input.
This Tilt Overdrive is designed to cover all of Shawn’s key tones from light and sweet through to saturated solos. The left-hand drive portion is rather more conventional with 2-Band EQ, Volume and Gain, while the right-hand Boost side goes rather more clever with wide-ranging Boost, see-saw Tilt EQ, and a 3-way Tight Switch which accentuates different frequency clusters via cutting or boosting parts of the signal. ’Half’ shelves off the top end, ’Normal’ gives you a Full Frequency Boost across the frequency range, and ’Full’ Boosts the Top End, while Cutting some of the Low End.
Obviously by combing the two sides you can carve out all manner of interesting tones and textures right across the frequency spectrum. While I question the need to have the pedal quite as large as this. There are plenty of vertical BB-size pedals which accommodate a similar number of features, and in fact I feel that Chase Bliss, Jackson Audio, Tsakalis Audioworks and Walrus Audio could even have accommodated such a feature set within compact enclosure.
Some players have slightly larger feet and feel more comfortable with a wider spread between dual footswitches - while for me this is very slightly over-sized. Also slightly odd that you wouldn’t have an order toggle to invert the Boost and Drive arrangement - for even more tonal flexibility.
It certainly sounds the part, and looks the part for the most part! - albeit I’m not sure what the significance is of the vintage and slightly static motorcycle graphic in relation to Shawn Tubbs. This is a signature pedal that’s obviously very much been designed to Shawn’s exacting requirements. Versus a more generally appealing everyman pedal necessarily. Previous REVV Pedals have featured rather bold primary colours - so these more subtle and elegant looks are quite the departure from those looks-wise.
There’s much to like here, while I can’t help feeling that the format could be slightly more compact - at least to Vertical BB-size dimensions. Instead you get something which is pretty much exactly the same size as two compacts right next to each other.
I feel a lot of people are going to like this - while we need a few more descriptives on which amp this is mostly based on - so as to be able to place this accordingly and more accurately. It sounds suitably Marshall-y to me in many places so that it does indeed seem to match Shawn's amp roster.
Pricing of $299 / €299 / £299 seems pretty reasonable for a two-in-one - and these are available right now for pre-orders, arriving imminently in stock at the REVV Webstore and at most International Dealers.
What say all of you? Who’s considering adding this to their board?
Demos
