Sitek's New Dual-Natured Joss Allen Signature Freya Low to Mid-Gain Overdrive Booster combines its Goddess namesake's zeal for Love and War

I feel that there are broadly speaking 2 categories of best-fit user here - while you will have the occasional broader-based eclecticists who deploy all the different modes. For most players though the decision will be whether you use the pedal for primary or secondary purposes. As mentioned, I'm very much in the former category - I'm a clean pedal platform amp champ - and while I have a whole series of metal high-gain pedals too - everything goes into a 2 x clean amps stereo setup. This means I really enjoy the unadulterated nature of raw overdrive and fuzz. While there are a whole load of players out there that only deploy and utilise overdrives as booster style secondary tools / accessories - and really only actually like fuzz if it's tempered by a driven amp.

The Dual nature of the Freya is such that it has been honed for both these purposes and you can argue amongst yourselves which half you think is the more successfully realised here. For me though the Freya has a sufficiently distinct and interesting character all of its own to make it fully independently viable. It does have that slightly darker character lean which I mentioned - which makes me recall in part the core tonality of Sitek's Cocoa Distortion - while that is of course much crunchier and higher gain. I would say by and large that as an overdrive, the Freya is particularly well-suited to single-coil pickups - with Ablerto Barrero's Strat sounding particularly stellar in his above demo.

But while the Freya is Tube Screamer adjacent it's not your typical Tube Screamer by voicing or overall character - there are obviously vastly different degrees and flavours of soft-clipping - beyond that notable mid-frequency-hump. There are actually various factors and parameters I use to analyse and benchmark my drive pedals - focusing on signal density, texture, openness and overall timbral and harmonic breakup character in particular. And the character and timbre of the Freya is sufficiently distinct to make it an intriguing proposition in this heavily saturated marketplace - it certainly has a degree of density and darkness to it - but still within that rather more lower gain drive category - and where the use of a pre-gain boost greatly softens and improves its character and adds an elegant and even sustain very much to my liking.

I would be very interested to conduct a straw pole on all who have acquired the Freya to-date and for what purposes - I'm aware of significant numbers of both bluesy overdrive and metal players - while I'm not clear what the exact split is or where the more significant appeal resonates. The video demos to date have been polar-opposites from either end of the usage spectrum - which nicely rounds up things with another circle-back to the Goddess Freya duality metaphor.

This is the first Sitek dual-pedal as such - and the final execution has been top-notch quality from every perspective. I feel it treads the 'Signature Pedal' line / route very carefully as this is very much an all-rounder pedal with a broad scope of abilities and appeal - unlike many artist pedals which end up being all too limited and narrow in their scope.

There's an interesting juxtaposition in the two core natures of this pedal as they are so far apart - Lower-Gain to Blistering Metal applications, and part of me fears that because of that duality the pedal might not reach the level of success it fully deserves. That said - right now Sitek cannot make these fast enough - every batch has been sold out within moments - so thankfully things are off to a great start. If you're interested in getting your own - check in with the Sitek Store - and you can email Andy for updates on when the next batch is coming through.