Spaceman Effects Evolves its Mercury Series / Platform into the 3-Band EQ Redstone Germanium Preamp / Overdrive / Gain-Stager

Firstly - apologies for the hiatus, I was on family duties for this past week but am back now firing on all cylinders! There were two big releases this week, and this is a key one for me as readers should be aware by now of how much I loved the Spaceman Mercury IV Germanium Boost. For a long time - that was my ultimate Harmonics multiplier - and Spaceman have now extended that concept via combining NOS Germanium Transistor - with an articulate Opamp - which together with 3-Band EQ should have you covered for all varieties of Harmonic gain - from boost to highly textured crunch across a gain scale of up to +40dB.

Controls - Volume, Gain, Low, Mid, High.

I love Harmonic Overdrives - where the Spaceman Aphelion is a long-term / all-time even favourite of that genre. Spaceman describe this new Redstone as a multipurpose sonic Swiss Army knife preamp - equally adept as a Boost, Line-Drive or Overdrive. It is also described as having a Harmonic Profile with 3-Dimensional Character - which is all of course right up my street!

I will for sure be comparing it it to the Mercury IV when I get mine - to see how its harmonic generation compares and differs to that. I’m most interested in this really as a Harmonic Overdrive. The Thorpy Heavy Water is my current choice for Harmonic Boost - with its two Boost Channels that you can deploy individually or in combination.

I will of course be comparing the Redstone to the Aphelion too - which is a wonderful Harmonic Overdrive - and my poster-child really for that genre. Will be interesting to hear / feel the impact of the +40dB taper on the Gain control - and see how much the 3-Band EQ adds to the Aphelion / Mercury template!

I’ve been kind of waiting on this story to see what the UK stockists are pricing this at - we all know that inflationary pricing has had an impact - and for instance the recent EQD Special Cranker - where we would have once paid the $ number equivalent, we UK customers are now paying £109 vs $99.

Andertons have been pricing Spaceman at the typical dollar / pound numerical equivalency - so the recent pedals were priced appropriately - at $229/£229 and $279/£279. While the Bank of England has just raised interest rates to 1% - so the $249 Redstone may be £249 or £259 even - be interesting to see - still nothing posted as of this publication.

Some of the US brands don’t coordinate adequately with International dealers - and we’re now typically seeing anything from 1 week to 6 weeks’ delay from when Americans get their hands on these pedals!

I’ve picked up most of the Spacemen from the last few years - including the very recent Delta and Explorer - and will certainly be looking to get my hands on one of the Redstones - as soon as they materialise on this side of the pond! That will take my Spaceman count to 15.

The only recent ones I haven’t had use for are the Saturn VI, Mission Control and Atlas III. Of the legacy pedals I always wanted near enough all of the compact editions - which means I would still ideally like to snag a Gemini III, Mercury III, and Rumblefuzz at some stage - while those are still trading for silly money! I feel Zak will eventually give us some updated version of the Rumblefuzz, and I must then be satisfied that I at least have the Gemini IV and Mercury IV!

I know quite a few of you are Spaceman fans - I’ve always liked the standard Black and White livery - while there have been some cool variants over the years - and each of the Redstone editions is actually pretty cool in its own way. Possibly the Yellow / Carbonado variety will be my choice this time around - I mostly associate Germanium with either Gold or Copper accents!

Who among you dear readers is looking to get one of these?