Roger Mayer vision series pedals.(GEAR)

British effects designer Roger Mayer is best known as the man who built and modified many of Jimi Hendrix's tone tools. Appropriately enough, two of the four pedals in his new Vision Series are descendents of Hendrix pedals, while another takes a new look at a classic British booster, and the fourth updates a pedal originally made for a pre-Zep Jimmy Page. In characteristic Mayer style, however, none of these is a "vintage reissue." The Page-1 Fuzz, Vision Octavia, Concorde+ Treble Booster, and Voodoo-Vibe Jr all offer considerable advances and improvements on the original designs. Their slim enclosures are stompably robust, and they benefit from slide-door battery access. Each device has a single Hard Wire Bypass output plus dual-buffered outs to put a cork in the "true bypass versus buffered" debate. All pedals were tested with a variety of amps and single-coil and humbucker guitars.

PAGE-1

Way back in 1964--before Jimi Hendrix even landed in London--Roger Mayer built a fuzzbox based roughly on the Maestro Fuzz-Tone for his pal Jimmy Page. The Page-1 recreates that early project, but with added circuitry for extra gain, and a Tone control for increased versatility. At its heart, however, beat two carefully selected AC128 germanium transistors (the same type used in many early versions of the Fuzz Face) that deliver a rather nasty, percussive, early-'60s-style fuzz. Germanium fuzzes are lauded for being smoother and more musical than silicon, but this is one hard, harsh mutha of a pedal. With the Gain set low, it gives a honking, dirty boost with seemingly no end of level. Bring Gain into the one-to-three o'clock range, and the tone is brutal and filthy with odd pulsating and gating effects at extreme settings. Amid a thumping band this pedal makes a major impact, but it's definitely one for brave souls or early fuzz purists.

VISION OCTAVIA

Octave pedals can be an acquired taste, but players addicted to that sleazy, pinched, octave-up sound find it hard to keep their toe off the "on" button once they get the knack. It all began with Mayer's Octavia, and the Vision Series update contains the feed forward and gating effects added to the final Hendrix version of the Octavia that were lacking from the previous RM production models of recent years. The Tone control is a new bonus, and the Drive control lets you push the effect into a degree of self-distortion in front of the octave note. The Vision Octavia is still a one-note-wonder (any attempts at polyphony elicit a dissonant clank--which is cool in itself for some applications), but use it "right" and that classic, wild, edgy sound is all there. A fine update to the original classic, this pedal works best with a neck-position single-coil a la Hendrix.

CONCORDE+

As much as treble boosters helped countless '60s rockers kick some balls out of the big tube amps of the day, the mere notion sounds like a one-way ticket to Tinnitus Town. So to stem the brutal highs of vintage units such as the Dallas Rangemaster and Vox boosters, the Concorde+ carries a well-voiced Tone control (think "fatness"), plus Drive and Output knobs. The circuit contains a single germanium AC128 transistor preceded by a low-noise silicon drive stage for added gain. A little experimentation quickly proved that this is far more than just a booster. ...