And when I needed a dose of Stones- or Faces-like swagger, I loved the sound of a Les Paul neck pickup and the Greer’s drive set around 4 o’clock.īut the expansive sweep of the Lightspeed’s freq.

The grittiest tones have a lot of character, however, and there’s more than enough attitude to enable a clean amp to take on raunchy riffs like the Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” Getting this kind of medium-gain grit is easy with humbuckers. The Lightspeed starts crystal clear and maxes out somewhere in the mild drive range.

If you need an overdrive that also generates thick distortion, the Lightspeed is probably not your pedal (you might want to check out Greer’s Tone Smuggler instead). At this range, you can decrease the loudness for a fatter, unity-level lead tone or keep it high to use the Lightspeed for a sharp and glassy lead. Kicking drive up to 10 o’clock yields more saturation, with the tones dancing between clean and gritty, depending on your picking intensity. Excellent tones for both single-coils and humbuckers. If you’re using a more powerful amp (in my case, an Orange OR50,) this is a great way to thicken the overall output and add sustain while retaining a relatively clean tone. This requires turning loudness to around 3 o’clock to reach unity gain. It can be set up as a very transparent near-clean boost by dropping the drive to the bare minimum. One of the nicest things about the Lightspeed is its ability to add a range of drive-from light boost to dirtier tones. But there’s certainly something intriguing about what lurks behind the muck, especially on such a simple effect. For hardcore circuit nerds, this is a bummer. Popping off the four back-plate screws leads you to the 9V battery compartment and a circuit board dipped in a foggy epoxy to protect the identity of it’s secret components. Reverse-engineers beware: If you’re trying to dissect what makes this Greer organic, forget it. knob makes the pedal friendly to just about any pickup configuration. … the expansive sweep of the Lightspeed’s freq.

Greer lightspeed