One of the most recognizable pieces of gear in classic rock canon is the old Hornby-Skewes Treble Booster, a version of the classic effect used by too many artists to list. While almost all of them used a Rangemaster, the Hornby-Skewes version came stock with a silicon transistor for a more biting sound that cut through even the densest of mixes. The SKEWER stays true to that circuit, giving the old JHS unit the same treatment as our Naga Viper. This lets you dial in the desired frequency range from rich and full to treble-heavy, as well as control the amount of boost. You can also vary the amount of transistor gain for some extra juice. Some players had their original Treble Booster modded to play nicer with the rest of their gear.

Product Page

Review by bonedo

Demo by That Pedal Show

Demo by Guitar Pedal Demos

Product Page B

Manual

Skewer

Featuring a plethora of useful options, the Giygas gives you everything you’ve ever wanted in a fuzz box, along with some stuff you never knew you wanted (but deep down, you totally knew).  The core of the fuzz circuit is brawny and fierce, yet with plenty of violin-like sustain and articulation on tap, and the entire thing is wrapped in a clean blend circuit. From there, the fuzz gets catapulted into a gyrator-based mids boost, and then into a tilt EQ circuit. With the blend rolled all the way back, you can use just the powerful high-headroom EQ to sculpt your clean tone. A horde of options await you under the hood, ones that will make our four-stringed friends extremely happy. 

Demo by Demos in The Dark 

Demo by AndyDemos

Demo by Does It Doom?

Demo by JayLeonardJ

GIYGAS

It’s uncertain what exactly the origin of flanging was. It could have been the result of trying to push the boundaries of multitrack recording, probably due to running a couple tape machines in parallel but not quite in sync… Maybe a guy messing around in the studio brushed up against a take-up reel flange accidentally?  Maybe that guy was Les Paul, maybe it was John Lennon and George Martin? It is unclear. But, what is clear is that the mechanical studio method of achieving the effect became, within a decade, commonplace enough for companies to simulate the effect electronically. The electronic approaches were pretty cool and groundbreaking, but by the 80s became tired and worn out. At Catalinbread we attribute this to the fact that these units controlled the flange effect using an LFO that went up and down at a predictable rate taking the life and freshness out of the effect. When we decided to design a flanger, we knew we would approach it the way they originally did it…

Official Product Video

Demo by ProGuitarShopDemos

Review by reddit /guitarpedals

Review by AMAZONA

Review by The Gear Page

Zero Point

The Sinkhole is perhaps our most ethereal reverb unit to date. We’ve combined a harmonically-rich “hole” reverb with an impossibly deep four-voice chorus that’s been outfitted with a feedback control and a gentle high-cut filter. Within this arrangement, the feedback control allows the Sinkhole to reach deep within the reverb to extract some truly otherworldly tunable modulation, featuring everything from comb filtering to pseudo-phaser to haunting auto-filtering. That aspect never gets out of control; it’s all wrapped up within the confines of the reverb. We’ve stretched the reverb trails out to their absolute limit, with the maximum decay time almost freezing your signal in space. Extreme settings evoke warm synthesizer pads, reminiscent of vintage analog-digital hybrids, holding your modulated note indefinitely. Combine all that with a full wet-dry blend and a warm preamp circuit, and you’re beginning to feel the gravity of the Sinkhole. Let’s get pulled in, shall we?

Review by Gearnews

Review by musicradar

Demo by 60 Cycle Hum

Demo by SHOEGAZER CHANNEL

Sinkhole Modulated Reverb

We try out a lot of different circuits at Catalinbread when looking for new ideas, always looking for that spark of something special. During one such prototyping session, one circuit really stood out. We’re talking about a rare and obscure circuit known as the Harmonic Percolator. “Wow! There’s something to be mined here!” This circuit has the amazing property of generating predominantly even-order harmonics – which creates an amazingly sweet and clear distortion. 

You may know of this circuit from its use by Steve Albini, who owns one particular unit that apparently has magical properties no other unit seems to have. We could search for holy grails and chase rainbows, but we saw a potential beyond one person’s use of it. Oddly enough, the ‘Percolator has a reputation for creating an ugly sound, albeit a cool and ugly sound. But we found something beautiful in it. So beautiful that you could play complex jazz chords through it and every note rings sweet and clear. So, using the original circuit as the springboard, we created the Karma Suture.

Demo by Dennis Kayzer

Review by Musiker-Board