Ogre Tubeholic, Kronomaster & Thunderclap FX Pedals

The world is full of wonderful and unique guitar pedals but most of them look pretty much the same. It’s safe to say however that the pedals I am looking at here are definitely different with Gothic and futuristic designs that would sit proudly on any young Metalhead's pedal board!

Pros:

Unique designs and aesthetic features
Solid construction
Metal tone to the max!

Cons:

Love 'em or hate 'em looks
Live use of these pedals could be compromised due to design

Ogre Tubeholic, Kronomaster, & Thunderclap FX pedals

In a world of me-too lookalikes, Ogre pedals really stands out. Whether you happen to like that uncompromising aesthetic is down to personal taste, but what we're really interested in is how they sound. Sam Bell does the honours. 

The world is full of wonderful and unique guitar pedals but most of them look pretty much the same. It’s safe to say however that the pedals I am looking at here are definitely different with Gothic and futuristic designs that would sit proudly on any young Metalhead's pedal board!

Ogre The Tubeholic overdrive pedal

Ogre's Tubeholic is a Tubescreamer style overdrive with a bit more drive. The pedal features a futuristic alien design with eyes that light up bright blue when the pedal is activated. Flipping the forehead section of the aliens face will ‘pop the hood’ of the pedal so you can access the pedals controls. The pedal is set up just like a traditional overdrive pedal. You have a level control for the overall volume and front end of the pedals effect going into the front of the amp, you have a tone control to tailor the upper middle and treble range of the pedal and the drive knob which controls the amount of overdrive the pedal exhibits. As far as this pedal sounds, it does exactly what you would expect an overdrive pedal to do, when put in front of a valve amp it will push an amp's clean channel into a light bit of creamy overdrive and when put in front of a driven channel we can expect some huge sustaining notes for some super metallic shredding!

Ogre The Thunderclap distortion pedal

This pedal looks like something from hell itself! With a design that looks like an evil henchman from one of the early Doom video games, the pedal's upper ‘horns’ actually have a practical use – they're the controls! This pedal is an extreme distortion pedal, with a level control, bass, treble and gain control. Complete with piercing LED light up eyes when activated this pedal sounds like it looks. Super fuzzy, Black Sabbath levels of distortion at your fingertips, notes just rip roar out of the amp. My only slight worry with this pedal is the placement of the horn control knobs could easily be knocked in a live performance situation and it’s not exactly easy to tell where your settings are at. This pedal might also take up a bit more pedalboard footprint than some others. However, I feel the point of these pedals is that they look different and are there for visual appearance as much as sonic.

Ogre Kronomaster delay pedal

Taking a step back to Ogre's futuristic alien designs, the Kronomaster delay works much the same way as The Tubeholic pedal. Popping the hood of this bad boy will give you access to a Mix, Repeats and Delay control knob. The mix determines the level of the delay effect, repeats lets us control how many repeats you hear and the delay control determines the length of the delay. This pedal sounds best in the FX Loop of the amp so the repeats you are hearing are the amps effected tone, rather than putting it in front of the amp where the amp will treat the delayed repeats as original input signal. This pedal has a monstrous delay time and with some experimentation you can add anything from a bit of ambience to your tone, a cool delay with your ripping solo or huge space ambience for some sci-fi chord work. Once again, this is a fine enough pedal and you'll probably love it or hate it more for its looks than its sound.

CONCLUSION

All of these pedals operate with 9 volt battery or regular power supplies and they are sturdy in their metal construction. They also offer true bypass operation. Clearly, they have been designed to appeal to the Metal player and that's fine – why not? They may not win any awards for pushing the boundaries of pedal effect sounds but they do what they set out to do perfectly well and they must cost a lot more to make compared with the traditional plain box pedals we are all used to. If you like this look then they are definitely worth checking out.