Dirty Boy has just pulled the ultimate power move for guitar effects pedals, striking a blow for analogue die hards in the process, as it has just unveiled a preamp pedal that is based on a digital guitar plugin.
The SilverBOY is a heavy-duty pedal, with knobs you can turn, a physical beast finished in that raw machined Dirty Boy house style, and yet it is a digital plugin in hardware form, the T-800 of preamp pedals.
Dirty Boy supremo Danny Gomez says it is a first for his company, but is it not a first for stompboxes? We can’t think of a precedent. The SilverBOY was originally co-developed with Two Notes Engineering for its Genome software eco-system. Now it's an actual thing.
“SilverBOY was born as code. Now it exists as hardware,” says Gomez, who designed the pedal alongside Roberto García. “It’s the first time we’ve built an analogue circuit from a virtual amp – reversing the whole industry’s direction.”
It might be too late to stop the onwards march of AI stealing our jobs, ransacking our minds. Social media’s algorithms have us wired to the moon. But this feels like a small victory for the old school – and the SilverBOY does not lack in features for its evolution out of binary coding. It’s got everything you need. Maybe more.
Well, let’s just talk about the connections it has. There is a headphones output (always welcome). There is a stereo line in (with a level control), an emulated output for 2x12 flavour when going direct, and a regular preamp output.
It can be used as your your all-in-one amp simulator for direct recording and performance. It can be placed in the effects loop of your guitar amp. It can be placed in front of your amp and used as a high-functioning distortion, boost and tone shaper. It even has a Variac control.
There is a 3-band EQ, gain and volume controls, a footswitch and no room for graphics because the enclosure’s real estate is maxed out with features.
As for the sound, Dirty Boy promises “everything from clean sparkle to snarling, collapsing fuzz-soaked saturation”. In other words a versatile tube-like boost that cleans up nice, is dynamic, and maybe, just maybe, is as good as the plugin if not better.
“Your virtual tone has now become physical tone,” says Dirty Boy. “Detailed, dynamic and dialed to the edge – with bite, punch, bloom, tube-like sag and raw harmonic behaviour”.
Raw harmonic behaviour is something we can absolutely get behind, and if you can too, then head over to Dirty Boy for more details. SilverBOY is available now, priced £357/$476. No, it’s not cheap. But still…
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.