"For the past three or four years I was getting very frustrated with some of my pedals," Joe Satriani exclusively tells MusicRadar. "Effects are a huge part of my sound and the music that I make, but at the same time there's so much I wanted to change about them. So, when the opportunity to do something special at Vox presented itself, I decided to jump at it."
Over a year in the making, Vox and Joe Satriani have introduced The Satchurator distortion pedal - the first in a line of Satriani signature effects pedals. Drawing on the guitarist's knowledge accumulated from decades of groundbreaking performances, both live and in the studio, the Satchurator has been designed to Satriani's exact specifications. The Satchurator produces Satriani's signature tone and adds new features and improvements never before combined in a distortion pedal.
"For way too long I kept having to sacrifice tone and overall volume for the sake of distortion," says Satriani. "Those were some of the main issues I wanted to address with the Satchurator. Reduction of tone, too much noise, and not enough possibilities for individual user creativity - all things I wanted to fix. And after a lot of hard work and many prototypes, we're there. This is a pedal that will allow a player to be extremely expressive in the ways distortion can be used."
True to Satriani's wishes, the Satchurator is capable of very high gain levels, but operates more quietly and musically than other modern distortion pedals. It also preserves the tone and pick-attack of the guitarist plugging into it, regardless of style, from subtly distorted blues tones through classic rock and shred. The result is what Satch always envisioned: a professional-quality pedal that recaptures sought-after vintage and modern sounds in a powerful, versatile and extremely musical pedal design. And no Joe Satriani signature pedal would be complete without some of the guitarist's special touches, such as an additional footswitch called Just More, which is, as the name would indicate, an additional gain boost that adds a dynamic sweep to the sound.
"The Satchurator is the most musical, most dynamic, multi-function distortion pedal I've ever played through," says Satriani. "This little red box is a monster tone generator. The Vox team has delivered exactly what I need for the stage as well as the studio: a distortion pedal that responds to my touch, and produces a big, natural, harmonically rich tone compatible with any guitar/pedal/amp configuration."
The Satchurator pedal will be available in the summer. For more information, visit the official Vox website. For news of the new album, go to MusicRadar's exclusive Joe Satriani blog interview. And there's a JS podcast coming soon!
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