After answering multiple requests from guitar players for a pedal that took the boost from Thorpy FX’s the Dane boost/overdrive and housed it in a standalone pedal, Adrian Thorpe has come up with the Heavy Water Dual High Headroom boost. And it looks pretty sweet.
It makes for a Capra-esque tale; the people spoke, Thorpe listened, and here we are with a standalone Dane. But the Heavy Water takes things further.
Sure, it has all the crystal clean headroom and boost of the Dane and houses it on the right-hand side of the pedal, but the pedal's left-hand side features a newly assembled boost circuit that’s a soupçon hotter, with germanium diodes on the board to clip your signal a little and bring out some dirty overdrive into the boost mix.
The Dane’s boost function worked like gangbusters with with either singlecoil or humbucker pickups, and this hotter boost-cum-drive sounds like it will perform similarly. And, if you ever find yourself in that moment when you need to really give your amp a shunt to punt out a little more gain and cut through, the Heavy Water is designed so you can engage both boosts at once, which, to borrow Mr Thorpe’s technical speak, will “absolutely smash the front end of a valve amp into submission.”
Which is all part of the fun of playing guitar.
The controls are simple: four rotary knobs, two for boost level, and two for “lows”, which increase a little fat into your signal. This is a lot of fun for Strat pickups or P90s, and it’s really how this pedal will interact with your pickups and amp that is most exciting.
The unit will leave a pretty small footprint on your pedalboard, dimensions: (W)65mm x(L)125mm x(H)53mm. And it’s powered by 9V power supply and retails for £189.99.
For more details and to order, click here.
