Stompbox Blog: Cusack Screamer

Stompbox Blog

Welcome to the guitar effects virtual museum. I have been collecting stompboxes for the past few years and wanted to share some thoughts. I will continually add more pics and opinions. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks for looking.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Cusack Screamer


Jon Cusack(not the actor from Say Anything) was an electrical engineer that was fed up with all the false claims by pedal manufactures about good tone. Putting his ears and skills to good use he engineered what he felt was an improvement on the original Tubescreamer design and started his company with the slogan "Reality In Tone". His clone of the cult pedal classic is considered one of the best and interestingly enough doesn't even use the usual JRC4558 chip present in most clones. He allows you to switch them out with a socketed input although I wouldn't recommend it. He clearly knows what he is doing using quality components at an outstanding price. When designing his pedal he searched in vain for knobs that replicated the "chicken-head" knobs from the 1940's but couldn't locate any small enough for a pedal. He scaled them down 75% and then built a mold to make his own. His cases are made from die-cast aluminum and the serial numbers and wording are machine cut into the enclosures. The first thousand in production were not painted as you can see on the #129 unit above. The Mach 2 versions are orange although custom colors are also available. Attention to detail is evident from the neoprene skid plat, quality soldered joints, unique battery clip, Cliff jacks secured, and the fact that everything is connected on the circuit board with no soldering of wires. Why is it called the Screamer? This unit has twice the gain of the standard Tubescreamer on hand to make your amp breathe fire but maintains the clarity of notes at the same time. For more information on this product just click on the link.....http://www.cusackmusic.com/

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