Xotic

Fat Sound's Take

A fantastic booster pedal based on the preamp circuit of the Maestro Echoplex delay units. The EP Booster adds anything from a nice little degree of overall fattening to your tone to a sweet, musical, singing sustain. I love it and at have worked one into the chain of my personal pedal board!

-Stu Carter, owner Fat Sound Guitars

From Xotic's website

"What do the tones of renowned guitarist such as Page, EVH and Johnson have in common? They all used the legendary echo machine EP-3 as a pre-amp.
We've captured that magic in a new Xotic Effects pedal, the EP Booster.

We've used the highest quality parts available with a discrete FET design and low impedance output, the EP Booster provides up to +20dB of unadulterated boost with multi-dimensional, shimmering highs and lows, and no ear fatigue. The internal DIP switches let you choose the boost frequencies, and EQ settings.

Housed in a small 3.5"x 1.5" x 1.5" case with blue LED and transparent knob, the EP Booster can be powered by 9-volt up to 18-volts.

A simple pure boost that pays reverence to the magical EP-3 and captures the celebrated tones of the world's most famous players.

The EP-Booster......great tone starts here!"

Fat Sound Award for Sonic and Design Excellence!

Guitar Player Review - Editor's Pick Award April 2010

"Based on the preamp stage of an EP-3 Echoplex— which has been used by Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Johnson and others as a guitar-signal booster/ conditioner—the EP-Booster ($145 retail/street price $116.00) is a super-compact unit (3.5" x 1.5" x 1.5") that features a discreet FET preamp with a low-output impedance that makes it well suited for driving long lengths of cable (as well as other effects) without loss of highs or signal. The unit has a quality feel and it looks cool too with its clear plastic Gain knob, blue LED on a black face plate, and buffed zinc housing. A 2.1mm adapter jack is installed for those who don’t want the trouble of removing the bottom pate to change a battery. Bass Boost and Bright switches also reside inside, and Xotic recommends using the “off” positions on both for an authentic EP-3 response.
Though very simple, the EP-Booster could easily become an essential element on your pedalboard. Even when using moderate boost with the Gain knob less than halfway up, the EP made everything sound fatter, juicier, and well, more vibey. Cranking the EP-Booster’s Gain knob to maximum pushed all of our clean amps into thick distortion that could be easily controlled via the guitars’ volume knobs. In this mode, the boost sounded perfectly balanced with no tenden- cies to get shrieky or splattery—even when the EP’s Bright switch was on (which actually is a flat setting). The Bass Boost switch is also useful for making single-coil guitars sound a littler thicker and tougher. No quibbles; the EP- Booster is an highly useful sonic tool and it earns an Editors’ Pick Award."

—Art Thompson
KUDOS Makes everything sound fatter and cooler. Minimal footprint
lets it fit just about anywhere.
CONCERNS None.

Customer Comments

"I recently purchased an Xotic EP Booster and it is "as advertised", awesome!"

Rob B.
Charleston, SC

"Very cool pedal!"

Kim A.
Katy, TX
 

The Xotic AC Booster is so natural sounding that you'll swear it's a part of your amplifier. It offers an extremely transparent sound that works *with* your amplifier to add just the right amount of moderate to full-on distortion for lead or rhythm work. One of the most popular pedals we carry.

Features

• Creates a warm and pleasant sound by using the finest quality parts available.
• The super wide range gain control allows for enough gain for it to work as a distortion pedal when turned all the way up.
• Equipped with not only boost Gain but also Treble and Bass controls that allow you to adjust your sound anyway you like.
• True bypass for eliminating any signal interference when switched off.
• All hand wired and hand crafted in the U.S.A.
• Can be used with AC adaptor (optional) or 9V Battery

Fat Sound's Take

Essentially two AC Boost pedals in one, but with added features and a few tricks up its sleeve.

Channel one has the complete Gain, Volume, Bass, Treble and Mid controls of the original AC. Channel 2 features a simple Tone control to augment its Volume and Gain controls.

A handy switch allows you to change the sequence of CHA and CHB for various cascading gain tones.......basically this means you can run CHA in to CHB or vice-versa.

There is also a compression Hard/Soft switch for Channel B and a Volume Boost control for Channel A. All in all this is one extremely versatile pedal that allow the player to cover an enormous amount of sonic overdrive ground with one unit.

Simply put, the AC Plus broadens your possibilities versus the original AC Boost.

Specifications

• Input impedance: 1M ohm
• Output impedance: 1K ohm
• Connectors
• INPUT Jack, OUTPUT Jack,
• AC Adapter Jack (DC 9 V)
• Width 117 mm 4.62 inches
• Depth 93 mm 3.65 inches
• Height 50 mm 2 inches
• Weight 0.4 kg 0.9 lbs.

From Xotic Effects

The original version of the Xotic Effects BB-PREAMP, featured warm, compressed overdrive tone. However, for some guitarist there was too much compression that perhaps restricted the pedal from "breathing".
A new version (serial number 3643 and higher) was released with some of the compression reduced in April 2007. The result was a more aggressive BB-PREAMP that today remains one of our best selling pedals.

A few years ago, Xotic Effects and Andy Timmons partnered to recreated the original BB to what is now know as the Andy Timmons signature model BB-AT. Selling a total of 2,000 of this model in less than 7 days, it was clear our original design was still sought after.
Borrowing from the compression selection of the AC-Comp, the Xotic Effects Custom Shop introduces the BBP-COMP. Users will have the ability to choose, standard compression (think current BB-PREAMP), more compression (Andy Timmons BB-AT) and no compression. The new BBP-COMP rolls two iconic pedals into one while taking it′s sound to a new level with a no compression option. Quite possibly the most musical and versatile distortion pedal to ever have been created. The new Xotic Effect Custom Shop BBP-COMP, uniquely created, legendary tone with swagger. Features

• True bypass for eliminating any signal interference when switched off
• All hand wired and hand crafted in the U.S.A.
• Can be used with AC adaptor (optional) or 9V Battery
• Gain, Volume, Treble and Bass
• 3-way Mini Toggle: Standard BBP Compression / More Compression (Andy Timmons Model) / No Compression

Fat Sound's Take

Essentially two BB Preamp pedals in one, but with added features and a few tricks up its sleeve.

Channel one has the complete Gain, Volume, Bass, Treble and Mid controls of the original AC. Channel 2 features a simple Tone control to augment its Volume and Gain controls.

A handy switch allows you to change the sequence of CHA and CHB for various cascading gain tones.......basically this means you can run CHA in to CHB or vice-versa.

There is also a compression switch for each channel which allows you to vary the low end cutoff frequencies for each channel.  All in all this is one extremely versatile pedal that allow the player to cover an enormous amount of sonic overdrive ground with one unit.

Simply put, the BB Plus broadens your possibilities versus the original BB Preamp.

Specifications 

• Input impedance: 1M ohm
• Output impedance: 1K ohm
• Connectors
• INPUT Jack, OUTPUT Jack,
• AC Adapter Jack (DC 9 V)
• Width 117 mm 4.62 inches
• Depth 93 mm 3.65 inches
• Height 50 mm 2 inches
• Weight 0.4 kg 0.9 lbs.
   

Fat Sound's Take

Based on an extensive shootout of the 10 Boost style units that we stock:
Clean boost with a lot of overdrive available in gain circuit.  Mids are slightly scooped with light compression added.  Bass and treble
controls are extremely active and quieter than many other EQ's. Very versatile in range of tones.

The lowest gain offering in the Xotic lineup is just the right pedal to push an already great sounding tube amplifier a bit farther in to its own natural distortion or boost characteristics

The RC Booster offers a super transparent 20db+ clean boost and a +- 15db 2 band active EQ without ever compromising the integrity of the original TONE. It's active Treble, Bass ,Gain and Volume controls allow for limitless tone shaping . It provides a solution to sound degradation, caused by long instrument cables and/or long effect chains between guitar and amp, by strengthening the original signal.

Features:

• True bypass for eliminating any signal interference when switched off.
• Dedicated Volume, Gain, Treble and Bass controls
• All hand wired and hand crafted in the U.S.A.
• Can be used with AC adaptor (optional) or 9V Battery.