A pedal recreation of the Intersound IVP – a cult classic rack preamp designed specifically for electric guitar and bass, as used by Steve Albini and The Grateful Dead. Featuring the now revered ‘Tube’ voice circuit, designed to emulate tube overdrive. While it doesn’t quite succeed in nailing the tube sound, it is such a unique sound itself that it is the main reason behind the IVP’s enduring reputation. It uses a combination of op-amp gain, a transistor amplifier and a transformer to get its overdrive tone. The IVP also includes a six-band EQ (four semi-parametric and two Baxandall bands), two channels (Clean and Tube), as well as comprehensive control over input and output gains, including the ability to run it at line level. All of the EQ comes before the overdrive, so it can be used as a tool to get a wide variety of drive tones. The unique drive sound and flexibility of control allows it to stack exceptionally well with other devices (famously with Harmonic Percolators).
Controls:
• Pregain allows the input signal level to be reduced after the input stage. It comes after the Hi/Lo input toggle.
• Bass and Treble form a 2-band Baxandall EQ that come before the parametric EQ section. In the 12:00 position, the frequencies are flat. From there, they cut frequencies to the left and boost frequencies to the right.
• Low Frequency sets the frequency for the lowest parametric band, from 30 Hz to 240 Hz.
• Low-Mid Frequency sets the frequency for the second parametric band, from 100 Hz to 800 Hz.
• Hi-Mid Frequency sets the frequency for the third parametric band, from 460 Hz to 3.6kHz.
• Hi Frequency sets the frequency for the highest parametric band, from 1.2kHz to 9.6kHz.
• “dB” boosts or cuts the frequency selected by the respective frequency control. In the 12:00 position, the frequency band is flat and essentially out of the circuit. From there, they cut and boost the frequency by 10dB on either side.
• Clean sets the volume level of the clean channel. The tone is unchanged throughout the rotation and it has no clipping, so its main use is for level-matching with the Tube Drive channel.
• Tube Drive sets both the gain (overdrive) and volume of the Tube Voice channel.
• Master is the master volume of the unit.
• Inst/line sets the output to instrument or line level
Accepts only 9VDC centre negative power – the IVP steps up the voltage internally to bipolar +/- 15VDC.
All Dirty Sock Effects have a lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects and normal wear and tear. If it breaks, I will fix it.
