Henretta’s “No Knob” Pedals, or, “Everything Must Get Smaller!!!”

Okay I get it, small portable gear is the new wave, the way of the future. Half of my posts are about new digital simulators or shit that fits on a pedalboard or whatnot, but now I think these companies are just fucking with me.

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Upstart pedal company Henretta Engineering has released a line of pedals… with no knobs. They’re as small as you can make a pedal. Hell, the on/off button barely fits on there. These things are ideal if you fly to a lot of gigs, or if you like to get really fucking angry that you can’t change your distortion volume.

To be fair, there are internal trim pots if you want to adjust things, but you won’t be tweaking levels, gain, or equaliztion at sound check, which is pretty crucial on a distortion pedal. No one needs a board so small that an MXR-sized stompbox is out of the question for their core tone.

Yet, a counterpoint: if the tracking is decent I’d buy the shit out of that octave up pedal. And maybe I could find room for the (not coincidentally green) overdrive as a Tube Screamer-esque boost in front of an amp’s dirty channel. And the tiny Orange Squeezer clone has my interest piqued….

Source: Premier Guitar

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Chris Alfano has written about music and toured in bands since print magazines and mp3.com were popular. Once in high-school he hacked a friend's QBasic stick figure fighting game to add a chiptune metal soundtrack. Random attractive people still give him high-fives about that.

Latest comments
  • holy shit what a awful, useless product

  • Nope.

  • These would be neat at $25 a pop in plastic casing (like the criminally underrated Behringer pedals) so they were a low-risk inferior version that you could try in your chain and see if it’s worth investing in a higher quality one. $125, though? PASS.

  • Depending on the purpose I might buy this. Like delays and some reverbs I like my settings fixed. And yes, for some people, the smaller the better does apply.

  • This kind of taking the fun out of pedals, isn’t kind of the point to be able to twist knobs on the fly… otherwise we’d have rack effects units. Might be fun to try if it was super cheap…

  • The green one is an auto filter…not an overdrive. But, hey, whatever. They are perfect for some and not at all for others. Niche.

  • I just got the Orange Whip and it’s perfect for my needs. Once I got the internal pots adjusted to give me the sound I was looking for and got the level right to jive with the rest of my pedals, I don’t think I’ll ever want to adjust it from there. I’m using it more as a super squashed effect and not as a level balance or boost, however. The workmanship inside is fucking meticulous and the sound quality is fantastic. Used to have a 2 knob Keeley and it never was a good match for my setup.

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