OVERDRIVE-KING TONE Heavy Hand ...a Blues Breaker ...is the BB the new ts ???

 THE BLUES BREAKERS 

It all started with the Analog Man King Of Tone pedal which took 2 Blues
Breaker pedals and put them in one box with one voiced with more gain than the other.

Now we have a half dozen high end boxes putting 2 pedals in a box though the one less assertive is often a Tube Screamer or facsimile rather than 2 of the same pedals. 

I think love it or hate it the King of Tone got it right with BB. The nobrainer being the BB is better sounding 'transparent' pedal. Do you need 2 of them though??? I like many think not. The thing is when pedals are separate you can pick two different pedals and two different brands and come out with better choices to suit your needs. So of late those with the duel pedals are taking the BB side of the pedal and offering it as a stand alone.

TONE KING HEAVYHAND

$265.00 USD

I have noticed that the biggest fans of any BB pedals whether they are separate or paired in the new 'wonder' boxes already own a KOT. They don't sell it but the damn thing soon becomes the conversation piece paper weight on their desk. Why?? The KOT uses very old tech. It was even very old tech when they made the first one 2 decades ago. 

The reason was they deemed that the old parts give you a warmer tone. The problem is old parts are inferior tech that can create unwanted smearing or the harmonics which can make the tone muddy. Keep in mind the early fans of the pedal were club musicians many semi pro using single channel overly clean Fender amps. Yes, amps like the silver face jobbies with a very crisp clean sound and the bright switch turned on that

a bit of mud hardly was a problem. 

I borrowed a friends KOT and I indeed found it muddy.

Yes it had a pleasant vibe but in my band it got buried.

DUELIST ?

So one of the new wonder boxes has been the Tone King Duelist. It has done very well with a big fan base for several years.The B. side is the Heavy Hand. The A. side is a Tube Screamer.

It is obvious that there is demand for a BB with more guys running thru small amps left clean and the BB is replacing the Tube Screamer which made its original mark more as a booster overloading the input tubes by running that ts with the level cranked. You can do that with a BB but the point is you don't have to. Left on lower settings gives you a punchy clean sound that can make an amps real clean sound seem lame.

The Heavy Hand layout is comprehensive. You have the standard level, drive and tone but also another knob that adds girth by fattening the mids.

A toggle lets you add some edge or glass which is more of a presence thing. Another toggle lets you add a  bit of compression.

CONCLUSION

A lot is going on to tweak your sound but once you get 'that' sound then like a lot of pedals they are never touched again. 

My thing is for a Strat sound is I like to hear the glassy chime and bell like attack of the Strat. This seems to work best with a BB pedal and I can hear a lot of that peeking thru with the Heavy Hand. That said I hear more transparency from my Browne Amplification Carbon which is the BB half of their Protein Dual OD. At $220.00 USD for the Carbon it is not enough cheaper to sway me in either direction if I had to pick between the two.

But if I want some of the more aggressive features of the Heavy Hand I would go to one of my MIAB pedals so for me it is not about features but having that permanent fixed sound in the pedal and just a couple of knobs to tweak it so it works with my rig. Except for more sustain and some of the kind of comp you get from a power amps sag you get from cranked tube amp I do not want any of that preamp like distortion. My Carbon may yet be beaten, but so far it is in the lead until the race is over.