OVERDRIVE- GREER AMPS Soma Vintage Preamp ...nice and nasty!

GREER AMPS SOMA VINTAGE PREAMP 

Allen Greer started the company in 1998 and not unlike most small gourmet pedal makers made pedals for friends. About 5 years ago the company were for the most part a regional maker of small amps. You made an order and when your amp was done you picked it up. The pedals seem to fill the down time. Some pedals were designed in house, some were bought from others and one pedal was designed and the guy made the circuit board but had them build it into the casing and sell it as Greer. They had 4 pedals that all sounded more or less like a Tube Screamer. Each one was just a bit more dirty than the other. There was no uniformity to the enclosures look or graphics. The big turn around came with the Lightspeed OD which originally sold as a kind of vintage Fender-in-a-box. It took off by word of mouth within the Indie, Blues and Americana crowd. For awhile it even looked like it was going to be another Klon.

A BIT OF THE 'WHY'

$230.00 USD

The Soma is based from the preamp section of a 63 Fender 'brown' amp right down to including the  transformer. The key ingredient is the transformer. 

Think of a transformer as a bucket of electricity being filled up by a hose and everytime you hit a chord you turn on the tap and empty some. However if you take out more than it can refill your amp distorts more but starts to clean up when you back off and lighten up slamming those strings.  An amp with a big bucket in which I mean transformer does not run out so it stays clean. The transformers are the secret sauce of a Plexi. They have a medium size bucket, lol. 

Putting one in a pedal is not a new idea. The Supro Pre was designed to be a Supro-in-a-Box. The guy nailed it. I have one and my ears soon remembered the sound. One day I walked into a store and I heard a guy playing one. I decided to go chat with the guy. When I got to where he was he didn't have the pedal. He was playing straight 

into a Supro amp. 

THE PEDAL

The layout is volume, gain, bass treble and presence. The company has always had a rep for quality parts and early buyers for their pedals were weekend warriors that kicked the sh@t out of their gear. Yes, Greer pedals were carefully stored under a milk crate full of the old Atlas mic stands with the cast iron round base, lol. 

CONCLUSION

I quite like it but to my ears it sounds like the pre out of a 50's broadcast board 

not a Fender amp. The 'brown' amps had a sweet creamy distortion and this pedal 

is as nasty as a Fuzz.