Spun Loud Effects Litigator Overdrive featured by Delicious Audio

April 14, 2022 · 2 sources

Delicious Audio published a feature on the Spun Loud Effects Litigator Overdrive on April 14, 2022, credited to Paolo De Gregorio¹. The pedal had been announced earlier: Premier Guitar reported on February 5, 2021 that it was set for release on February 11 at spunloudeffects.com².

The Litigator is a three-knob overdrive with controls for volume, gain and tone¹². Delicious Audio describes it as an original, transistor-based design that uses two gain stages, with a tone control for darker or brighter sounds¹. Premier Guitar reports the tone control cuts high frequencies or boosts them, and that the circuit is housed in a 125b enclosure with top jacks². According to Premier Guitar, the pedal runs on a standard center-negative 9V power supply, which is not included, and uses Wima and Wurth capacitors, Neutrik jacks and Gorva Design 3PDT switches². Delicious Audio lists soft-click Gorva footswitches and the same capacitor and jack brands, and notes the pedal is designed and built by hand in Bellingham, Washington, with original art by Seattle artist Daniel Chesney¹.

Both accounts tie the pedal to British blues rock tones of the early 1960s, which Delicious Audio says are known to some as the "beano" tone and to others as the "Bluesbreaker" sound¹. Delicious Audio states the Litigator is not a replica of the Bluesbreaker circuit¹. Premier Guitar gives the US price as $135².

Premier Guitar quoted two players on the pedal. Nick Rogers, owner of Dirty Haggard Audio in Portland, Oregon, said the drive character is "unlike other overdrives I've used, more of a full-spectrum saturation as opposed to a more typical upper-midrange bite"². Gene Johnson, a Seattle-based guitarist who tested an early prototype, said the pedal runs "from an edgy clean boost to a serious tube scream"².