Black Arts Toneworks Revelation

The Black Arts Toneworks Revelation is what the maker calls a "stripped down all out amp pusher": a pedal meant to sit in front of your amp and drive its preamp section harder, rather than replace your tone with its own. Black Arts Toneworks describes it as an extension of your amp's pre section, used to push the amp into heavy saturation or to boost riffs into fuller, thicker versions of the amp's base tone¹. The pedal is out of production, so it is now found only on the used market.

The core idea, as the maker puts it, is that the Revelation does not color your sound. It is a clean-ish boost and overdrive in the boost pedal family that adds more of what your amp already does²¹.

An amp pusher that adds more of your own tone

The Revelation was built around one job: hitting the front end of an amplifier hard. Black Arts Toneworks says to use it "to push your amp into super creamy saturation, use it to boost your riffs into full and thick exaggerations of your amp's base tone"¹. The maker's framing is that the pedal "does not alter your tone, just makes MORE of it"¹.

That puts it in a different category from a full overdrive or distortion pedal that generates its own clipped character. Here the amp does most of the work, and the Revelation supplies the push. The independent Guitar FX Layouts site, which analyzed the circuit in 2017, put it the same way: "Think of the Revelation as an extension of your amp's pre section"³.

The circuit inside

Guitar FX Layouts traced the SuperBass version's lineage to another Black Arts Toneworks pedal, writing that "it's basically the Pharaoh without the tonestack," with component values identical to the Pharaoh and the tone control removed². For the SuperLead, no schematic existed, so the site derived its layout by comparison with other Black Arts Toneworks circuits, and its author believed the SuperLead uses the values for the LSTR³. The site also noted that the Oath, another Black Arts pedal, is the Super Bass circuit without pots³.

The controls: Pre Gain, Gain and Volume

The Revelation keeps things to three knobs, the same trio on both versions³². The maker describes what each one does¹:

The Volume control is the amp-pusher's heart. In the maker's words, "the volume knob absolutely slays the front end of your amp"¹. A practical signal path is to set Pre Gain for the overall character, add Gain until the distortion is where you want it, then use Volume to decide how hard your amp's input stage gets hit.

SuperLead and SuperBass versions

The Revelation shipped in two versions of the same basic circuit¹:

The maker positions the SuperLead as the choice for "a fuller, fatter, more saturated and aggressive sound," and the SuperBass for a fuller, fatter, rounder sound that "works equally well for guitar or bass"¹. Guitar FX Layouts noted the SuperLead "has more high end" than the SuperBass layout it posted first².

Among builders on the Guitar FX Layouts post, one commenter reported preferring the SuperLead to the SuperBass so far³. Another builder found the SuperBass circuit had more gain than they wanted and swapped two 100 ohm emitter resistors for 560 ohm parts to drop it, describing the stock gain as more than needed². Those are individual builder impressions rather than a consensus, but they point to the same thing: this is a high-gain pusher, and players who want something tamer may need to work the Gain knob carefully.

Power and the limited edition

The Revelation runs on a standard 9V DC power supply and has no battery connection, so it needs a pedalboard power source¹.

A related name to watch

The Revelation name also lives on at a different company. Revelation Effects makes the Revenant Preamp & Boost, a high headroom preamp for guitar or bass. It is a separate product from a separate maker, worth knowing about so the two are not confused when shopping used⁵.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions