Bucktone Effects Black Powder

The Black Powder is a distortion/overdrive pedal and the inaugural product from Bucktone Effects, a maker founded by Caleb Buck. It is designed to break up and compress a signal while giving the player control over the tone, and it was conceived as a transparent overdrive that would not drastically alter the tone a guitarist works to achieve¹. For players browsing Distortion Pedals or Overdrive Pedals, it sits in the dirt-and-dynamics camp rather than the heavy reshaping camp.

Controls

The pedal's control set is aimed at shaping how the distortion sits in a mix¹:

• Gain and volume knobs, the core drive and level controls
• Three-way compression setting, with the compression becoming more noticeable as the gain is cranked
• Girth knob, which adds hair to the distortion: clockwise it emphasizes mids and highs, and it removes low end
• Hi-cut, which rolls off highs from 5kHz to 800Hz
• Tight switch, which firms up the low end when engaged

The hi-cut range and the tight switch give the Black Powder some of the tone-shaping ground usually covered by an Equalization Pedal, built into the drive circuit itself¹.

Background

Bucktone Effects debuted with the Black Powder, which Caleb Buck described as the result of a path that ended with him "finally designing the Black Powder and founding Bucktone"¹. Buck also stated, "I myself build every one of these pedals by hand here in Southwest Missouri"¹.

At launch, Delicious Audio reported the pedal available at a discounted price of $160 for a limited time¹.

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