The NRG Effects Humper 4558 is a clean boost pedal from NRG Effects, a small builder whose range also includes the NRG Effects Poker treble booster and the NRG Effects Purrer overdrive. Its circuit is built around the 4558 op-amp, the chip associated with the Tube Screamer style of overdrive, but it has no internal distortion clipping. The result is a boost that keeps your core tone while adding the distinctive tonal filtering character of that classic circuit1.
What it does
The Humper 4558 gives you two tone-shaping controls alongside the boost. There is a low-pass filter and a high-pass filter, and the low-pass control cuts low end as it is turned up, which is the same kind of tonal filtering that gives Tube Screamer-style pedals their character1.
Because there is no clipping stage, the pedal does not break up on its own. Instead, it works as a clean boost, and on That Pedal Show, Dan and Mick demoed it and noted the large amount of headroom inside it1.
What reviewers said
That Pedal Show's verdict was that the pedal has an unusual amount of headroom for a boost1:
"there's a lot of headroom in there that it's crazy that have room Headroom in there"
They found it works very well as a clean boost, especially into scooped Fender-style amps, where the extra level pushes the amp's front end without muddying the low end1.
Videos
NRG EFFECTS
That Pedal Show
Sources (1)
- Crazy Tube Circuits Falcon, NRG Humper 4558, Thorpy Deep Oggin, Anasounds Utopia, That Pedal Show (YouTube), 2019-03-12
