Lari Basilio

Lari Basilio is a Brazilian guitarist whom JHS Pedals calls "highly influential," and her signature pedal with the company is the Violet, an overdrive/distortion built around a pre-distortion EQ¹. MusicRadar reported in November 2024 that she "has joined the likes of Madison Cunningham and Paul Gilbert as a JHS Pedals signature artist, and her pedal, Violet, is an overdrive/distortion pedal with more than meets the eye"². She is also an Ibanez signature artist³.

The Violet: her signature pedal

The Violet came out of a collaboration between JHS Pedals' Josh Scott and Basilio¹. Guitar World reported in November 2024 that she had been using a prototype of the pedal on almost everything she played since mid-2022, and that "the core of her celebrated guitar tone has been given a signature release"³. Basilio herself put it plainly:

The pedal launched in two finishes²:

What sets the Violet apart from a typical distortion box is where the EQ sits. MusicRadar's coverage highlighted its "clever 3-Band EQ in which the midrange controls are placed before the distortion to expand your palette of tones"². Delicious Audio described it as "a Lari Basillo signature distortion pedal featuring a 3-way pre-distortion EQ with sweepable parametric mids"⁵. Scott also designed the pedal to be eminently stackable, so it should play well with the other drives and distortions already on a board².

In short, the coverage points to a few things that define the pedal:

• A 3-band EQ with the midrange controls placed before the distortion stage²
• Sweepable parametric mids, per Delicious Audio⁵
• An overdrive/distortion circuit intended to stack with other drives and distortions²
• Two finishes, Purple and Black, launched in November 2024²

What she and reviewers say about it

Basilio's own enthusiasm centers on how the pedal responds to her playing: she told MusicRadar she loves the dynamics of the pedal and its amazing, very responsive EQ².

Gearnews' George Loveridge found the pedal had a clear sense of purpose: "I like the fact that this isn't just yet another distortion pedal. This thing has goals and objectives that it wants to achieve!"⁶. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson called it "a really immaculately executed pedal for me in the super appealing Purple Variant," flower icon included⁴.

Other connections

Basililio appears among the artists on Laney's BCC pedal pages, where her comment on the TDE reads simply: "...Such a cool pedal!"⁷. Guitar Pedal X also named her in Stefan Karlsson's Part 1 Guitar Heroes list of initial 25 favorites⁴.

Her JHS signing puts her in company with Paul Gilbert, whose own JHS artist signature pedal, the PG-14, was introduced in a January 2020 demo video on the JHS Pedals channel⁸. JHS pedals, made in the US, have shown up on the boards of players from Radiohead to Matt Bellamy, Billy Corgan and Mike Campbell⁹.

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