Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret MkIII Overdrive

Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret MkIII Overdrive

I couldn’t help it. It was one of those days, I was watching demo videos when I hit on one that got the gas (gear acquisition syndrome) goin’ strong! It was Andy at Pro Guitar Shops and a Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret overdrive. I really dig Andy’s demos. You really get a feel for the product because his audio quality is very high and of course his playing is just phenominal. I had seen this video before but I guess I wasn’t listening to the pedal, I was listening to Andy. But this time it hit me like a freight train, that pedal is freakin’ sweet. So after considering at length (about 30 seconds) the possibility of getting one I checked on line to find one locally then hit the road and snagged one ($169 at Sam Ash). This is supposed to be a Marshall in a box, and it certainly is that. It’s got an internal switch to go from Super Lead to Super Bass, and they nailed both. But it’s so much more than that. It has the sweetest smooth overdrive tone of any of my pedals. And it’ll throttle up to full on saturated Marshall with a twist of a couple knobs. Everything about it is so natural sounding. Like how the notes decay without getting frazzy at the end. And it stacks beautifully with other pedals. Catalinbread calls this a ‘foundation” pedal but it kicks ass as a stand alone overdrive. It also has an internal trim pot for presence. I haven’t felt the need to tweak that as of yet but give me time. It will run on 18 volts too, and I will be trying that out in a day or two.

This is now my “always on” drive, and here’s the coolest part: since I got it I haven’t used any other drives with it except the one time just to see how it sounds, because it doesn’t need em. This is my first Catalinbread unit and it’s pretty impressive in every respect (the build quality is second to none). I guess I may have to just grab more of their stuff, so stay tuned.

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