Bleak District Electric Terra review – the perfect overdrive for every guitar you own?
£145, bleakdistrict.co.uk
An effects pedal is a small box with some twiddly bits on the top. It can be any colour, and sometimes it’ll have a little picture or some squiggles on it. But can it actually be pretty? I think Bleak District Electric has a definitive answer to that question in the colourful yet beautifully composed layout of the Terra overdrive.
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Like most pedals from this growing British maker, the Terra makes use of mismatched knobs in its design scheme; but the most striking element here is the array of yellow lines emanating from the middle-left control. It’s not just a fancy flourish: that’s an eight-way bass-cutting switch, and the lines indicate the thickness of the tone in each position.
In practical terms, this means you’ll never need to worry about things turning woolly when you switch from single-coils to humbuckers. It also means you can pick the sound you want anywhere on a line from full-range amp-like overdrive to lean Tube Screamer rasp… but that’s not the only source of tonal tinkering power here.
See those two mini-knobs on the right? Clean allows you to blend in your bypass tone, and Smooth adjusts the top-end presence. As a package this looks highly promising – all it needs to do now is be good.
Image: Richard Purvis
How does the Bleak District Electric Terra sound?
Yep, it’s good. With gain set low and the rotary switch pointing up at it for maximum bass, the character of the drive is full-bodied but snarly, with plenty of cut-through in the upper mids. With a wiry Telecaster that might be where your tonal explorations begin and end – job done, get the kettle on – but with ’buckers there’s a gurgliness in the low end that risks overwhelming everything else… so it’s time to get twisting.
Hit a sustaining chord and you can hear the bass vanishing step by step as you turn through the eight modes – all the way to the thinnest yellow line for a punky tone so mean it should be in prison, and so skinny it could escape by slipping between the bars. EQ-wise we’re very much in Screamer territory now, but without the same smooth compression: it’s a little more loose and organic, which is probably why Bleak District calls the Terra an ‘earthly overdriver’.
Image: Richard Purvis
Crank the gain and things get quite fuzzy (and also quite hissy), but the two knobs below that are arguably more interesting to explore. While the clean blend only really makes sense when the gain is set reasonably low, it’s a great way of adding definition to the note attack, making the sound somehow cleaner but not cleaner. And the right-hand mini-knob is all about upping the sizzle factor: I left it at minimum for most of my test noodling, but it can perk up the edginess just a touch when you need it.
All in all, that’s a whole lot of tone-tuning capability for a compact overdrive pedal. That wouldn’t mean much if its fundamental voice didn’t pass muster, but the Terra sounds almost as luscious as it looks.
Bleak District Electric Terra alternatives
There is one small elephant shuffling about at the back of this particular room: the stupendous Great Eastern Design-A-Drive (£229), another UK-made overdrive with a rotary switch for tuning the thickness of the low end. But its character is quite different – more silky, less bitey – so you’re definitely allowed to own both.
Beyond that, high-quality drive pedals with extra tonal flexibility include the Spaceman Effects Polaris ($319), Redbeard Effects Angry Rhubarb (£199.99) and Origin Effects RevivalDrive Compact (£279/$419).
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net