Mild Overdrive – Although a fuzz, the Mercury can easily double as an overdrive similar to the Tube Drive, with warm dynamic tube gain and compression. This sound clip demonstrates how well this tube fuzz pedal responds to different pickup configurations and picking techniques – the amount of gain produced by the Helios is controlled by alternating between hard and soft picking. The Mercury settings are: VOLUME = 3 o’clock and FUZZ = 1 o’clock. Increasing the Mercury volume control pushes the amp a little more to increase the natural compression and smoothness of the tone. The guitar (a Strat) volume is at 8.5. Setup used: Laney Lionheart L20 mic’ed with a Shure SM57 slightly off axis. Reverb and delays are added in ‘Logic’. Thanks to Bjorn Riss of Gilmourish for recording this sound sample.
