Portugal's Tonewave FX Pedals now available at Northern Stompboxes in the UK - The Bright Distortion, Caramel Overdrive, and Preset Preamp

A somewhat fledgling brand - still largely under the radar for most, but with an interesting line of largely JRC4558 powered OpAmps in different combinations - for instance as famously used by the TS808. It shows just how important the supporting cast of components is - and how you can deliver vastly different effects from a similar selection of parts!

The first oddly named ’Bright’ Distortion hits sort of Rat Distortion territory in using 2 x JRC4558 OpAmps in combination.

The Caramel is a warm, dynamic and harmonic Salty and Sweet Overdrive with expanded range.

And the ’Preset’ is intended to be an always-on tone-enhancing boost / overdrive / preamp. One of my pedal colleagues referred to each of these as a different Tube Screamer variant - which is not really fair. Both the Rat and Expandora use the same LM308 chip - but in vastly different ways - with a different cast of components.

There’s plenty of pedals that use a similar cast of components to vastly differing effect - just like a BBD can be a Delay, Chorus and / or Flanger!

In any case - all are still in stock on the Northern Stompboxes Webstore - the Bright is £159, the Caramel is £189, and the Preset is £169.

There used to be a Tonewave website active on www.tonewave.pt - while that is currently inaccessible for some reason?

Here follow further details on each pedal :