Whether you’re using the Karma Suture as your standalone dirt box into your amp or you’re using it to boost, overdrive, and enhance your existing dirt pedals, you’ll be greeted with harmonic distortion laden with even-order harmonics – sweet and musical, even with complex chord voicings. Both models provide you with amazing even-order harmonic distortion with distinct personalities. If you’re familiar with the difference between a germanium and silicon fuzz face, then those qualities apply to the Karma Suture as well – germanium gives you a thick, sweet response with a softer picking attack. Silicon provides a more immediate picking attack with a more aggressive tone.
So, you’re thinking, is it a fuzz? Yes! Is it an overdrive? Yes! Is it a sparkly boost? Yes, again! Karma Suture’s four control layout allows you to dial in a huge range of harmonically rich tones that sound great into clean amps and as well as overdriven amps. Or into a foundation overdrive, such as the Dirty Little Secret. It can work equally well with vintage single coils and hot humbuckers.
EXPERIENCE
Although it works great off of a 9V power supply, Catalinbread suggests that you use a fresh battery to power your new Karma Suture, without any other pedals, plugging straight into your amplifier set up for a full clean to verge of breaking up tone. In order for you to become acquainted with your new Karma, start by setting all of the knobs to noon, listen to and feel where this takes your playing! After you’ve had some fun playing and getting a feel of what each knob seems to do, you may feel the need to learn more about your Karma. In which case, read the manual!
DIG DEEPER
Because Karma Suture generates predominantly even-order harmonic distortion, you will notice amazing clarity even with extreme settings. You can even play complex chord voicings and yet every note rings through clear! Try that with your average fuzz or distortion pedal! And even at maximum settings, the Karma Suture retains an open and responsive character unlike a lot of fuzzes and distortion pedals. Even though it has an open character, you can get amazing sustain with the Karma Suture on, especially if you’re hitting a cranked up amp with it. Harmonics come in waves, undulating in and out as you hold that epic power chord.
The Density control goes from a thick fuzz tone that can sound like an amp ready to explode all the way to a tight harmonically rich overdrive that screams “rock and roll!”. This control is the key to dialing in the Karma Suture with any rig, allowing you to fine-tune to find the exact sweet spot.
The Diodes control allows you to set the threshold of the diode clipping circuit – from full clipping to get the most distortion and compression all the way to no diode clipping for a wide-open (and LOUD!) sound.
The Input knob controls how much of your guitar signal gets to the harmonic generator. Set it low for a lively boost, laden with even-order harmonic content. Or crank it all the way up to get fuzz blasts!
And Output controls the volume level. This pedal is capable of some serious output in certain settings!
