Lovetone is an English company with a new slant on guitar stomp boxes. I tried out the four units that Lovetone presently makes: the Meatball, the Doppelgänger, Big Cheese and the Brown Source. It is interesting to me that Lovetone considers the four as a "family" rather than as individual or stand-alone effect pedals. Of course, if you desire, any of the pedals can be bought separately. The intent is to create entirely new and different sounds by way of the endless interaction between the four pedals when assembled together on the powered Pedal Board. To this end, some of the units have an effects loop so that other devices or other Lovetone products can be inserted. With homage to the old analog effects units of the '60's and '70's, Lovetone pedals are not just copies but rather a better realization of what we wish the retro pedals could really do for worthwhile and compelling sonic processing.

The Meatball is an envelope follower with a triggered filter capability. The very wide filter range allow you to precisely "tuned" the frequency to the song or even the notes you play. The Meatball does an amazing autowah and as with all the Lovetone units, you can also use them with your mixing board for low noise and big sounding studio effects. The Doppelgänger is a double oscillator phase/vibrato unit that does rotary Leslie™ speaker or Univibe simulations. You can get that '60's phasing sound all the way to a vibrato vibraphone sound. Big Cheese is a distortion pedal reminiscent of the early fuzz tones. You can change from a "gated" break-up to overkill. The BC works well in the effects loop of the Meatball for a guitar synth sound. The Brown Source gives you instant '60's brown sound. You can have a tube warmth with harmonics but within an overall very clean sound.