Secret Sauce: The Xotic EP Booster

I haven't blogged in a while, but I found a reason today with a revelation from my newest gear acquisition.

 I've been searching for a great boost pedal lately, and after owning several boosters in the past, with a thorough search for something better, I broke down and finally purchased the Xotic EP Booster. There are posts and YouTube gear run-throughs galore, all of which seem to put the EP Booster on a pedestal. The hype is high, and when I received my own EP in the mail, I put it on my board, and concur that it deserves all of the praise.

First of all, for those who have never heard of this bad boy, Xotic took it upon themselves to emulate an often used trick of the trade that several guitar heros like Eric Johnson, EVH and Jimmy Page have used for decades: using the preamp section of the Maestro Echoplex 3 (ala, EP!) Even when those great riff-meisters weren't utilizing the tape echo, they still heard an incredible improvement in their tone by simply keeping the Echoplex preamp going in the chain. The results were amazing. Xotic eventually decided to developed their own version of the circuit.

 There are other folks making an EP3 clone, but Xotic makes their version in a 3.5"x 1.5" x 1.5" enclosure, which takes up very little room on my board. Since it's the first pedal I plug into, and it needs to endure stress and strain, I Velcro'd and zip-tied the little guy to the outside rail of my Pedaltrain Jr., and it doesn't budge. The price is amazing in comparison to other clones, too. I got mine for $116, the general street price for brand-new Xotic EP Boosters. Other clones I've seen are going for almost $200, and most have larger enclosures.

My "mini board" consists of the Xotic EP Booster >MojoHand Rook >Barber LTD >EB volume pedal (w/ T1M buffer mod) >Danelectro Tremolo (very cool, and cheap, too!) > TCE Flashback> TCE HOF Reverb, on a Pedaltrain Jr., powered by a Voodoo Labs ISO 5, wired by Kevin Shaw.

The tone, when I place the EP before my first OD pedal on the board (a Mojo Hand Rook, then a Barber LTD), is punchy, filled with sparkle and girth. The fattened signal pushes the front end of my Shaw amps, just enough to add a little bit of tube compression to my clean sound. When I engage the ODs, the EP pushes them like my Les Paul humbuckers alone could never accomplish. It brings a new tone to my Tele and my Bluesman Vintage S-model, too.

 Even though the mojo of the Xotic EP Booster is difficult to put into words, the magic is there in the hearing. My new board is the smallest of the three I use. It's now my favorite sounding of all, and super quiet, even when the drives and the booster are all engaged (thanks to Kevin Shaw's amps and his expert pedalboard wiring skills). I guess I'll have to get two more Xotic EP Boosters for the other boards, asap. I am very excited about the new adventure in tone I'll be taking when I plug in, live and in the studio.