Construction and cosmetic concerns:

This is a large pedal that combines a couple of classic Lovetone pedals in a single unit, so on some levels this pedal could be considered small when compared to having both the Brown Source and the Big Cheese on your board. The construction is solid inside and out, and has easy access to the inside if you want to use a battery without a screwdriver with the flip-top lid (common to other Lovetone pedals). By default the pedal routes the signal into Brown Source –> Big Cheese, but a clever routing system allows you to swap that order with a single patch cable. It’s even possible to use each pedal individually, placing each side in whatever position in your chain you desire. Switches and LED’s for both sides makes it easy to control and tell what’s going on.

Conclusion:

The “Source” side is a very nice overdrive which will retain lows very well when when the tone stack is off, or the tone knob is turned significantly to the bass side. This side certainly wasn’t the crux of the review, but it was nice to find out. The “Cheese” provides a host of different fuzz options but provides the most unique sounds when the tone is placed on the ‘cheese’ wedge, where you can use the curds knob to dial up a strange sputtery gate, which is fairly unique. Stacking the two sides together you can dial in a host of different fuzzes from explosive to synth-y.

As I suspected it proved very hard to capture everything this pedal is capable of in a short review, but I think I’ve at least shined a bit of light on this beast.

High cost and low availability will keep most people from owning on of these, but a big cheese or a big cheese clone should be on the list of anyone struggling to find a distinct fuzz sound for themselves.

As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment or let me know

Note: A rating of 5 = acceptable and should be considered a ‘good’ basic score