Maestro Expands Their Original Collection of Classic Guitar Pedals

Earlier this year, Gibson relaunched Maestro and helped the brand get back into the pedal game after somewhat of an absence, despite having in fact been the makers of the first-ever mass-produced guitar effect pedal. It was 60 years ago when the Maestro FZ-1 was first released – a pedal you may not know well, but you certainly know its sound. The intro to Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones is a Maestro fuzz! In fact, the story goes that Keith Richards used it to put in a guide track for what the saxophone should play over the intro of that song. The producers supposedly thought that this new fuzz sound was so unique and left it in the recording – something Keith didn’t know until he heard it later on the radio! Needless to say, Maestro was there at the very beginning, and you could say paved the way for sending guitar players on a wild-tone goose chase — buying every new effect that comes along with the promise of making us sound better!

In the first release of pedals, Maestro included a new FZ-1 fuzz, as well as a delay and some overdrives. In this second release, they have put out some more classic sounds: an envelope filter, compressor, phaser, tremolo and a boost. We were given a set of these to check out and we put them through their paces. First impressions revealed they are solid and well-built, and their vintage aesthetic makes them look the part too. In addition, the triple-LED indicator lighting up the Maestro logo is a nice aesthetic touch!

The important questions are all around tone and can report all five pedals sound great, though admittedly I’m drawn to particular types of effects. The Agena Envelope Filter had a wonderful vintage ‘quack’ to it, that was able to be adjusted to sound more modern and hi-fi if desired. Maestro was at the forefront of envelope pedal design all those years ago too, so this vintage tone is not surprising. This is a pedal made for funky single-line playing and sounds somewhat like the classic Jerry Garcia type of envelope sound, and less like the 70’s analogue soul kind of sound (these are far from scientific descriptions 🙂

Another first for Maestro is the Phaser pedal – the PS-1, released some 50 years ago. The Orbit Phaser takes up the mantle from this famous pedal and delivers both 4 and 6-stage phasing, with a simple control layout. The 4-stage gives a nice subtle warmth, not dissimilar to a Phase 90, while the 6-stage has a bit more intensity to the tone. Both are very usable, but not revolutionary in their sound. Having said that, if you are looking for a solid vintage-sounding phaser with a bit more versatility, this could be the one for you!

With the popularity of players such as Cory Wong and Tosin Abasi, the humble guitar compressor has gone from a rather obscure, misunderstood pedal to an essential part of a modern player’s rig. The Arcas Compressor could do the subtle ‘is-it-even-doing-anything?’ type compression, all the way through to the modern ‘I-play-guitar-on-Instagram type of squashing! It is a nice-sounding pedal that is very versatile. The level control has enough headroom to allow it to be somewhat of a boost. A ‘blend’ control, allowing for the dry, uncompressed guitar signal to get through in parallel, would have been a nice addition on the pedal, though it is not a deal breaker by any means.

The Mariner Tremolo has both harmonic and classic trem settings, accessible via the switch. Harmonic trem is an effect that has come back into vogue of late, a pitch-type modulation based on early Fender ‘brownface’ models’ tremolos. With controls for depth speed and shape, the Mariner can cover a lot of ground in terms of trem sounds. There is no control on the output with this pedal as is the nature of the trem effects, with Maestro keeping true to the traditional vintage design with no volume control.

The last in the new range is the Titan Boost – this was probably my favourite if I had to pick one. The Titan has both full range and High Pass boost (essentially a treble booster) again accessible via the small switch on the pedal and gives up to 25dB of boost. This was a really nice ‘always on’ type of pedal in full range mode, but it was engaging the hi-pass side that really made this thing come alive. We were able to send our amp into glorious overdrive by just boosting those treble frequencies. This is awesome as a solo boost because it removes low-end information allowing your tone to really cut through a band – pretty important when soloing! It also means that your tone won’t be muddy as the ‘mud’ has been removed!

All the Maestro pedals are true bypass and analogue and do exactly as they should. The new series does a great job of paying homage to the vintage spirit and tone of the company while including some subtle contemporary features, that don’t stray too far away from the original classic sound.