Tech 21 NYC American Woman
Review by Mark Starlin
Back in the early 70’s, channel switching, high gain amps had yet to be invented. To get that soaring, infinite sustain, players would often resort to tricks such as running one amp into another (a disaster waiting to happen) or having someone hot rod their amp (which is how some well known amp makers got their start.) Randy Bachman, who was a member of The Guess Who at the time, and later Bachman Turner Overdrive (BTO), had his repairman, Gar Gilles, build him a tube preamp with two gain stages. This simulated the effect of running one amp into another without the inherent danger. This unique tone was made famous on the classic Guess Who hit American Woman. The Tech 21 American Woman pedal was designed to capture that classic tone in a pedal. Does it succeed? Let’s see.
That Sound
Naturally, any sound on a recording is the result of several factors. In the case of American Woman, it was the result of ’59 Les Paul, the two stage preamp, a Garnet amp, an RCA ribbon microphone, an RCA compressor/limiter, tape saturation, and lest we forget: Randy’s technique and choice of notes. Can one pedal possibly recreate all that? With the exception of Randy’s technique, the answer is yes. In fact, when I popped The Guess Who’s Greatest Hits in my CD player and played along (using my Les Paul) with the lead lines on the song American Woman, it was shocking how close I could get to that famous tone.
Other Sounds
You may be thinking: “So it does the ‘American Woman’ thing, what else can it do?” While the American Woman pedal was designed to create singing sustain, it is capable of a nice crunch also. I was also able to dial up a high gain tone suitable for chugging rhythm playing. Still, the very nature of the beast is a highly compressed, processed sound. And that is what you get regardless of settings.
I tested the pedal with my Les Paul Custom and my Japanese Stratocaster (upgraded with Kinman pickups) and in my opinion, the American Woman pedal works best with Humbuckers, and even better with heavy, sustaining guitars like a Les Paul. You still get lots of overdrive with a single coil guitar such as a Strat, but the distortion is not as smooth.
Pedal Features And Construction
Let’s look at the controls and see what we have. There are four controls on the pedal: Level, Tone, Gate, and Drive. The Level control allows you to add up to 10dB of gain to your signal. This allows you to set the volume for your solos so they will cut through the mix. The Tone control is specialized low pass filter that lets you cut the treble to get that “warmer” tone on the record. The Gate control, obviously, is a noise gate. Which you will definitely need as you turn the Drive control up. The Drive control lets you dial in the amount of overdrive you desire.
The unit is solid metal in a marbleized green color with gold lettering. The knobs are plastic, but solid. The effect switch is metal, and there is an LCD light to tell you when the effect is on, and when your battery is low. A clip-open plastic plate on the bottom hides the battery compartment. There is a DC adapter jack on the side.
My main gripe with the pedal is the Gate, which never really shuts off. Even with the Gate and Drive controls in the fully off position, the Gate continued to choke off my clean guitar signal as it decayed. This is a shame, since you can’t really use the pedal as a “pre-boost” to add additional gain to your amp (as the manual suggests.) I also noticed a slight loss of signal level when using an adapter as opposed to a battery. This is not a big deal as you can simply add more level using the Level control if desired. Also, when you plug in a guitar cable, the plug doesn’t fully insert into the jack. There is about a quarter of an inch of plug showing. This is true for both the input and output. I didn’t notice any signal problems with this design, but I would prefer it if the cables plugged all the way in. (more…)
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