P.I.F Pedals is a small boutique pedal company with one mission: Pay It Forward. Their first offering is the Dual Preamp Boost – a dual boost pedal with inputs and outputs for both, giving you immense flexibility as well as superb tones.
The right side of the boost is the “sparkle” boost, which is a BS170 FET transistor-based boost. This adds a shine to your tone and mixes well with warm humbuckers or semi-hollow body guitars. With the volume dimed, you get plenty of head room to add texture and dynamics to your clean sound, while turning the gain up will approach a light overdrive suitable for blues and digging in to your strings.
The “organic” side on the left has a little more flexibility and does for single coils what the “sparkle” side does for humbuckers. It is said to be based on the preamp of a famous tape delay. Using the “organic” boost gives your single coils added boost and gain. The Freq switch can enhance your mids and presence, while the Bass gives a little more boost to the low end. I use this with both switches on and the volume dimed, giving my Tele a little more balls to work with.
Between these two boosts is where it gets interesting. Instead of two boosts in series like most dual overdrives, there are separate ins and outs for each boost, leaving you literally hundreds of possibilities with your pedalboard. You could put the “organic boost first, for instance. Or, more simply, one could stack the two boosts one after the other giving you stages of gain for a slightly overdriven amp. One could even put their entire pedalboard between the two drives, using one to boost your signal before your pedals, and the other as a post boost. Don’t like one of the boosts? Leave it out of the chain entirely (though I bet you will love both!).
The Dual Preamp Boost hasn’t left my pedalboard for more than a few days because of its clean headroom and incredible versatility. Putting my drive section between the two boosts is astounding, while the two boosts help me keep my low output guitars loud and my Les Paul can have the sparkle it sometimes lacks.
