Flamma FC18 Clean Boost 4-stars Reviews

Great value, but not much clean boost

Summary: Great value transparent boost, small footprint and lots of flexibility, but not much clean volume boost Pros: - Great value for the price - Small footprint on your board - Tone options help you find your boosted tone, whether pre or post - Leaving the tone controls at 12 o'clock, this is a good transparent boost and does not colour your tone very much at all - Good range of gain to add grit/sparkle/drive Cons: - Unity volume is about 3pm on the volume knob; there is really not much extra volume available in this pedal, especially if you're keeping the gain low or zero. The info says "up to +20db", it doesn't specify +20db of clean, and I am not convinced there is even half that of clean boost in this pedal. If you are looking for a strong clean volume boost, e.g. as a pre-boost for your preamp, this is probably not the pedal for you. - Unclear why it's labelled a clean boost when it has a really crucial gain knob? (the biggest knob!) Maybe I am missing something, but to me a "clean" boost is volume without gain. - Assembly/construction looks okay but I wouldn't rely on it taking a lot of punishment over time. Other comments - The 2x tone controls are useful, especially the treble to help avoid tone getting muddy, however there is no mid control and some people might be specifically looking for this in a boost. I guess in theory you could drop the treble and bass, and then increase the volume, and that would increase the mid - but as mentioned above, there is very little extra volume available in this pedal. - The tone and volume controls are small and quite fiddly - this is the pretty standard for most/all pedals this size with multiple controls.