Mike Fortin is on a roll. Only the other week, Fortin Amplification teamed up with Fredrick Thordendal and Mårten Hagström to bring us the Meshuggah preamp pedal, putting the tones of a holy grail metal amp into a compact stompbox.
This week? We’ve got the Fourteen, a overdrive and boost that’s packed with three Tube Screamer-inspired circuits.
Described as the “apex of Mike Fortin’s modification philosophy” it has collects two modded TS circuits – plus his TS-inspired Hexdrive – for three modes in one compact housing. “Each of the three modes represents a milestone in pedal history,” says Fortin.
Like the Meshuggah pedal, with which is shares a similar enclosure (and is also made in the USA), it is a dual-channel design, presenting three models across two identical channels with the capability to switch channels on your guitar amp with assignable drive via the side-mounted 1/4” output.
Simply hook it up to your amp’s channel footswitch input and select which of the Fourteen’s channels changes your amps channel via a slider switch.
On the front of the pedal, each channel as a three-way mini-toggle switch to select your flavour of drive. Choose from the Fortin-modded OD9/TS9 and OD808/TS808, and the Hexdrive. Like a Tube Screamer, each channel is served by Drive, Tone and Level dials. Input and output jacks are located on the top of the pedal.
The Fourteen’s controls are interactive. Fortin advises you to play around and experiment with them. You can use it as a boost to drive the front end of your amp, as an overdrive, or as a full-on distortion pedal when operating it in the F808 mode, which is packing way more output and saturation than the other two modes (the level output is three times that of the Hexdrive mode).
Fortin has fitted this with a pair of soft-touch relay footswitches for channel switching and bypassing/engaging, with red and green LEDs to let you know which channel is active. Feed it 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply (drawing 115mA) and you are good to go.
Three drives, one pedal, which a lot of musical potential, the Fourteen will set you back $249. Ships from 19 May. See Fortin Amplification for more details.
