vickLiving Room Gear Demos introduced us to Arizona based Vick Audio, a company that specializes in producing reproductions of classic effects for the 60’s and 70’s as well as original effects units.

The Mount Pleasant is an overdrive inspired by the Marshall Blues Breaker.

Here’s how company owner and designer Mike Vickery explains what inspired this pedal:

Several years ago, I had a chance to try out an old Marshall Blues Breaker pedal and was blown away by it.  However as much as I liked the pedal it had some issues that I thought could be improved.

I felt the original was very bright, needed a little more gain and needed more output since it was not able to reach unity volume at the lowest gain settings.  All these problems are easily overcome so I began working on a design.  The result is a wonderful sounding low to medium gain overdrive that will work well for blues, rock and a variety of other applications.

With the exception of the toggle switch the controls are your standard volume gain and tone controls.  The tone stack has been modified from the original pedal to give a more balanced response but I added a high cut switch to give you a couple of additional options. I would recommend using NC (No Cut) option unless you have a particularly bright set up or for some rhythm or bass applications.  The Mount Pleasant is particularly responsive to pickup selection giving warm full tones towards the neck and bright singing tone when you switch towards the bridge.

Hi Cut toggle switch controls

  • NC (No Cut) – This is the stock tone setting for the Mt Pleasant.
  • HC1 (High Cut 1) – This removes more highs than HC2.
  • HC2 (High Cut 2) – This removes less highs than HC1

Check out the video!