Product Review - Fender Smolder Acoustic Overdrive pedal
My written Review of the new Fender Smolder Acoustic Overdrive Pedal:
I saw a post in one of my Facebook groups, where one of the members asked the group if they had experience with the Fender Smolder Acoustic Overdrive pedal. That person was considering the purchase and was asking for a recommendation. This, unfortunately, was the first that I had heard of this pedal, and I was intrigued.
I have been looking for a way to “amp up” my guitar solos when I’m performing as BlairOutLoud for solo acoustic gigs. During these type of gigs, I “record” or loop a verse or bridge riff in a song while I’m performing it, so that later in the same tune, I can solo overtop of it. Typically I used a Boss EQ pedal to hit a volume boost and then just added reverb and delay for taste. Most guitar distortion pedals are designed around electric guitar pickups, so it’s difficult to add a “regular” overdrive pedal into an acoustic guitar mix without thin sounding distortion and unwanted feedback.
The new Fender Smolder Acoustic Overdrive is a great solution!
I purchased one recently, and last week I installed it onto my acoustic pedal board and used it at several acoustic shows to give it a “test drive”. I wanted to see if I could be happy with the results.. and the answer is a resounding YES!
Here’s Fender’s official page for the pedal:
https://shop.fender.com/en-US/effects-pedals/acoustic/smolder-acoustic-overdrive/0234550000.html
Here are some features of this pedal:
Made specifically for acoustic guitar voicing, and acoustic piezo pickup design
Pickup Compensation control - for squashing feedback or other misc noise
Seperate Tone versus Treble and Bass controls for sound shaping
Modern metal construction with a vintage vibe
LED lights for stage visibility, but the ability to turn them off and on via your preference
Magnetic battery compartment for easy access
I’m generally happy with the look and feel of the pedal. Of course the tone is the ultimate measure, but it does come with comfortable features to round out the package.
My setup:
The pedal board that I use for my acoustic shows is very simple.. I run a Boss VE-8 Acoustic Singer pedal (pictured below). This box alone handles guitar processing, vocal harmonies, and has a looping function. Lots of killer reviews of this product on YouTube if you are interested.
I also have a Boss FS-7 footswitch that you can pretty much use to toggle presets, turn effects off or on, and in my case, I primarily use it to stop my loops or stop recordings in progress.
So basically where I used to only just boost the clean signal over the recorded loop for my solo.. I now have a way to add some dirt onto the solo, or for the regular audience ear, I can now make my guitar solos sound like electric guitar over the acoustic rhythm bed underneath!
Now.. Before we go further…
You do have the ability to make this sound terrible!
It’s very easy for a “rocker” to pull an overdrive out of the box, plug it in, and to immediately dial in WAY TO MUCH overdrive (which I am owning up to), with the end result sounding thin, too crispy, and overall just unusable. After a few minutes messing around with the Tone knob versus tweaking the Treble and Bass knobs, I quickly realized that the most valuable knob out of all seven (even more impressive than the Drive knob itself) was the Blend.
My quick advice would be to place the Tone, Treble, Bass and Level knobs in the “high noon” position.. then turn up the Drive to taste. If at this point you hear any extra noise like feedback or bass frequency hum, dial up the Pickup Comp knob to squash it. The Pickup Comp or Pickup Compensation knob according to Fender compensates for “potentially bright piezo elements”. In my experience, after dialing in the Pickup Comp knob, my extraneous low hum or feedback was zero and tone was tight.
Now we Blend!
Turn the Blend all the way to the left to lower the volume of the overdrive, and then start to turn it back to the right and find a sweet spot where the saturation is perfect for your application. See my settings used in my gigs last week in the picture here.
For my Gibson SST that I’m playing (fairly strong piezo output), I discovered that taming the Treble and Bass, yet cranking the Tone knob sounded better 🤷♂️. I cranked my Drive for saturation, but eased up on the Blend and wal-la! 👌
Sweet spot achieved!
Below is a video from one of my gigs last week where I used the Smolder Acoustic Overdrive in a solo during my cover of “Wanted Dead Or Alive” by Bon Jovi. This was towards the end of the evening and I had some “lit” fans in the background rocking with me.. If you would like to skip to the solo, scrub up to 3:16 mark on the counter and check it out. I wish I had a better camera angle, but space was limited there. Just know that I’m using this pedal to get the solo sustain!
So there you have it!
The Fender Smolder Acoustic Overdrive pedal… I’m a fan. I used it in 4 gigs last week, and I’m happy to announce that it’s found a home on my acoustic pedal board, and you’ll be hearing it in my solo sections, I guess from here on out.
This pedal sells for $149 in most places that I’ve seen. Get it directly from Fender with the link above in this blog entry or find it on any major music retail site.
I would like to shoot my own video review for the BlairOutLoud YouTube Channel if time allows.. however, Fender did a great job with their own featurette of which I’ll link to below.
If you have other products you are curious about, leave a comment and let me know what I should check out! Feedback for this review also appreciated!
-Tom