Strymon La Brea Analog Tape Drive

It’s not often that your own gear inspires something completely different, but that’s just what happened with our new La Brea Analog Tape Drive.

An all-analog drive pedal that uses multi-stage tape saturation techniques to create driven tones ranging from mild breakup all the way to full fuzz, La Brea also features high frequency filtering and a fully variable dry output that always stays in phase with the original signal.

Twelve years ago, our analog engineer Josh read the original white paper that Pete Celi wrote on the development of our popular Deco pedal. The paper inspired him to begin experimenting with some of the tape-centric techniques used in Deco in a full analog drive pedal design, and over ten years of tinkering later La Brea is the result.

La Brea feels completely natural to play, as the tape techniques create some pleasing natural compression along with the saturation and gain. Whether you’re looking to punch up some crispy open-string arpeggios or throw up a full wall of unique fuzz, La Brea can achieve it.

La Brea feels completely natural to play, as the tape techniques create some pleasing natural compression along with the saturation and gain. Whether you’re looking to punch up some crispy open-string arpeggios or throw up a full wall of unique fuzz, La Brea can achieve it.

La Brea’s operating voltage is internally boosted to 24 volts using a custom internal power supply, providing ample clarity and headroom. As a result the pedal can operate as a vibey clean boost if you prefer, or an all-out fuzz depending on where your amp and the Tape Sat knob on La Brea are set to.

Like all the other members of Series A, La Brea also features an internal jumper that determines the power-up state (moving the jumper to the second position will cause the pedal to turn itself on automatically when it sees power). This can really help if La Brea is buried under the second deck of a complex pedalboard, or in a rack drawer in a rack system.

• All-analog tape saturation drive initially inspired by our own Deco pedal’s Saturation voice.

• Full analog design - nothing digital in the signal path.

• Gain switch to set the range of the Tape Saturation control.

• Shift switch to enable a dedicated high frequency boost or a high frequency boost with added

  midrange frequencies for fatness and clarity.

• Variable Dry path is always in phase with the pedal’s output for adding clarity and fatness

  even with high saturation levels.

• Runs at 24V internally to facilitate high headroom, a wide gain range and quiet operation.

• Requires a 9VDC, center negative pedal power supply with 500mA of current.