4 Knob Compressor? ... Oooooh Matron In case you didn't know, Robert Keeley is regarded as the Godfather of the boutique pedal world. Its definitively true to say Keeley are no longer a boutique company BUT for many many MANY guitarists Robert was their very first introduction into the world of "Oh yeah that's a great pedal, send it to me and I'll make it even better". The term "Keeley moded" is now a common phrase across the globe, and has encouraged a huge number of builders to have a go themselves which directly lead to the massive pedal boom we live in today. Of course, if your regularly improving others pedals then it makes good sense to start producing a version of them with the upgrades all ready in place and from there to start producing a range of pedals. From here the Keeley 2 & 4 knob compressors were born and were the finishing touch in solidifying Keeley's place on the Mount Olympus of the gear world. The Compressor Plus succeeded the 2 & 4 knob compressors and went on to become the single most popular compressor ever sold, in excess of 80,000 units have been made also making it Keeley's most successful pedal ever. But ... Why? Well its pretty simple really and that's the key, simplicity! Keeley made a compressor which gives you studio quality compression and made it incredibly simple to dial in to the extent that the release control is assigned to a two way switch perfectly dialled in for humbuckers or single coils. All the tricky work has been done for us leaving enough control to personalise our tone. This could have gone horribly wrong but the team over at Keeley have great experience and great ears so instead it worked out just fine!
ECCO CO Co co When Les Paul was creating the first tape delays he also stumbled upon the ability to create other effects simply by gently resting his hand on and off the tape reel. One such effect was flanging which slows down and speeds up one of two tapes running parallel. This history lesson is relevant as it has taken from then until now to put a flanging effect on delay trails in a single unit. Until now this was only possible with some very clever routing and normally only ever happened in a studio environment. The Eccos is much more than simply a delay with flanging on the trails though, so much of this pedal is adjustable and there are even some beautiful shimmer like tones which you can hear in our showroom playing style. Whats more with selectable subdivisions and an inbuilt looper this pedal is a super powerful tool able to do so much in such a small package.
Size Matters At least thats what this pedal would have us believe because its knobs are HUGE!In reality though, it's what it does with it that counts and the Fuzz Bender from Keeley doesn't disappoint. Fuzzes tend to fall into one of two camps, silicon and germanium. The later is normally found in classic fuzzes and is slightly softer sounding than its aggressive silicon cousin. Robert Keeley however has gone down the route of having ones cake and eating it by putting 3 transistors in this pedal which are indeed a mix of the various aforementioned types giving a very unique sound and feel. What's more, control over the fuzz's bias means those hidden spluttery tones are now accessible from the top of the pedal if you feel like having a good time.
P H Phat.. The company which Keeley now is looks to be one of the most rewarding places to work within the industry. Every picture shared of this hard working team shows a happy community/family of innovators, technicians and more. Way back when Keeley was just Robert Keeley the focus was on modifications and compressors, one of the most famous mods which Keeley offered was the BD-2 Phat mod, this was the first Keeley mod which added a switch to outside of the enclosure and was loved by players all over the world. This pedal is the production model of the Super Phat Mod featuring a sustainable version of the JFETs required to get each one sounding perfect, tuned until the Keeley team were all 100% happy with the results this is the pinnacle of the modded Phatness.
Taking back Control Keeley are very well known for their compressor game, the compressor plus is in fact one of the best selling pedals in the entire world. So when it came time to celebrate Keeley's 20th Anniversary a compressor was the obvious release to do it with HOWEVER what do you add to the compressor plus!?It turned out the opposite approach was just the key, by reducing the number of controls and dialling in the attack, release, tone, etc to great fixed positions it takes the mystery out of how to set up a good compression sound and feel. The result is one which can be shared by players of all levels as it sounds great and you can't really go wrong with only a level and a comp knobs.Well done Keeley and Happy Birthday
Don't Let Cap America See This One Tremolo and reverb go together like pea in a pod, since the early Fender amps featuring these effects in tandem this combination of effects has become part of musical culture.So when you hear that Keeley have made a new tremolo/reverb pedal you'd be forgiven for expecting something fairly traditional.Instead what we have is one of Keeley's most advanced pedals ever featuring tones the aforementioned fender amps would gasp at. This pedal contains features such as: true stereo output, presets, 3 reverb and 3 tremolo types, tap tempo, trails on/off. All in all this is one of the most impressive trem/verb pedals on the market, add in its pedalboard friendly size, high fidelity audio, intelligent switching and great price point and its easy to see why the Hydra has been so successful.
Cavernous Around 2017/2018 suddenly multiple companies started making combined Reverb & Delay pedals. It wasn't totally unusual to see these effects in a pedal together nor was it unusual for companies to work off of the back of each others success, it was however this white, full sized version of the Caverns which received the most love from all of these types of pedals and most likely the pedal which encouraged other companies to make their own versions.We don't want to write much here about how in sounds and behaves, well simply say this is one of the best pedals we've demoed in years ... just beautiful!Despite having 8 knobs, two footswitches and two 3 way toggle switches the pedal is incredibly easy to use, verb on the left, delay on the right and split the controls in half.
Not A Star Wars Pedal The Keeley Dark Side is a very ambitious pedal, you see David Gilmour's various tones throughout his career have always been outstanding and as a result hordes of players are fixated with replicating them. This is to the extent that for many Gilmour fanatics even buying the same gear as David isn't considered perfect unless it was made in the right year, month, day, hour and phase of the moon.Lets be clear here, we very much fit into this description ourselves and often frequent with this crazy yet amazing group of people and as such we knew when the Keeley Dark Side was announced that Robert himself was a brave brave man.But the Dark Side is a perfect tool as it does EXACTLY what it sets out to do, it fits a large number of our favourite Pink Floyd tones into a tiny little box and does it all while sounding utterly incredible. This is not for the player looking to spend $10,000 on pedals and $30,000 on a strat to emulate a single guitarists tone, this is for the player who wants to cover 99.9% on the tones in a single unit. Any of the multiple effects built into the Dark Side could easily be sold as a stand alone pedal, the delay is one of the stand out features due to its multiple head combination set up.
That Famous RED Pedal Think of a famous three knob overdrive and the colour red may not be what pops into your mind but what Keeley has produce here is extremely clever, they've created a a low gain mid hump overdrive which ACTUALLY sounds like the tubes are screaming! How? Well that's actually fairly simple (as genius often is)! There is a type of transistor called a FET which on many levels behaves much the same as the glass tubes/valves we love to hear in amp and more importantly they sound much more like a tube/valve than normal transistors found in gear. What's more is this pedal has a unique touch responsiveness meaning as you play lighter and harder the pedal becomes cleaner and dirtier respectively causing the pedal to feel alive and organic in your hands.
Bit Of Gold, Bit Of Black, Bit Of British Amp Tones The term Marshall In A Box was coined for pedals such as the El Rey Dorado as that's basically what they are! This particular pedal was sculpted to sound like a specific Marshall 45/100 reissue which sounded so good Keeley considered it to be the quintessential Marshall tone! Low Power mode has less compression and therefore is louder, it has more girth and fewer harmonics which provides a more old-school tone. The High Power mode in contrast has more compression so less volume but more drive, harmonics, and a tighter, more defined tone. Old-school crunch in Low Power mode, super lead tones in the High Power mode just how Jim intended.