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JHS pedals unveils a cheesy remake of a 90s classic

Will it be as good, or even grater, than the original?

The JHS Pedal Cheese Ball, and the original LoveTone Big Cheese.

Image: YouTube/JHS Pedals

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JHS Pedals has revealed the Cheese Ball, described by Joshua Scott himself as a “meticulous” recreation of the LoveTone Big Cheese, the highly sought after distortion/fuzz pedal. While JHS has aimed to recreate the sonic aspects of the LoveTone pedal as accurately as possible, the Cheese Ball comes in a much smaller enclosure, with a much lower price-tag.

Joshua Scott unveiled the pedal through JHS Pedals’ Instagram account, explaining that he had never seen any mass-market pedal that clones the LoveTone Big Cheese – until now.

The Cheese Ball’s controls mirror those of the original LoveTone, albeit without the cheese-based names. While this may disappoint die-hard fans of silly control labels, the knobs on the pedal are now far more self-explanatory. ‘Whey’ becomes gain, ‘Curds’ becomes volume, and the tone control, instead of choosing between ‘Hog’ and ‘Bee’ just chooses between ‘dark’ and ‘light.’ The final control, a four-way selector knob, chooses between different gain voices:

  • ‘Off’ removes the tone control from play, brightening up the distortion sound.
  • ‘1’ is a more scooped voice, approaching a Big Muff.
  • ‘2’ conversely is a mids-forward fuzz.
  • ‘3’ is a messy, sputtering gated sound.

The announcement of the clone is great news for anyone who doesn’t have upwards of £600 to blow on a single pedal: the LoveTone’s limited production and notable fans (The Edge, Kevin Shields, Brian Molko, to name just a few) see the original Big Cheese fetch eye-watering prices on the second-hand market.

Watch Josh from JHS introduce the pedal below:

The Cheese Ball lists for £179, and is available to preorder now, and will ship October this year. More information at JHS Pedals’ Instagram.

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