When I first encountered the Hip Kitty Oxblood, I was intrigued enough by the description and clips to purchase one. Unfortunately, I could not coax a really usable tone out of it with my then-current amplifiers, and it went into stasis. I did not sell the Oxblood because I knew, quite frankly, that I would never get a decent price for it -- it's too much of an outlier in the pedal world.
Fast forward to this past month; I have been tracking the guitar parts for my next album, and I was determined to use EVERY PEDAL I OWN at some point on the record. It was a total blast swapping out different amp/speaker/effects combinations and in the end I
was able to provide a showcase for each of my major speaker choices and effects in 3 extended instrumental/solo sections.
The Hip Kitty is less of a 'distortion' pedal (as it is described) and more of a character/
saturation pedal. It is, in fact, quite a dynamic pedal and what I originally thought of as a major item in the Minus column (it's incredible midrange push and high pass filtering) became a major item in the Plus column when it came time to recording.
Coupled with the VOX Little Night Train pushed just to the edge of breakup, I was able to coax tones ranging from twangy overdrive to
Hard Days Night ish open 'hwang', slashing type of tone.
Adding the Maestro PS-1 to the mix, I was able to get a REALLY nice lead tone with a Strat. And, lastly, using a Catalinbread Naga Viper in front of the Oxblood, I was able to thicken up the tone overall for a meaty, meaty, lead tone with an Agile AL 2800.
Old pedal board pic w the Oxblood...
CLIP:
https://soundcloud.com/bena/hip-kitty-sample
