Most drive pedals are based around traditional analogue circuitry but in this Pico‑series pedal, EHX have used digital technology to coax three different characters of drive from a single pedal. Not only that but they have also included powerful tone‑shaping controls, making this a very versatile little pedal that’s able to cover everything from the merest hint of drive to full‑on fuzz. Being digital, it takes more current than its analogue counterparts, but a PSU is included and if you plan to use your own pedalboard PSU, 100mA of current is required.
The three modes, selected using the Type button and flagged by the tri‑colour LED, are Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz. As with the other pedals in the range, the colours are green, orange and red, and the orange and red can look quite similar. There are the usual drive and volume controls, which are common to all modes, plus two tone controls for bass and treble, though in Fuzz mode the leftmost knob controls a noise gate while the right‑hand knob becomes an overall tone control, with a slightly resonant low‑pass characteristic. Overdrive goes from low to mid gain and has an open voicing that lets most of the character of the instrument come through without change. To my ears, when using a guitar with single‑coil pickups and with the pedal plugged into a clean amplifier, this sounded just slightly aggressive with the tone controls set flat, but backing off both the bass and treble helped smooth things out. With the amp set to already add a bit of hair to the sound, the overdrive pushed it into blues territory, easily maintaining a natural tonal character.
Distortion adds more gain and gets you into classic rock territory and, again, the tone controls can be used to refine the sound and to dial back any unwanted edginess that might creep in. Those tone controls, which have a Baxandall characteristic in this mode, have a lot of range. Switch to fuzz mode and the bass knob controls a noise gate threshold, while the treble knob allows for extreme tonal variations, ranging from thin and buzzy to very fat and soupy. It can deliver a Big Muff kind of tone but at brighter settings does that raspy ‘Satisfaction’ thing pretty well too.
A secret Input Contouring EQ setting... tames the low end while boosting the mids.
There’s also a secret Input Contouring EQ setting, activated by pressing and holding the Type button, which causes the LED to flash rapidly eight times. This shifts from an unfiltered input to one that tames the low end while boosting the mids, a characteristic that many will recognise from Tube Screamer‑type pedals. The effect is fairly subtle but to my ears smooths out a little of the overdrive/distortion edginess I commented upon earlier and using it I could get very close to the sound I get from my own Fulltone OCD pedal. The input EQ setting is remembered on power up/down so you can pick which mode works best for your particular type of guitar pickup and stick with it.
Summary
To summarise, this is a very versatile and compact pedal with plenty of tonal flexibility, though if you want to switch from one mode to another, be prepared to adjust the controls each time you do so.