distortion

The Carbide is a pulverizing distortion pedal that captures the mighty "chainsaw sound", with heady boosts to 3 specific frequency bands and a ton of volume. Officially, obtaining this "chainsaw sound", as it came to be known, consists of plugging into a Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal and maxing all four knobs. The Carbide starts with this at its base, then tweaks the majority of the distortion circuit for maximum crunch and thud. The Carbide splits your signal into two paths, one path heads to a powerful clean boost specially configured to downtuned instruments, the other heads into the gears of the distortion. Each path is given its own volume knob before being mixed in parallel, letting you fine-tune the right amount of dirt. An Emphasis control tightens up the extreme low end while cutting treble, letting the boosted frequency bands jump out of the mix.

Emp(hasis):
The stock HM-2 circuit gives you two "color mix" or EQ knobs: the L knob controls a frequency boost at 87Hz but the H knob actually controls two different bands simultaneously, at 958Hz and 1279Hz. The Carbide keeps these three boosts intact but the Emphasis control cuts frequencies around these bands, making them pop a little more. Like the H knob of the original, the Emphasis control adjusts two different filters simultaneously: one at 63Hz and a treble shelving filter. The Q of the low filter is just wide enough to butt up against the onboard bass boost, while knocking out pesky sub bass.