T-Rex Fat Shuga Overdrive with Reverb Pedal Reviews
Get gutsy tube grit and swirling vintage reverbs from your amp with the T-Rex Fat Shuga. This 2-in-1 boost/reverb pedal breathes new life into any tube amp, adding depth, saturation, and texture to your chords and leads. The Fat Shuga's boost and reverb circuits function independently with separate gain and reverb levels, but they are tone-tailored to complement one another as they interact. If you're in the market for both a boost pedal and a reverb, Sweetwater guitarists recommend saving some space on your pedalboard and checking out the T-Rex Fat Shuga pedal.
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Highest Rated Reviews
Wow!! Sounds great; like keef & Mick Taylor!!!
This baby is not a One trick pony!!! Reverbs are amazingly sweet And versitile; the cream/crunch is absolutely gorgeous, orgasmic!!!! sounds great,like keef & Mick Taylor between 1969 & 1972!¡!! Magical ****!!!
Fantastic Pedal!
I've had this pedal for a bit now and am still shocked by how good it sounds and how perfect it compliments a tweed amp. I'm using it in to a modded tweed deluxe 1x12 combo and a 5F6A 4x10 combo Tweed Bassman circuit and it's a PERFECT "always on" pedal. I'm not a pedal guy and typically plug straight in and use the volume knobs on the guitar for grit. With tweed amps I sometimes miss that dash of reverb on clean stuff and don't care for the clutter of a pedal board so thought I would try the Fat Shuga. While the room and hall digital reverbs are decent to good and did exactly what I wanted it's the low to mid gain boost that is the magic in this pedal. Super transparent and gives you a slight signal push that makes a tweed amp on volume 3 respond like it's on volume 5 - just more attitude and dynamics and a push in the low mids. Just an FYI both the boost and reverb can not be independently turned on and off via foot switch. I'm using it as always on with just a "dash of splash" and the gain knob set lower. Love it. Going to buy a second one for backup.
Great Pedal!
I really am blown away by this pedal! Got it for a great price during guitar month but after using it I"d be ok with paying full price. I"ve been recording with it in front of my Fender Bassbreaker 007 and it is always on. I"m working on a project that calls for some big reverb sounds (think Chris Stapleton), and this combination nails it. The hall reverb is especially sweet. The cream knob doesn"t give much more volume just adds more drive. For a lot of what I do this pedal with that amp is all I need! Great Simple Pedal!
Gives tube-amp-like grit to a '60s solid-state amp (Ampeg G100)
My Ampeg sounds nice and full for a solid-state and does have a not un-tube-like overdrive. I like my Fulltone OCD for bluesy saturation, but my clean setting was just too clean. I had just 3 pedals so I thought the reverb combo feature would help fill things out.
Cream saturation takes clean and makes it sound like a clean tube amp. It punches things up and adds grit, even when not turned up enough to get obviously saturated. When it saturates, it sounds convincingly like what you'd expect when you overdrive a tube guitar amp by a mild to moderate amount. You might still be wanting a drive pedal in addition to the Cream but you might get away without it if you have a way to juice up the gain before the Shuga.
There's also plenty of gain boost there! SO much so that I decided to feed the FatShuga with my OCD, instead of using SHuga as a pre-distortion boost. Doing it the other way basically gave me no control with the OCD. Apparently there's output trim inside but the chassis uses a small hex-headed bit, so I'll have to see if I have that.
The reverb doesn't sound like a cheap add-on! The room setting is discrete and adds liveliness but doesn't draw attention. It's shorter and a bit less vibey than the hall. The hall setting is longer and more obvious. What's nice is the reverb volume brings it up to the point where it is the hottest it can be while still being tasteful. Your guitar's tone doesn't submerge into the ocean; its head is still above water.
The only thing I don't like (besides the large amount of output gain, which is nice if you want it), is there is no on-off for the reverb; you just have to turn it all the way down. I wish there was a footswitch jack to toggle the reverb. For that reason, you might end up just presetting the reverb to add background space instead of using it as your main reverb effect. Or adjust it in between songs. But if that's all you need, then you've saved a bunch of money!
Killer Pedal
I've been eyeballing this pedal for literally years now, and I'm so glad they decided to start making these again…. The boost sound is clear and virtually unaltered from your original tone until you're at around 40% and up. From that point on, it's just warm, thick overdrive and it sounds amazing. I'm surprised by how amp-like this pedal is. It won't do high gain, but it will do cranked-fender-tweed without hesitation. I'm currently using it as an always-on grit pedal w/reverb. To make this precise, here are some pros and cons.
Pros:
1. Fantastic overdrive sound
2. Fantastic reverb sounds
3. Internal trim pot to control decibel output. (I have mine set at unity gain so I can crank the knob all the way and use it as more of just an overdrive pedal w/reverb for an always-on option)
4. Output of trim knob only slightly affected by Cream knob (What this means is that from 0%-50% Cream, it's a clean boost, and from 50% - 100% is just more overdrive. But the volume doesn't change hardly at all from 0-100, which I love. Obviously, you can adjust the trim pot internally if you want it be a legitimate boost)
5. Indented Reverb knob with two great reverb options (it even sounds to me like there's a slight pre-delay on the Hall setting, which really adds a nice extra dimension to this pedal).
Cons:
1. Way too expensive. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing pedal... but if you consider the fact that it's essentially two pedals in one, you might be able to justify it's hefty price tag.
I HIGHLY recommend this pedal.
A Boost with Benefits
I was looking for an overdrive/reverb combination for my dry as a bone champ amp, and this popped up in a search. Seemed like a good value, and I bought the "last one" so I figured others must have liked it too. The reverb sounds great, I like a room reverb turned up rather than a hall reverb and this room reverb is more lush than most. The Cream knob was a little bit of a disappointment though; all the way down it boosted my amp too much, and all the way up it didn't provide enough grit to justify the volume increase. Also, placing it after dirt pedals I had to really dial in the dirt pedal's volume out so as not to get a huge volume jump when engaging the grit. I sidelined the pedal and planned on selling it. But after a few weeks I did a little hunting and found that there's an internal trim pot which allows one to dial in unity volume when the cream knob is turned all the way down (or to really boost the drive of the cream knob). I prefer to have unity on a boost at the lowest position and dial up the knob as needed. I think T-Rex should put info about the trim pot into the user manual, it would have saved me some time and second-guessing. Now the pedal stays out, and I like it just fine!
