Southampton Fifth Gear

This is an out-of-production pedal that was recommended to me many times. An elusive one, hard to find in the EU, so I did bite the bullet and ordered one from the US as soon as I found one for an acceptable price.

It certainly has its own flavor, but I feel reminded of the Barbershop, the Mini and the Beta.
The layout looks like the Barbershop at first, but it feels more like the Mini. The Heat knob does not starve like the sag knob on the Fairfield, it makes the sizzle gnarlier.
There is no clean setting and it’s still passing signal with gain at zero.
However, my trusty ol’ flats suck a lot of drive from most pedals, so I can dial in a tone that sounds clean enough to pass through ‘no overdrive’ territory as long as no one takes a closer look.
The drive favors the lows. If I go up on gain and heat, I have a lot of touch sensitivity higher up the neck, but down in the money zone, even soft plucking gets a drive.
With higher settings, it sounds like a mild fuzz. The organic feel is gone and the sizzle feels artificial. Not without its uses, but not what I’m looking for. So I kept the dials on the left half of the playfield. With both heat and gain at 9 o’clock, I need to turn up the volume to 3 o’clock to get unity and have something to satisfy those with pedal OCD – all dials perfectly horizontal. I also have a mild drive that clears up well with playing dynamics.
When I pair that up with the Saturn VI, the effect is … interesting:
The two drive engines mingle and feel like – it’s hard to describe. Imagine a compressor set so it gets you a fair amount of dip and swell, now take away the dip. You get the initial attack just like you’re used to, but when you let the note ring, it has the weirdest sustain, it feels like there’s a whole second or two where no decay happens, almost as if the pedals are sending themselves in self-oscillation.
I’m getting a bit of noise from the combo of Saturn VI and Fifth Gear – when I add the BDPG it gets even worse, but I would not really use those three teamed up to play a quiet part.

But all in all, I found the Fifth Gear on its own to be a bit uninspiring. I tried to make friends,
but I failed. Moving it more to the front of the signal chain helped some. With more dynamics hitting the pedal, the response was a bit more lively. But trying different settings and switching around between Jive, Saturn VI and Fifth Gear always ended up with me feeling inspired to try something with Jive/Saturn, while the Fifth Gear did not animate me to engage in any way. The heat and gain are interactive, but not that much. I felt like in my signal chain, there is a point where the sizzle feels artificial and too harsh, it’s kind of removed from the rest and comes as a side dish on a different plate. When I dial back from there and find a sweet spot on the gain that gives me a touch sensitive drive pedal that has some dynamic range to it, I can clearly understand why many people recommend it as a dirt pedal for bass. When I play on until my ears got used to it, it feels like a solid choice and a really good overdrive. Plus, it’s yellow and has a muscle car printed on top.
However, when my ears are at home playing the Fifth Gear in this low’ish gain setting where it feels best to me, I can switch it off and switch on the Saturn VI in its stead, and it feels like the sunrise after a long and cold winter night. The drive feels even more dynamic, sounds more organic and the added harmonics are so seamless, adding a natural feeling treble content that lifts the proverbial blanket from my cabs.