Sushi Box FX Smoke Signal (v1)

When I heard that Mr. Sushi Box has done his interpretation of the Verellen Meatsmoke I was totally on board and ordered one in the very first batch that was available.
I wanted to get my hands on a Meatsmoke forever, but never found one I could afford.

What we get here is a tube driven device with two channels that have completely independent controls for Gain, Volume and EQ. Those two channels are voiced differently, one is more clean and one is more dirty. The cleaner channel is already quite rough by itself and the dirtier channel is, completely unable to pass a signal without adding copious amounts of dirt.

The range of dirt provided here is astounding and I could easily see how this might be a favorite for a bassist that plays in a stoner/sludge/doom band. You could use it as a clean-ish preamp and with the possibility to go all in dirty, or you could set it up as a 2 way dirt pedal, it has a bypass switch.

This is the first version of that pedal. Nathan has modified it in later runs, where the clean channel represents the Sushi Box Underground Accelerator, I think it had something to do with Verellen being unhappy with someone else making a straight up copy of their design, even though the original Meatsmoke is not in production and has not been for a while. Since I never got my hands on a Meatsmoke, I cannot say how close the Sushi Box gets to the mark.
What I can vouch for is that you get a pedal that does a serious raspy grind, with the option of doing even (a lot) more with the stomp of a switch.

I don’t admit this easily, but this one was too much for me and my tastes. I wanna say brutal.
When you wrestle this, expect a dirty fighter. Prepare for dirt in your eyes and a solid kick in the groin. And beware – I’m pretty sure there’s a knife hidden in the boot.