Way Huge Pork Loin
My first impression of the Way Huge Pork Loin is quite good. It is a soft overdrive, very easy on the ears and there is not much gain on tap – even with the gain maxed it sounds friendly.
Handling this pedal is not exactly straightforward. By my understanding (gained from turning the knobs and listening):
Volume is Volume, that’s easy.
Overdrive does determine the amount of overdrive in the signal. Not to be confused with gain – because the volume does not change when you turn the knob and there is still signal passing through at zero. It feels a bit like a dry/wet blend.
Tone feels like a passive tone control and is also described as such.
Curve seems to regulate the top end of the sizzle. CCW for brighter, CW for darker.
Now it gets confusing:
There is a knob on the inside that is called Drive Mix. It’s supposed to control the mix of Overdrive and Clean signal, so in essence it does the same as the Overdrive knob ?
Then there is that knob on the outside called Clean. This is supposed to blend in clean sound, so it controls the mix of Overdrive and Clean signal – again ?
Then there is the presence that does tweak the high end of the overdrive (this might be either gain or another tone control, depending on what high end means)
and last but not least the knob named Filter that adjusts the clean tonal spectrum.
The way I gather it, there might be three voices here.
- The unaffected clean signal.
- The ‘Clean British Preamp’ signal
- The Overdrive signal
So if I understand this correctly, you get a ‘clean sound’ based on a vintage console plus an overdrive sound,
and then you have six knobs, half of which do clean/dirty blend while the other half are passive filter knobs at different points in the circuit and then there’s a master volume.
The curve knob feels like it rolls off the highs on the sizzle when you engage it. The sizzle goes from dark, warm and soft to harder, more high frequency content, more shriek-y clipping sound.
Simply pluck a string and turn it from left to right and back so you hear the range and then pluck again and turn it slowly until it sounds right.
Playing it feels and sounds very natural. Breakup with medium plucking intensity starts a bit past noon on the gain knob and even with the gain around 2 o’clock, soft playing is not clipping yet.
Right now, I have the Pork Loin set so that when you kick it on while playing softly, there is absolutely no difference. As soon as you start hitting medium hard – that is where my comp engages – you get a bit of grinding dirt – soft, round gravel (the one you can walk barefoot).
When you dig in, it gets dirtier.
Way Huge did write the phrase ‘Soft Clip Injection’ on the pedal and that is a very well chosen set of words, this is what this pedal does, described in three words. The clipping you get is among the softest I ever heard. It’s never harsh, not really aggressive and always easy on the ears.
The ‘third’ audio path, that one that does the clean British preamp sound is warm and round, depending on what you feed it, I’d even go as far and call it fat (in a good way). The tone controls are basically a series of treble rolloffs and there’s no way to boost any frequencies. This never gets shrill and/or shrieking. It is a fun pedal and I think it’s sound is quite unique.
These are not made any more, but you can easily find the Pork & Pickle, which is smaller and has a fuzz option on board. It does not have the same set of controls, but you can coax very similar sounds from it.