Broughton Terraformer

Josh Broughton has made some amazing pedals, and I’ve owned quite a few of them. In fact, all my active pedalboards have a Broughton pedal on them, the RFE I use is the perfect addition to the Noble preamp and in that regard, one of my favotire pedals in the world. However, it’s a very utilitarian pedal, and therefore somewhat sober. In that slot on a pedalboard, sobriety is highly valued, at least by me.
In the slot of the drive pedal, adventure and excitement are highly sought after.
The Terraformer comes in the typical Broughton design, which is liked by some, and thought of as somewhat boring by others. While the Broughton pedals don’t compete with the sheet metal pedals of brands like 3Leaf or Origin, the build quality is immaculate.

To cut to the chase, here’s my verdict: In the words of the late Douglas Adams: “Mostly Harmless”.
In the words of the Dirt Jounalist: “It’s Okay, but boring.”

I could conclude this here, but maybe someone would like to know why I got to that opinion, which is why I will babble on a bit (spoiler: There’s no plot twist).
The Terraformer comes with a three band EQ, capable of boost and cut, a clean blend and a gain knob, plus the obvious volume knob. Every knob works just as advertised, and I could not detect much in the way of crazy interactions between the knobs. The gain knob has a decent range, and the pedal stays in the realm of overdrive at all times. You can set a low gain sound that only growls when you dig in and you can set a level of drive that cannot be ignored, and you get a decent reaction to your playing style and strength.
Imagine a Hippie. A real one from back then. VW Bus, campfire, guitar, flowers in the unkempt, long hair.
Mind severely altered by … substances Hippies like. I’m sure you get the picture. Now take that Hippie and have them imagine the 9-5 of a government accountant. Wearing a grey suit, driving a grey car to a grey building, going into a grey cubicle and do accounting for 8 hours straight.
This is the level of excitement that swashes around in my hormone system when I play the Terraformer.

Does it have shortcomings? Not really. It works – as advertised. So what am I complaining about here?
While the quote “Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things” (Yoda) totally works for a little green creature living alone on a swamp planet, mastering the Force, it’s not really my motto to live by when selecting a machine to provide overdrive to my clean signal. Adventure and excitement are at the forefront of what I’m looking for in a dirt pedal. And how does that work?
You have a little box that you feed signal in, and that signal gets clipped and EQed a bit and leaves the box – what’s exciting about one of them and boring about another?
This is seems like a strictly philosophical question, but there are special quirks that other pedals manage to do, that several people, playing several styles, all scattered over the planet can agree on.
One exciting pedal would be Audio Kitchen’s Fake Plastic Trees. This is a literal amp in a box, since a tiny little power amp drives a tiny little power soak on the inside, and the feeling of how the pedal connects your ears to your fingertips is awesome. There is considerable “push back” of the pedal that fights to stay clean when you set it to a little bit of drive, and that gives you an awesome dynamic feeling of playing the thing. The BJFe Blueberry? It does that thing with the mids that creates an image in my mind of the frequency spectrum that qualifies as mids for bass having a wild party, excitedly hitting a piñata and collecting the candy. The Origin DCX Bass? It does several exciting things, just read the review.
Al of these aforementioned pedals essentially do some EQ and send the signal through some sort of clipping device, same as the Terraformer, but while all of these use some sort of exciting party trick to inspire me to play in a certain way, the Terraformer leaves my mind in a grey cubicle, hunched over a printed out Excel sheet.
It might be that it’s me and not the pedal. Maybe I’m a little over saturated from so much saturation in the past, but when I hook my bass to any of the pedals I hold in high regard and play a while, whenever I get back to trying out the Terraformer, the vivid landscape in my mind grows dull and grey.
I want something that excels at inspiring me, not something that makes me think of excel sheets.
Maybe it’s me, and no blame falls to the Terraformer. It’s a hard working 9-5 pedal that does its best to do its job and support a family, and I’m the unthankful stay at home parent, complaining about how the day to day grind has replaced the excitement and I want out.
I don’t know – but there’s no spark.