Verellen Meatsmoke

Writing these lines is a Bucket List Achievement level of experience.

More than a decade ago, when I played in a rock band, I was looking for a simple setup. I wanted a single pedal with two drive levels that can be stacked, with a master volume control for each – and I was a bit surprised at finding that there were not that many pedals around that can do that properly. Back then I found, among others, the Blackstone Mosfet, which I bought and tested at some point. The other pedal that made it on my GAS-List was the Verellen Meatsmoke, which did look extremely promising, but turned out to be extremely elusive. Even finding information about this thing is hard. The Verellen website is not online any more, and it seems that not too many of these have hit the market. The highest serial number I’ve ever seen was in the two hundreds. Over the years, I kept my eyes peeled for a EU version for an acceptable price, but I usually only discovered ads that had already sold. That’s why my pulse quickened when I saw one in the local classifieds. I shot a mail towards the seller as fast as I could, but was told I’m second in line. My hopes faltered and my pulse played a shuffled blues, but as fate would have it this joyous day, the saint of the pedalboards smiled upon me. The person first in line came from Switzerland and there were issues with import taxes, so the deal fell apart – and into my lap.

What exactly is the Verellen Meatsmoke? It describes itself as a “Vacuum Tube Instrument Preamplifier”.
For controlling the sound, the pedal sports two rows of knobs. You get two each for gain, bass, mids, treble and master. Two foot switches let you engage and disengage the device and either switch between channels or stack them – I don’t know which term is a better fit. It’s labeled “Boost”. Let me explain the inner workings as good as I can. From what I gathered on the interwebs, it works like this:
There are two tubes inside, which I think are 12AX7. Each of these tubes has two stages. When you run the Meatsmoke in the normal channel, the signal passes both tubes, but only a single stage of each. Running the boost channel sends the signal through both stages of both tubes, picking up a lot more gain and dirt along the way.
Reviewers describe the EQ as very powerful. It seems to be active, with shelving lows and highs, but I could not find any info on the corner frequencies, so this will have to be judged with a keen ear and good headphones.
On the back of the unit, there is an IEC input, which does not drive a switching power supply, but an oldschool one with a fat transformer and a set of large condensers.
This is what makes finding an appropriate Meatsmoke even harder since the ones made for the US market run on 110-120V mains voltage and only the ones made for the 220-240V grid work for me.
Apart from the power input, there is the instrument input and two outputs. One is meant for driving either the front of an amp or a power amp directly. There is a switch to select how hot the output is. The second output is meant for direct recording or sending signal to FOH.
It is an unbalanced 1/4″ out, so an additional DI might be necessary. This second output has a rudimentary speaker simulation in form of a low pass filter which can be controlled with a toggle switch.
Apart from that, there are two more switches. One is the master on/off switch and the other is a ground lift. The whole Pedal is built to last, with an industrial grade bent steel enclosure and birch wood sidewalls.
Resting between other preamp pedals it dwarfs even the Sansamp Programmable Bass Driver DI. This thing is huge. Forget your Pedaltrain Nano. Considering that this behemoth is an obscure piece of equipment, quite expensive and extremely rare, I think that if you want to use one of these, and actually find one, you can construct a pedalboard around it and use it to send a bold statement towards your fellow bass players. The lesser ones, those that do not have a Meatsmoke to call their own.

With all that pretext, let’s get to the all important question: How does it sound?

I hooked it up to my pedalboard in place of a dirt pedal and used the regular output, set to low.
Since at some point along this journey I turned into the analytical type, my first intention was to figure out how the EQ works. It took me less than a minute to find out this is a Fender tone stack. This means the EQ is passive. Mids are cut only and bass/treble are boost only, so 0/10/0 is as flat as it will go. My first emotion upon finding that was, I admit, a slight disappointment. I would have loved active mids capable of boosting. It’s been a while since I used a device with that tone stack, but I quickly found my go-to settings have not changed. A healthy boost on both bass and treble, with the mids maxed, creating a slight scoop. The normal channel is dead silent when the device is idling. With my P bass, I get a slight growl from the back of the throat on louder notes starting with the gain around 10 o’clock. That growl gets more pronounced with increasing gain, but the Meatsmoke fights to stay mostly clean. While playing in that area, I get the vibe of an amp that runs out of juice, but in a very positive way. I always associate that particular sound and feeling with power tube compression, so it is a bit weird to find that in a device that does not have a tube driven power section, but I’m not complaining. In the initial attack of the note, there is a certain hollow feeling where the ear expects a peak, like the amp tries its best to deliver that, but simply cannot. This makes it somehow a bit more aggressive. The treble it spits out makes sure there is ample definition to the notes. Overcoming my initial feeling of disappointment, I find myself immensely enjoying the sounds I’m getting, because not only do they sound right, they also feel right. The harder I push, the harder the Meatsmoke pushes back.

It might be some funny prank, sneaking into the camp of some wildlife people and swapping their tranquilizer blow darts for ones that contain a home brewed concoction of amphetamine, cocaine, noradrenaline, adrenaline, cortisol, a few drops of LSD and a sprinkle of magic shrooms for good measure.
Imagine the look on the guys face when he lowers the blowpipe, having hit the silverback gorilla right in the neck and expecting him do go drowsy in a second. Try to imagine how the gorilla might feel at this moment. I doubt being hit by a lightning could get him more amped. I doubt he’d even feel being hit by a lightning. What happens next in the wildlife expedition is a bit what it feels like when you step on the foot switch labeled ‘boost’.
Where the normal channel fights back to stay clean,
the boost channel could have been labeled “F**k it, we ball!”.

The dam breaks and the volcano erupts in the middle of a sandstorm that is also a blizzard.

With the gain at zero, the “F it, we ball!” channel passes no signal. With the gain at .001, you get audible distortion.
And while it felt like you have to push the normal channel into drive, the boost channel drives you. The tone stack is the same, but the gain is a different beast entirely. As I wrote earlier – if I understood the whole thing right, the signal passes stage one of tube one and stage two of tube two in the normal channel, while it passes both stages of both tubes in the boost channel, so it’s probably picking up twice as much gain – it certainly feels like the gorilla inside who runs things had just received a certain dart in the neck.
It also does not sound like you’ve just dumped a bucket of dB on the same circuit. It sounds like you turbocharged it along the way and fed it nitro instead of air. There is a completely different flavor to the nature of the drive. I’m tempted to use the word “timbre”, but that’s inappropriate. It’s more like Josh Homme played bass and someone dropped the voltage to his pedalboard to 5V.

When you manage to create an ultra silent chainsaw, one that is made of chitin, even the chain, with organic forms, like someone paid HR Giger money to design such a thing. Since it’s running on magic insect power, it emits no sound whatsoever, besides the soft whirring of the chain. Use that chainsaw to cut a sail on a boat in a soft breeze. That gorgeous sound of strong fabric tearing under relentless assault, that is the sound that floats on top of a cauldron full of thick, driven bass that boils angrily, suspended over a crackling fire. A voodoo gumbo not every palate will appreciate. It’s hot (as in still bubbling when you ladle it into the bowl). It’s hot (there are whole habaneros in there, along with regular chilis), it’s spicy and some of the bits in there look like tentacles and those meaty bits look suspicious. . . wait, are those eyeballs?

Forget about those pedals that rely on a clean blend to deliver a full range bass signal by splitting off the low end because the weak little clipping diodes can’t handle what a bass guitar throws at them. From this here beast you get low end distortion. As much as you like, as much as you can handle and then some. Towards the end, you cross the realm of what’s credible and pass on to a soundscape that looks like it’s made up of broken moog synthesizers. Everything is breaking up, breaking down, breaking together.

The Verellen Meatsmoke feels like it escalates things one step. Where other two channel preamplifiers will give you a clean channel and a drive channel, the Meatsmoke gives you a drive channel and a (drive)² channel. I do think if you play stoner or doom, you’ll feel instantly at home with what the Meatsmoke provides. When you play rock, you might enjoy the normal channel a lot, but find yourself hard pressed to justify the sonic onslaught that is produced through the boost channel. The key is to embrace what you’re getting. It’s wild – play wild. If you’re trying to find settings that are tame enough so you can use it as a mild drive so you can use the normal channel as a clean channel, it’s gonna fight you all the way – and even though it sits on the floor, it somehow has the high ground.

So let’s get it into a band mix. One thing of concern is, of course, that the tone stack that comes into play here is unable to boost mids in any way, essentially giving you a bathtub EQ unless you run it flat. Since I did need a proper DI out, I ran the Meatsmoke into the Origin Bassrig Super Vintage with a solid boost in the mids, set to 800Hz. Pitted against hard hit drums and searing metal guitars, the beast is not impressed. I said it sounded organic when I played it at home and organic it stayed in the band context. The sizzle reminds of angry insects. A swarm of locusts going ape shit. But there’s more to it than just the sizzle. The sheer heft is unbelievable. You know dirt pedals that drop out the low end. Those are great for guitar players to leave us more room. The Meatsmoke creates a sonic foundation to build a skyscraper on. The booty is so fat, all the your mama jokes fade in comparison. It flaps your pants, it shakes the air, there’s just so much of it. It’s an unwieldy beast, not fit for the combat that is called ‘cutting through the mix’. Where your average Darkglass pedal is a shiny robot, made of white plastic and polished steel, that deals strikes with surgical precision, exactly and only to the spots that deal the most damage, the Meatsmoke is a misshapen mutant of elephant, rhino and a bunch of insects that can claim no such precision. When it strikes, though, it strikes with such force and ferocious energy that after impact, it only leaves a crater. It certainly hit those parts that deal most damage, along with all the other parts as well.

This is not the easiest pedal to wield. But it certainly is a lot of fun, should you find yourself in company that requires, or at least tolerates heavily distorted bass with a lot of . . .well, everything, except for metallic clank.

I can cross ‘Play a Meatsmoke’ off my bucket list, but this one surely will stay around. I’m gonna build a pedalboard around it.