As detailed elsewhere on the forum, I've just been on tour in Italy with Meshugga Beach Party. For travel, I paired down my pedal board to my essentials - tuner, echo and boost. For boost, I took along my Nocturne Atomic Brain.
The Atomic Brain has two controls and two switches (labelled "Abby" and "Normal" - got to love the Young FrankenSHTEEN reference!) The control on the right is a boost level, and the control on the left is a bass cut - counter clockwise for less bass, clockwise for more. The switch on the right ("Normal") toggles the standard boost level. The switch on the left ("Abby") toggles an extra boost. From my discussions with Tavo Vega, who makes these pedals, the intention was that you'd keep the "Normal" switch on to get your standard tone, and use the "Abby" switch for a little extra to accent lead or solo parts.
Now, I know the Atomic Brain is primarily associated with rockabilly - that of course makes sense given that Tavo designed this with the goal of getting the hot 6G6 Bassman sound without having the amp at piercing volumes. So, here I was taking this stomp box out of the box, so to speak, to spend some time in the surfin' world.
I found a number of different uses for the box. In general, I used it as intended, with the Normal switch on for lead, and the Abby switch on for accent parts. However, I also found it useful for boosting some rhythm parts, especially palm muted drips.
Sonically, this is a very "present" boost - I'd say it adds dynamic range as opposed to just making everything louder. The bass cut is great as I was able to use it to dial in how much "chunk" I wanted in the sound - also useful to avoid "ice-pick" treble (or more than usual, Shecky might say). I brought the boost level up where I wanted it, and then dialed back the bass until I had the clarity I wanted on the low strings.
For the first half of the tour I was using a Twin Reverb, and the Atomic Brain was in its element - bringing the hot tones of a high powered amp into a more controlled volume range.
For the second half of the tour I used a Hot Rod Deville, which is a whole different beast. Even on the clean channel, I couldn't get a clean sound out of the thing with my high output Mosrite style pickups. Here, my use of the pedal was more limited, and I used it more as a fuzz. Even with the amp compressing when you look at it, the presence of the pedal was a lot more pleasing than the amp alone.
So, end result, I'd say the Atomic Brain is a hodaddy that can rightfully hold its own place on a surfin' pedal board.
