Just got back from the Moollon shop, checked out what's up and came away with some promised goodies. The big news? Mr. Park has been working on a Marshallesque 18 watt head for years now, and said they're getting closer to what he's been after for a while. Handwired from a turret board as many would expect, it sounded sooper sweet to me, but he mentioned that he's yet to find a power transformer that has the under-refined power grit of vintage transformers that lack the fidelity, but provide the rock, so to speak. Korean tranny makers keep asking him why he wants "deficient" parts, and he said it might take a while to find something sufficient. At any rate, plans are to make just heads(no combos) for the domestic market, and the Moollon twist on the casing is almost as much an enigma to solve as the transformer issue. Camera phone pics suck, but anyway...
While on a trip to the testing studio before heading home, he asked me if I wanted to try out his original Uni-Vibe, so I strapped on a vintage '70s Strat and plugged into an old JTM45 on "10", and let the thing swirl. The warmth alone gave me the chills as I rolled the guitar volume pot down about halfway and chugged away, and then let the Marshall brightly shriek away as I cranked the thing up and had a few kicks with the speed pedal. Really good fun, although I froze up a bit in front of the man himself, he's a trew rocker and I just like to pound out 1st inversion major 9 chords half the time.
No doubt one of the better parts of the day was him handing me a few pedals, once telling me that "casing flaws prevent all etched boxes from being used", and that he'd assemble a few internals when he had the time to keep them from going to waste. That being said, I could find nothing wrong with the two he passed in my direction, a compressor and distortion box, personalized with "built for Andreas"....(Andi as I am by nickname, I go by the formal Swedish/Euro spelling 'round these parts) With no serial number or warranty card to show how personal things are, with "Andreas" scribbled on the inner tag. The comp has been one of my favorite Moollon effects that I had yet to purchase, being so quiet and smooth, and really sounds great on milder settings. The dist is an interesting one, being more a heavy OD that does a lot what the JTM45 does, as it gets a bit brighter as distortion increases(gain down is a clean boost), but in general has an almost flat EQ curve that makes a great rhythm chunker, like a slightly flatter EQ'd OD-3 with a bit more gain on tap, yet very transparent. A Micro POG and my collection will be complete...
