In this episode of “What does this pedal actually do?”, I pulled out an old friend (and maybe not that friendly): my BBE Sonic Stomp / Sonic Maximizer in stompbox form. I’ve had this unit for about 20 years, and back in the day I even patched it into the auxiliary of a desk to wind a little bit in on vocals and other instruments because I thought it had a nice effect. But today I wanted to stop the marketing rabbit hole—phase correction, re-timing, sparkle, bottom end—and just listen to what it actually does on a guitar I know inside-out. I’m playing my parlor-style “Second Coming” build (Pete made it for me—beautiful guitar) straight in with no EQ, because it’s super balanced across the strings and makes a great baseline. The moment I kick the Sonic Stomp on, even with the knobs turned down, there’s still something happening—an upper-mid/top-mid presence thing that turns into “crankly tangle in the twinkle” when you push it. Wind it up and it can get nasty fast, with howl and unpleasant frequencies, and on this particular rig I honestly preferred the guitar without it. My takeaway: it can create that smiley-face illusion in isolation, but it’s the kind of thing that can disappear—or cause problems—once you’re in a mix.