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Electro Harmonix Knockout Attack Equaliser

 

Review of the Electro Harmonix Knockout Attack Equaliser by The Man in the Jar  

An extraordinarily simple yet effective device to fine-tuning your tone.    

Features of the Electro Harmonix Knockout Attack Equaliser

Construction - Typically robust simple metal construction with screen-printed top. Virtually bomb-proof.   

Ins and Outs - One input and one output.

Power - The 9 volt battery is accessed by removing the base plate's four screws. An optional power supply is sold separately.

Controls - There's a chunky on-off footswitch and three knobs labelled Low, Dry and High:

Low - This controls the low-pass filter. Essentially the further clockwise you turn it the louder the low frequencies will be;

High - This does the same thing with the high-pass filter and high frequencies;

Dry - This is effectively a volume control for your original signal. Set at 12 o'clock with the filters both at zero the signal is exactly the same with the unit on or bypassed. Beyond 12 o'clock and the dry signal seems to get a slight boost.

 

Sound of the Electro Harmonix Knockout Attack Equaliser

A good way of getting to grip with what's actually happening is to turn all three knobs down to zero so no signal is present. Then turn the Low filter up a bit and play, up a bit more and so on until you are familiar with the low component. Then do the same with the High filter. In isolation the sounds produced by each filter are not pleasant, the low-end seems very wooly and the high-end is impossibly brittle. But that's because you're not used to hearing these frequencies in isolation. The magic happens when you bring the Dry signal back in and add or subtract degrees of the other two elements. Then you enter true tone-tweaking territory. 

Overall Impressions of the Electro Harmonix Knockout Attack Equaliser

I can see this as being part of a gigging musician's basic toolkit. It works for any input signal and the more you think about it the more uses it has: Electro-acoustic guitarists can supplement their onboard EQ with this unit. A vocalist could use it to tailor response to a particular room. A bass player with an old instrument suddenly has the next best thing to on-board EQ...  and the list goes on. Every roadie in the world should have a couple of these in their toolbag.

Buy the Electro Harmonix Knockout Attack Equaliser

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