What LIFE SUPPORT is, and what it’s used for
LIFE SUPPORT is a high-fidelity, all-analogue overdrive and distortion pedal for the treatment of Bland Guitar Syndrome and Excessive Aural Dryness. When used regularly, it can provide effective relief from these and other music- and instrumentation-related conditions.
All Intensive Care Audio pedals are built in London, England, using high-quality components and feature soft-touch, relay-based true bypass.
LIFE SUPPORT features 6 controls, offering a wide range of available remedies:
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PREAMP – Sets the gain of the overdrive, ranging from sparkly, chiming clean tones to natural, tube-like edge-of-breakup, and on into grittier distortion territory. This control interacts interestingly with the CLIPPING control (see below).
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VOLUME – Sets the overall output volume, including when BOOST is engaged.
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TOP – A passive subtractive treble filter after the last gain stage, useful for taming high frequencies that may become more pronounced as gain increases or clipping settings are adjusted.
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BOTTOM – A subtractive bass filter after the last gain stage, which variably bypasses the output capacitor just before hitting the output transformer. As this control is in parallel with the output capacitor, some crackle may be present when adjusted at lower gain settings.
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CLIPPING – Allows blending between two very different but equally useful clipping options:
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Fully clockwise: LED clipping, for a softer, more transparent breakup.
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Fully counter-clockwise: A parallel arrangement of a MOSFET and a JFET, resulting in harder, compressed, saturated clipping.
Use this in conjunction with the PREAMP control for a wide range of overdriven tones.
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BOOST – Controls the gain of the boost circuit, which drives the front-end of the overdrive circuit. This cannot be used independently of the overdrive, but is intended to push the front-end harder — increasing gain and compression, and acting as a boost for lead/solo situations.
