TC Electronic is quite up-front about the sound they’re going for with the new Dark Matter distortion: their website proclaims that it is designed to give you the sound of an early Plexi amp. Sounds good to me! So do they nail it? Let’s have a look.

The Dark Matter is a very robust stomper with a no-nonsense control array consisting of Treble, Bass, Gain and Level pots and a Voice switch (which shifts the bass response). It’s made from high-grade components, and is built into the same basic ‘hammerhead’ rugged die-cast aluminium chassis as TC’s excellent TonePrint pedals and the revolutionary PolyTune tuner. Its pedalboard footprint is pretty minimal so it’s unlikely that the jacks will cause too much of a space problem. There’s an input, an output, a True Bypass switch, a really quite bright red LED to indicate that the effect is on, and a 9v DC supply jack. Battery access is through a handy little turn screw on the bottom which you can easily turn with a guitar pick or a coin. The pedal runs on an 9v battery or a power supply.

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