Black Ice Overdrive

I installed this on my Tele by replacing one of my tone knobs with this and making both of them master tone instead of having one knob for each pickup. I've found that the black ice works great to add that extra oomph to your rhythm but doesn't really do much to lead playing. One thing that I noticed that I don't really like about it is that as I turn my tone knob (0.047 cap) from 10 to 0 I slowly start to loose that overdriven sound even when I have the black ice knob set to 10 (max). Overall I think it works well and is fairly simple to install if you have experience with a soldering iron.

I like subtle distortion, so I was never a fan of the over distorted rectifier sound. This little bug sounds like a big amp working a little too hard. I can almost smell that dust-on-a-hot-tube smell. Installing it was a bit more tricky than the instructions would lead you to believe. Make sure you have lots of patience and no caffeine before you start. My LP needed a new pot to make it work (just like the instructions say, but not explicitly).

Create Your own Heiloon Tele, here's how. New Somarium Cobalt Hot Rod Custom Tele Pups ($160) come in at 11.5K from the Fender Custom Shop. Wire to a New Bridge Tone push-pull pot ($10) so it's wired direct All On when you Pull up on the Pot for the Black Ice ($35). You get Crunch on demand. Throw away the Tele 3 way swith an Add the 5 way 3200 Super Switch (Not the Mega-Switch) ($35) to get 5 NeckOnly-4 Both Series-3 Both Parallel-3 Both Out of Phase-1 Bridge Only. Yes, with just two Pickups. You can find the wiring online with a little searching. (Clue-Similar to PRS wiring)

While your at it Copper foil Sheild the body cavity and don't forget to Shield the underside of the pickguard. Add you choice of custom knobs. You will pass this one down to the kids. The Black Ice sounds like a small fender blues tube amp overdriven just enough to crunch when you hit the stings harder. Humbuckers can sound this way on their own, but single coils definitely benefit.

Installed for a friend. Works GREAT and just enough distortion for a p-bass player. The original installation was downstream of volume and I replaced the tone with a dual 500K linear with the tone cap on one pot and the Black Ice on the other.

Goes from bassy to bright to a little distortion to more distortion. Found that a BETTER configuration is the same rig, but upstream of the volume and directly off the pickup. The Black Ice's Schottky diodes have a "trigger level" and using reduced volume didn't always produce enough output voltage to "get it there" but straight off the pickup always did. Nice and easy and my friend is VERY HAPPY with it, me too.

As long as you have enough impedance on your pickups you can can add and control distortion right at your guitar. Nice distortion at your fingertips. Just takes a push pull pot to switch between the black ice and a normal capacitor. Dial in the level you want with the tone knob. I have put these on 3 guitars and am about to use it on a 4th.

Black Ice is Fabulous. I have 3. All are wired so full drive is with tone rolled to 0. They are fabulous with hi gain pups. With Texas Specials & such they have a nice edgy crunch that gets people looking because you did not hit a pedal. I use a Matchless HC30 w/ a 10&12 combo. The Tele has Tex Specs & the Strat has very hot pups(9.8, 9.4, 9.4) and I do not use any pedals. The Black Ice adds all the overdrive & boost you need to maintain the original sound and still add umph. WOW, such a deal.

Worked better than expected. Gives a sweet overdrive that's perfect for blues. I wasn't sure how it would sound, but it put my doubts to rest when i turned it up. Its a gain control on the guitar. Best part, no batteries! Super product, super trick on any guitar. Thanks for selling this little jem.

I got a chance to build my idea of the perfect Tele-toy. On-board distortion had to be part of the plan. Everything else I looked at was active and had to have a battery. These sound like an "el cheapo" stomp-box. A lot of irritating noise. Not with Black Ice. My twin-rail 'bucker in the bridge only ohmed out at 9.3K, but was plenty hot to make it work. This is by far the best distortion I've ever used. I even got the 4.4K neck p/u to fuzz a little. With the hb coils split, it mixes crunch with twang just enough to be interesting.

I'm going to use these more often. My only gripe concerns StewMac's pricing on the thing. Something that small should ship for less than $2. Also, if there's a discount for buying more than 3, help out us struggling luthiers who only get to make 5 or 6 guitars a year, and just make the price what it is for more than 3. I'd buy more, but I do up-front business, and am on a strict parts budget. I recommend Black Ice to everyone I can.
Thanks for offering this fine product.

I totally dig on this thing. I bought it for a bass I built 4 years back and it totally gets that perfect vintage growl I want. I run it with hot j bass pickups and roll it to full and wammo you got dirty bass not hot fuzz..

This is a very light overdrive, but it sounds good. I doesn't change the tone, but it does slightly reduce the volume if you turn it all the way up. You need hot pickups, though - if you've got em, this is a great easy mod.