What's This?

The Activator Deluxe® is basically a true overdrive for use with musical instrument amps. The function it performs is quite simple: it just boosts the instrument signal by a specified amount, thus overdriving the amp or any other circuitry the signal might find on its way downstream. Big deal? The twist is in how it does it.

At moderate settings, the Activator Deluxe will not significantly distort the signal by itself. When used at more extreme settings, it will gently compress the signal peaks like those that occur when picking the strings on a guitar having rather "hot" pickups - common boost preamps have a much less graceful behaviour.
An additional benefit of the circuitry used is that power drain is much lower than average: The Activator Deluxe will operate several hundred hours(!) off a decent quality 9V transistor battery.

The signal supplied by many instrument pickups, particularly single coil guitar pickups, is rather delicate. A poor quality instrument cable will lose the Telecaster's distinctive bite altogether, and so do many effect boxes. The input and bypass circuitry of the Activator Deluxe were carefully designed to avoid these ills, and use premium quality components to ensure reliable operation.

And last but not least, it looks the part, too.

Most people use the Activator Deluxe for guitar. However, it can be used with any instrument equipped with pickups - bass, Fender Rhodes, Hammond, miked-up blues harp - as long as you're using a valve amp. Use with solid-state amps and wannabe "valve" amps is not recommended. If you have a modern valve amp, use the clean channel - this will result in a very dynamic, crunchy and LOUD lively old-style lead.