Build It Yourself

You won't put assembly-line workers out of a job, but you will get some cool sounds from Korg’s Nutube-powered pedal kits

- Trevor Curwen

Sold as ‘kits’, the self-assembly aspect of the Nu:Tekt TR-S Power Tube Reactor and HD-S Harmonic Distortion is actually limited to screwing on the bottom plate, sticking four rubber feet on and putting the knobs in place, with the addition of a sheet of stickers to ‘customise’ your pedal. That far-from-difficult aspect aside, each pedal looks a most interesting prospect based around Korg’s Nutube, which, the company says, operates exactly as a triode vacuum valve. Besides a set of four knobs, each pedal has three front-panel trim pots to adjust various parameters.