Behold – the Caline CP-12 Pure Sky Overdrive, which is a clone of the Paul Cochrane Timmy pedal. In the last 5 years it has become one of the most sought after boutique pedals on the market. They are made one at a time by Paul Cochrane himself, and this is the only pedal he makes. At one time there was a “Tim” pedal, but now “Timmy” is the only one available. The Timmy pedal is what they call a “transparent overdrive” (think tube screamer or TS-808 style pedal). If you want to get the gist of what the Timmy does and sounds like – watch this video.
When Timmy was hard to find you find them for sale for as much as $499. Now, you can buy them online at all kinds of smaller guitar shops for around $129 (which leads me to believe they are now mass produced). In either case, this may be more than you want to spend – and you can now buy the Caline Pure Sky Overdrive (a Timmy clone) for between $30 and $40.
The Timmy pedal is great on its own for overdriving your tube amp into dirt ridden bliss (like any tube screamer type pedal). Where it shines (for me) is for its ability to stack with other dirt and distortion boxes, or just for it’s ability to be used for a boost or lead boost. I tend to turn pedals like this up to about 2-3pm gain myself, but it really depends on how much saturation you want. I have come across many, many players who say that this is one pedal on their board that they NEVER turn off. You be the judge – at under $30 you can’t afford not to have it.
If you want some additional context, the Pure Sky excels definitely excels at stacking with distortion or boost pedals, but the thing that blew me away was if you turn this to about 11 o’clock volume and 1 o’clock gain when using the clean channel on a good tube amp this pedal just dead nails the classic ZZ top tone. I play La Grange all the time with this pedal and I just can’t believe how it reacts to my playing. It supports the pinch harmonics Billy Gibbons is so famous for, and it’s just completely touch sensitive. This same pedal can be dialed back for a ton of blues sounds as well, but that one tone setting (for me) is so beautiful to hear, I seldom move it from those settings. I have pedals ranging from $30 – $699 on my board, and it’s hard to believe this is one of the best sounds ones I own (and one of the cheapest).
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