Korg Nu:Tekt TR-S Power Tube Reactor and HD-S Harmonic Distortion review

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.

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The Power Tube Reactor is designed to deliver the warmth and response of a tube amp. Its circuit design can mimic the sag of a vacuum valve power amp where the sound compresses momentarily in response to transients. That’s added via a dedicated knob, aided by trim pots for setting the threshold level where the sag effect begins and adjusting sustain time.

The third trim pot is a practically targeted tone control. This is a drive pedal that feels right, reacting positively to your dynamics so you can transition from clean to dirt just with your playing. 

The amount of valve-like grit and drive can be dialled in via the Tube Gain knob and you can get as subtle or full-on as you like as a Mix knob offers parallel blends of dry and compressed/driven sound.

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While it’s great for use as a straight-up drive, tone thickener/conditioner and boost, it could also be a good way of adding some power amp-style sag into your tone if you haven’t got the option of using a decent valve amp at volume.

The Harmonic Distortion is a distortion pedal created by Fumio Mieda, designer of the original Uni-Vibe. Not wanting to rehash the sounds of the past, Fumio has developed what’s described as an all-new “never-before heard” kind of distortion based on harmonic synthesis. 

Three different distortion circuits – dialled in with the three Harmonic trim pots – can be used singly or combined to create everything from traditional cranked stack-style distortion sounds, through a range of fuzz shadings to highly resonant, raucous distortion at the more extreme end of the scale. It can get a bit wild, but an adjustable noise gate can bracket out the noise and keep things in shape. 

Specs

• PRICE: $299 / £199 each
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Drive and distortion pedals
• FEATURES: Buffered Bypass
• CONTROLS: (Power Tube Reactor): Volume, Power Sag, Mix, Tube Gain, Tone, Sustain, Threshold, Bypass footswitch
• CONTROLS: (Harmonic Distortion): Volume, Tone, Gate, Chain, Harmonic (1, 2, 3), Bypass footswitch
• CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output
• POWER: 9V battery or 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 45mA (HD-S), 85mA (TR-S)
• DIMENSIONS: 122 (w) x 96 (d) x 55mm (h)
• CONTACT: Korg