When is a stomp box too small to stomp?
When it's as small as the Cicada, a tiny new overdrive pedal from California-based Olinthus. Measuring just 1.2 inches wide by 1.8 inches long and .9 inches deep, the Cicada has a ridiculously compact footprint for an effects pedal and weighs a mere 1.1 ounces.
The idea behind Cicada was to stuff the biggest dirt sounds inside the smallest enclosure possible. To that end, Olinthus took tonal inspiration from the original Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer and shoehorned it into a rather ingeniously engineered box that doubles as chassis and on/off switch (more on that below). With a price tag of $99, it's about $50 cheaper than the Ibanez TS808 reissue.
First up, the electronics. The Cicada is an analog overdrive featuring a single-stage soft-clipping circuit with filtering before and after the gain stage. Three sound-shaping controls — level, drive and tone — reportedly allow Cicada to cover “a wide variety of sonically complex overdriven tones.”
As for its diminutive size, making guitarists smile is part of goal at Olinthus. Describing themselves as “a small team of musicians, designers, and engineers,” Olinthus aims to create products “that inspire creative ideas, bring joy, and make you laugh.” The company admits that “an overdrive pedal this tiny is a bit ridiculous," but adds, "making it small also makes it pretty awesome.”
It's worth pointing out that this isn't the first tiny Tube Screamer clone we've seen. Two years back, Pedal Pawn unboxed a boutique TS808 not much bigger than a nine-volt battery and gave it a proper demo shortly after.
But that mini TS was made in limited numbers and hard to find. The Cicada is very available through at Reverb.com.
Given the pedal's size, some compromises had to be made. For one thing, Cicada has one TRRS {Tip, Ring, Ring, Sleeve} jack that comprises the pedal’s input, output and power. Fortunately it ships with a dedicated breakout cable, but you’ll need to provide your own nine-volt DC center-negative power supply (minimum 50mA).
As for that ingenious design, you'll notice there is no obvious on/off switch. That's because the entire pedal is the on/off switch. The green anodized aluminum chassis is hinged at the top — just press below the knobs to turn it on, and again to turn it off. Olinthus says not to worry — you can use your foot and you won’t damage the knobs, even if you step on them by accident. The switch mechanism can withstand up to 250 pounds of force.
All of which means you'll probably misplace it sooner than you'll destroy it.
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