Guitar Gear Review: Decibel Eleven Hot Stone Deluxe

With summer NAMM 2012 around the corner I am going to preview some of the products I feel are going to make the biggest splash this year. I have tested a lot of gear over the past few months but nothing has blown me away as much as the Decibel Eleven Hot Stone™ Deluxe.

The Decibel Eleven Hot Stone™ Deluxe boasts an impressive 1600mA firing on all voltages. This gives you 80% more power than comparable power supplies. What this means to the layman is all of your pedals will be firing at full capacity. This gives you the tone and performance the effect manufacturer intended. This also helps eliminate volume drops when engaging your pedals.

The Decibel Eleven Hot Stone Deluxe has 8 isolated outputs including 2 medium current outputs and two high current outputs. This gives you 10 total available outlets and all can be used simultaneously. The medium and high current outputs give you the option to lose the wall-warts for your power hungry effects like Eventide, Strymon, TC Electronic Nova and Line 6 modelers.

What really blows me away is the variable voltage outputs. The power supply has two outputs that can be easily dialed in for 5V-9V output. This option comes into play in a couple of ways. If you have some kind of oddball, vintage or foreign device that needs a non-standard voltage these outputs can be used. The more traditional way to use these outputs is to get a “brown” sound from your effects. I plugged my vintage non-led MXR Distortion + into the variable voltage output. By bringing the voltage down a bit, I got a great gritty overdriven tone. The output gives the effect of a battery getting ready to die but allows you to regulate and sustain the voltage.

The variable voltage output also was great with my vintage DOD Chorus 460. By dialing down the voltage a bit I got a smoother, creamier lush chorus. What I liked the most about the variable voltage output is the controls to dial in the voltage are on the front of the box allowing you to tweak the voltage on the fly. While traditional power supplies do little more than supply power to your pedals. The Decibel Eleven Hot Stone Deluxe will actually help you define and control your tone.

This unit is built like a tank and is housed in a steel housing. Though Decibel Eleven Hot Stone Deluxe is built like a tank it only add a little more than 2 1/2 pounds to your pedal board. The Decibel Eleven Hot Stone™ Deluxe has a street price of $179 and comes with a 5-year warranty. For those of you not needing 10 outputs, Decible Eleven also makes the 8 output Decibel Eleven Hot Stone SM and Decibel Eleven Hot Stone HC. All three units can be purchased directly at decibel11.com