Barber Small Fry Burn Unit Review

Going down the pedal rabbit hole can be a little overwhelming given the pedal choices out there, but the journey has always been a rewarding one when you find those jewels in the rough. This was the case with the Barber Electronics Small Fry Burn Unit. Being a previous owner of their Tone Press parallel compressor, I had a feeling going in that this pedal was not going to disappoint. The Burn Unit’s looks can be a little deceptive, because it looks like any other overdrive/distortion pedal, but I can assure you that it is not standard fare. Let’s jump in shall we?

Tech Talk

Housed within the Hammond 1590BB sized aluminum enclosure we have Barber’s proprietary handmade recipe, boasting carefully selected high quality components, a robust double-sided plated through hole PCB. These are typically found in military spec circuit board designs for a worry free lifetime of use. It features true bypass switching, with carefully matched components, asymmetrical and symmetrical clipping in the gain stages, with extra flexibility accessible via the three position Dynamics toggle and internal trim pots for even more control of note shape, bass, mids, and presence. This packs quite a bit into an already compact pedalboard-friendly package. The unit is powered by your standard 9V DC negative center adapter typical of many other common pedal brands.

The Barber Small Fry Burn Unit Manual

Barber’s instruction sheet is pretty straightforward: “Set your volume at 12 o’clock and tone at 3:00 o’clock” and adjust to taste.

Barber then lists six baseline settings to get you going:

1. Blackface
2. Tweed
3. British
4. Warm Clean Boost
5. Black Magic Tone
6. The 20,000 Collector Amp

Each of these has their own suggested settings. I think we can surmise what some of these are from their descriptions!

Barber Small Fry Burn Unit Functions

The control layout is pretty familiar. We have a Volume for your overall level of the pedal, Tone to adjust the brightness, Dynamics and Burn. The Dynamics knob controls the compression characteristics of the pedal, and the Burn knob controls the sustain and drive. There is a 3 position mini-toggle. When switched to the left this position gives you the stock Burn unit sounds, to the middle a more vintage type drive sounds with less gain, and finally the right will give you access to the Burn Unit’s asymmetrical “power tubes” clipping options. These settings are meant to be used in tandem with the dynamics control for best effect. Additionally, the four internal trim pots are pre-adjusted and are a good starting point, but can be tweaked for sculpting your tone even further.

How Does the Barber Small Fry Burn Unit Sound?

In our demo, we set up the Burn Unit into the Boss IR-2 running a clean amplifier IR, into a mixer and then into a Focusrite 2i2. The guitar used is a Seymour Duncan-loaded dual humbucker Stratocaster which produces a nice full clean tone and serious chunk when we demoed it with the pedal. We started at noon on the controls then we kicked in the pedal, we were greeted with the gnarliest and harmonically rich distortion I’ve heard in a long time. The tone of the Burn Unit is a complex and rich amalgam of thick tones with plenty of thump but still with tons of clarity pushing through. The pedal reminded me of a SansAmp on steroids. I took the pedal around the dials and the pedal was very responsive in all settings. The Dynamics knob added a juicy character to the gain, making the guitar feel alive under the fingers and fun to play. The chords were chunky but still well defined through the gain. There was plenty of gain on tap to satisfy any discerning player from country, blues, to heavy rock. The Barber Small Fry Burn Unit deserves a place on almost any pedalboard. Please check out our demo on the Humbucker Soup YouTube channel below. Have fun out there!