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iamqman « Nice VH in a box »
Published on 03/16/11 at 14:35If you are into pedals and not amp distortion and are looking for that "brown sound" than look no further. This pedal certainly has that cranked plexi sound in a little elegant stomp box. It produces a good and extremely usable distortion sound into a clean amp or even a slightly dirty amp. It gives the front end of your amp a little sizzle but not to over the top. It definitely is refined into that earl VH sound. Therefore, it is not going to be an over the top grind or heavy saturation type pedal that is offered from Wampler such as the Ecstasy drive or the Triple Wreck. Simple lay out as follows...
Tone, Volume, Contour, and Gain with a mini switch in the middle for vintage and modern
Most know what each value does. The Contour changes the mid frequencies a bit and the vintage/modern switch is just as it says. Come to find out it actually does as it says. Going from each will give a slight change of feel in attack and color the tone to the old or the new distortion types. Very useful in custom modifying your desired tone.
UTILIZATION
Extremely easy to figure out. You can probably find a sweet spot within minutes of use with this pedal. I generally would keep the gain around 3:00 and volume according to your room. The tone knob I generally kept on the 11:00 range and the contour in 12:00 position. Since this is a mids focused pedal I would suggest using the contour to fit your personal amp EQ. I mostly stayed on the Modern side of the mini toggle but occasionally flipped it over to the vintage side. However, I generally just used this pedal as a mids booster.
The manual could be a little clearer in the sense that I like to have suggested settings with an unfamiliar company like Wampler. I would like those settings so I could get up in running with their favorites and then go from there. Not a hard pedal to figure out but would be a plus if they add a few extra pieces of insight to get you started.
SOUND QUALITY
I found this pedal to be extremely fun and since I go with natural amp distortion this pedal fit well as a booster in the front end of the amp rather than the main tone of your rig.
I used this with a Strat of course into a '74 Marshall JMP....since that is the guitar that created these type of sound. I found it to be very close as a pedal could get to that "brown sound". But let's be very clear....this will never give the feel or sound of a real overdriven plexi . Not matter how well it's marketed or hyped it just won't deliver that tone. If your on a budget or have a clean amp and want that early VH tone than I would suggest this pedal. You can definitely have fun with this pedal as I did.
OVERALL OPINION
The thing that I liked best about this pedal was its versatility. The vintage and modern switch was a very cool feature and an enjoyment to play around with.
I got this pedal before they jumped the prices up. So my out of pocket expense was fine for an experiment. Now that it is up to around $200 well that might make me think twice on the overall value of the pedal. I don't find that it is worthy of a $200 price tag. Fun nonetheless but not at that price. I can think of a lot of pedals that could deliver similar results for quite a lot less of commitment.
Since then I have found other booster pedals that I enjoy more with my overdriven amp so this pedal is no longer the go to for that reason. Yet I would recommend this for certain people on a VH quest on a budget.
Tone, Volume, Contour, and Gain with a mini switch in the middle for vintage and modern
Most know what each value does. The Contour changes the mid frequencies a bit and the vintage/modern switch is just as it says. Come to find out it actually does as it says. Going from each will give a slight change of feel in attack and color the tone to the old or the new distortion types. Very useful in custom modifying your desired tone.
UTILIZATION
Extremely easy to figure out. You can probably find a sweet spot within minutes of use with this pedal. I generally would keep the gain around 3:00 and volume according to your room. The tone knob I generally kept on the 11:00 range and the contour in 12:00 position. Since this is a mids focused pedal I would suggest using the contour to fit your personal amp EQ. I mostly stayed on the Modern side of the mini toggle but occasionally flipped it over to the vintage side. However, I generally just used this pedal as a mids booster.
The manual could be a little clearer in the sense that I like to have suggested settings with an unfamiliar company like Wampler. I would like those settings so I could get up in running with their favorites and then go from there. Not a hard pedal to figure out but would be a plus if they add a few extra pieces of insight to get you started.
SOUND QUALITY
I found this pedal to be extremely fun and since I go with natural amp distortion this pedal fit well as a booster in the front end of the amp rather than the main tone of your rig.
I used this with a Strat of course into a '74 Marshall JMP....since that is the guitar that created these type of sound. I found it to be very close as a pedal could get to that "brown sound". But let's be very clear....this will never give the feel or sound of a real overdriven plexi . Not matter how well it's marketed or hyped it just won't deliver that tone. If your on a budget or have a clean amp and want that early VH tone than I would suggest this pedal. You can definitely have fun with this pedal as I did.
OVERALL OPINION
The thing that I liked best about this pedal was its versatility. The vintage and modern switch was a very cool feature and an enjoyment to play around with.
I got this pedal before they jumped the prices up. So my out of pocket expense was fine for an experiment. Now that it is up to around $200 well that might make me think twice on the overall value of the pedal. I don't find that it is worthy of a $200 price tag. Fun nonetheless but not at that price. I can think of a lot of pedals that could deliver similar results for quite a lot less of commitment.
Since then I have found other booster pedals that I enjoy more with my overdriven amp so this pedal is no longer the go to for that reason. Yet I would recommend this for certain people on a VH quest on a budget.