Old Gold

fdesalvo

Hero Member
Messages
3,607
With so many new shiny objets emerging weekly, it's easy to forget the things that have been bumped off by the neverending flood of marketing and carefully executed forum ads.  I took a chance and purchased a couple Visual Sound ODs, the Open Road and the Route 808 - both V2s - in the hopes of building a "budget" pedal array for getting juicy blues tones at bedroom levels and beyond.  I was not disappointed.

Bear in mind, I've spared no expense on other jewels du'jour, but after some time, they inevitably ended up on the chopping block after the honeymoon phase ended.  Part of the reason was the dollar-per-tone index, a brutally indiscriminate measure I apply to every purchase.  I haven't run the Open Road through the modded Normal channel yet, so I'll reserve full judgement until then.  It's been tweaked for more mids, gain, and compression, so it may be just the ticken to use there.

I'll get the negative out of the way first:  The Open Road has almost no midrange and sounds quite scooped on my AA964 VR clone, despite the mid control on board the second channel.  It's literally very hard to imagine this tone making it through a mix live, so it's days may be numbered, though I do like it as a boost to drive the Route 808.

The other negative for some is a huge plus for me.  The unorthodox shape of these pedals moves the footswitch to the best possible position.  As if this wasn't enough, the switch is silent and shaped for barefoot use(!!!!!) - no loud clicking for you bedroom dudes playing in the wee hours

The Route 808 is my favorite TS variant that maintains the mid-hump. What it offers is a more noise-free interaction with more usable gain sweep and a bass boost switch, that I haven't found I need yet.  The best part of the design is there's no clean signal bleed-through, so no need to worry about hearing that hard attack at bedroom volume.  It's just the best of breed in my opinion.

I do have one other item on board that's not under the "old gold" category - a Walrus Audio War Horn.  This is a slightly more transparent TS derivative that's just astoundingly useful.  It's got bass/treble controls and a switch to alter the clipping diodes so there's more compression and less clean bleed through in one setting and the opposite in the other.  This sounds GREAT going into the Route 808, very wooly John Mayer/SRV type of tone with augmented upper mids, which is reminiscent of a Klone I'm running on the other board.

For around $60US you can score the V2 versions of these great VS overdrives, so it may be worth it to check them out.  It's opened my eyes to the other pedals, which enjoyed the momentary spotlight here and at TGP; lots of toys on the isle of Dr Morrow that deserve love and attention.


6c1CCou.jpg


NbadyZV.jpg

 
 
Good finds! Man I forgot all about Visual Sound. I had the H2O chorus/echo way back when, I loved it. Despite its odd pedalboard killing physical configuration...
150479000000000-00-500x500.jpg
 
Back
Top