RowinVintage Vacuum Bluesy Guitar Effect Pedal

Great little pedal!

The media could not be loaded. TL;DR — Beefy and mean, but musical; normal/bright toggle is the surprise star.Right off the bat: I have _no_ idea to what degree this emulates a Marshall Plexi, vintage or otherwise. (If you’re playing through your own amp, it’s kind of a moot point, right?) What I can tell you is that this distortion box is a one-stop-shop if you’re hunting for a tone that’s right for a range of rock sounds, skewing particularly towards the heavy/metal end of the spectrum.Check out the attached video (a 70s lawsuit Les Paul going through the Flexion directly into a DAW, nothing further added, subtracted or adjusted). I recorded a few brief loops and commenced to knob-twiddling. As you can hear, the Plexion is aggressive and muscular; even with Gain dialed all the way down, it’s still beefs up the signal. From the 9:00 to 1:00 positions, I got several extremely tasty distortion tones. Post-1:00 is mega-high-gain madness which, don’t get me wrong, sounded good, but is maybe more well-suited for a full jam with drums and bass guitar. I found the musicality — while still retaining the requisite menace — in the mid-Gain areas.The Tone knob matters greatly here, too. I usually have a knee-jerk reaction against dialing in treble, but I found going past noon on the Tone really helped open up the sound. Speaking of which, let’s talk about the the Bright/Normal toggle. Again, if an amp or pedal has a Brightness/Brilliance/Presence knob or switch, chances are I will avoid it. I find they often take more than they give, if that makes sense. But that isn’t the case here. The Normal setting seemed a bit too dry and muffled — maybe good for playing through an amp and not into a DAW. The Bright setting is where things came alive for me. It could be a simple DB boost that tricked me into liking the sound more, but I think it’s a bona fide top boost that, when combined with your favorite Gain level, really makes the sound sit up an growl.A super fun pedal for my fellow heavy music fanatics out there. It’s two days past Halloween, so we all need something to lift our spirits, right? For the price tag, you can’t go wrong here.Finally, I have to mention something you can see in the video: when signal passes through the Plexion you can see a faint red glow coming up from under the Volume and Tone knobs. The more intense the signal, the more intense the glow. I have no idea if this an intended feature, but this subtle touch made me smile. And that’s why we’re playing with these things, right?

Dumbler OD - I bought this to hear what a dumbler pedal sounds like. I accumulated many pedals recently but figured I’d try it. I have a modeled dumble amp and I love it for recording. Like many pedals it overlaps with other ODs. I find the sound to be more like a BD2. Many blues drivers don’t have much gain . The bd2 has a large gain range and so does this. It’s like OD with a distortion edge.The pedal can get a nice cleanish boost up to pretty heavy gain but not saturated.The voice can add a lot of treble and presence. With the tone control there are many options. I like the gain knob as far as feel and range but I have not used the pedal many times. I stacked it with a B.B. clone and boy can you get a variety of tones.At low gain and up the voice I hear the dumbler sound. But that’s subjective. I’ve heard expensive Dumbler pedals and they have that clear but gritty tone all throughout. This pedal has many uses even if dumble is not a specific need.While I have too many Drive pedals and I spent years playing tube screamers (and hope to still) the dumbler is kind of like my mini BD2 which I love. You’ll hear a lot of your tone with added drive. I like that it has a large range of gain. Not sure I’d use this for higher gain rock but it may work. I cannot speak to durability but I have a few Rowin products and they work well ( compressor is great)If you seek the sound of dumble you may want an amp model but this pedal will give an idea. It made me want to play some subtle Fusiony licks but also has a nice gain.

Works incredibly well at giving me the tone I want with minimal gear. I just run it through the clean channel FX loop on my Carvin X100B head into a Carvin 4/12 half stack, using only the pedal and the amp's tone adjustments to sculpt to my liking. No extra tube drive or compressors... just using the pedal and volume for my distortion. Sharp, bright attack, thick, chunky palm mutes, and great sustain. Perfect for old school metal and thrash (Pantera, Overkill, Megadeth, etc.)

I lean on only a few pedals and wanted to add a blues / distortion tone to my lineup, and decided to give an affordable pedal a try. I compared this to the "Donner Overdrive Guitar Pedal, Blues Drive Vintage Overdrive Effect Warm/Hot Modes for Pedal Boards Electric Guitar, True Bypass", expecting them to sound quite different. I own quality guitars and amps that are both practical and high quality from G&L Legacy Special to Godin A6 to Fender (Mexican) Nashville Power telecaster. I have various amps that range from Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Fender Mustang GT100, and even a cool Spark 40. That said, I now simplify performance through an array / sub and the board, using pedals and no amp. Regardless of direct-to-PA or through-the-board, this pedal does an okay job, but I think it's a better fit if you're really on a budget. To me, it wasn't bad tone, but it wasn't great, and I really shouldn't have expected it to not be so noisy when it's at a great price. If you're playing through a little amp with no good affects or a small PA, this may be great for you. It's really decent tone and constructed very nicely. I ended up returning this and the Donner pedal (not huge difference, really) for the JOYO American Sound Amp Simulator Pedal of Fd 57 Deluxe Amplifier from Clean to Overdrive Sound for Electric Guitar Effect - Bypass (JF-14). That pedal is also well built and offers good tone - just a little noisy yet. In truth, I did these cheap pedals in a hurry to add to a lineup of Boss, MXR and other pedals (I only play through a few) for a fast gig, but I'll likely get to know my old Voice Live Extreme 3 better for all it can do with effects, harmonies, and looping - but that's at a wildly different price point (hundreds more). This is a good value pedal for basic play.