Crazy Tube Circuits Venus Pedal - Real Tube Overdrive

We are an authorized Crazy Tube Circuit dealer.

One thing we learned while at the Crazy Tube booth at NAMM is that they have a huge collection of amps and pedals from which they draw their inspiration. Their new Venus pedal draws from the BK Butler Tube Driver, which was both a rack mount and pedal effect introduced in the 80's and used by the likes of David Gilmour, Eric Johnson and Joe Satriani. It's also the first Crazy Tube product to include an actual tube, in this case an uncommon ECC832 (half ECC82 and ECC83 dual triode). If you like to tweak, the Venus can use any dual triode tube (12AX7, AT, AY, AU, 5771, and their Euro equivalents). The Venus includes all the features of the rack unit that were not available in the pedal format including a tube bias control, midrange EQ, a fat/tight button to emulate the rack unit's contour control, and a low impedance line driver/buffer that is engaged only when the pedal is engaged. The Venus requires at least 400mA 9VDC tip-negative power. If you don't have that available, they've included their own 9V power supply. 

While the controls of the Venus are intuitive in nature, we offer the suggestion of starting with the bias almost fully clockwise. This puts the most current through the cathode plates of the tube and produces the creamiest distortion and smoothest overtones (the original pedal had the bias fixed to max). Starting there and tweaking the EQ and gain to suit, the Venus is a total flashback of 70's and 80's rock and had us channeling Foreigner, Kansas, various hair metal bands, and if we had the chops, Van Halen. It's thick, creamy but not lacking harmonic detail...it's a memory rush for sure. Turning down the bias to varying degrees the Venus gets more raw, gnarly, and its lowest setting lo-fi and spitty like an early fuzz. If you start with the bias low you might think you bought the wrong pedal. So don't start there, but you always have the option once you get your bearings. 

The fat/tight switch is a fixed midrange contour that affects your sound differently depending on your guitar type and amplifier -- single coils, humbuckers, Blackface vs. British etc. -- and since midrange frequencies are critical to tube response it's worth checking out, and will vary with bias and drive settings. Ditto with the midrange control, which is likely the most impactful of the three EQ knobs although they all have plenty of range. Lastly the line driver/output buffer may have different affects depending on your rig, but it's intention is to compensate for signal degradation due to other gear and cabling in the signal chain. In our case the line driver added a noticeable boost in clarity and presence. But as they say: Your results may vary.

For fans of Classic Rock, the 80's and their respective Guitar Gods, the Crazy Tube Circuits Venus is a trip to guitar Mecca. But for modern rockers and alternative players it's control set and ample features makes it much than that. It's another great addition the the Crazy Tube lineup.  

In the words of Crazy Tube Circuits: 

Inspired by one of the greatest masterpieces of the pedal museum we set out to recreate a classic tube tone sculpture with modern refinements. We concentrated all the different voicings of the classic tube-powered overdrive variations throughout the 80s and 90s, along with some mods and features of the rack mount variants, in a compact enclosure with less than half the size of the original pedal unit. Instead of an internal power transformer we chose to power our device from a standard 9V DC power supply to reduce background noise and hum and designed a voltage multiplier circuit to provide the needed voltage range of+/- 15V DC.

While the classic unit featured an ECC83 dual triode, many users preferred a lower gain/higher headroom alternative like ECC82/12AU7. For our rework of the masterpiece we opted for an ECC832 dual triode tube which is half an ECC83 and half an ECC82 for optimum performance and the best of both worlds.

Controls:

drive: controls the amount of tube drive/saturation and sustain. From light tube overdrive (counter-clockwise) to fuzzy distortion {clockwise).

bias: set the tube cathode bias/control the current passing through the tube cathodes.

Adjust this knob to find the sweet spot for different tube types used and/or set the texture of the overdrive: from gnarly, nasty and gated (counter-clockwise) to smooth and creamy (clockwise).

volume: set the output level of the effect.

hi: adjust the amount of high frequencies, increasing as turned clockwise.

mid: adjust the amount of mid frequencies/sweep through the different voicings of the classic tube-powered overdrive varia­ tions throughout the 80s and 90s.

lo: adjust the amount of low frequencies, increasing as turned clockwise.

ti ht push switch: pre-set the amount of low and low-mid frequencies that hit the tube gain stages, select between fat or tight sound (when pushed in) - inspired by the "contour" knob of the rack mount version.

line driver push switch: select between the unbuffered instrument level output of the pedal version or the buffered line level output of the rack mount unit (when pushed in).

FOOTSWITCH: engage or true bypass the effect via a high quality relay.