Product: SWR Interstellar Overdrive
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted
04/11/2007
at
04:14pm
by
Dave Wiese
Features
:
10
Tube preamp with 2 EL84's. Overbribe with blend control, Dunlop type expression control to control blend and footswitch. Balanced XLR out with lift. 5 watt out put, as well as line level out. Three band eq. One rackspace.
Sound Quality
:
10
It's definitely reminisant os the early SM heads, warm and clean, and handles the lows without getting muddy. Not as over the top as an Ampeg SVP-Pro. The overdrive is real conservative overdrive, not a full blown distortion. The blending raises the volume so I rarely use the expression pedal, mainly just the footswitch. Lately I've gotten out of rack gear and have been using a TS-9 for overdrive. As far as bass preamps go, this one is one of the best I've ever played through. I traded an Ampeg SVP-Pro for it.
Reliability
:
3
One day it just stopped working on me after having it for 2 months. I still have it, but haven't gotten fixed yet. One day I'll probably get it fixed, but I'm not using rack gear at this time, so it's not a major concern of mine. I was dirt broke when it went and had to buy a pedal to replace. Said pedal being a TS-9 which I'm still using to this day. The expression pedal for it is in a Dunlop Crybaby kind of casing which is a heavey duty well built pedal. The original footswitch was simple; metal box, Switchcraft footswitch, and hardwired cable.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Overall Rating
:
8
Great sounding preamp with a good overdrive. I would loved to have recorded with it, but it didn't last that long. Tube enthusiasts will deffinately like the Interstellar. Mine was a first generation (grey casing which was chanbed to a black casing later on) which may explain the problem I've had. I tried the SVP-BSP which was designed with Billy Sheehan, and the overdrive was nowhere near the quality of the Interstellar. I'd give it a 10 if it was still working.
