Arion MDI-1 Tube Mania

It's easy to use. Three knobs, that's all, level, tone and distortion

My first overdrive pedal was a denio overdrive super overdrive. It has good crunch, great for power chords but lacks drive when soloing. I tried Tube mania in a music store and immediately found the distortion sound I've been looking for, a sound in-between an overdrive and a distortion, lots of sustain, it compresses well at high volume which is nice. Chip is NEC alright. Great sounding effect. I used it with my Ibanez roadster lawsuit into a Carlsbro bassline 50. A bass amp but nice on guitar otherwise. Other effects I used are ibanez digital delay, mxr dist+, mxr flanger, and a dunlop crybaby.

Someone steped into my arion onstage and broke the jack and damaged the solders inside. Bought another one (the last one in store). The old arion was repaired otherwise. The new one serves a a backup though.

nah never dealt with them. I heard that Petrucci uses arion?

This pedal allows me to play sustaining leads (aka santana). Works well on single coils and double coils. I've been playing for 12 years now, started with a denio overdrive, then into lazer metal rocker, then finally into tube mania. I've been using this pedal for 8 years now. I can't find anymore arion tubemania in stores, instead bought a marshall drivemaster which serves as my backup, just in case.

It has the standard 3 knob dirt box controls, Level,Tone, Dist. Tweak to your liking.

I picked this up just to try, thinking it might be the early version of Arion's MTE-1 Tubulator, which I like .It's not.
The sound is very bright overall tone wise. Tons of overdriven gain. It picks up a little past the Tubulator's Dist knob cracked full. I would say it's more of a distortion effect than tube overdrive. If you crank the dist full, your in metal land. It will sustain a note pretty darn long though. It's a little more dirt than I like.
Note for the tech guys, it has a NEC C157C,708D chip inside.

Plastic constuction

I think they are out of business

I'm sure that lots of people would like this pedal and it's effect. A little too much drive for me. I'm playing mostly classic rock & blues kind of thing on and off for about 30 years. If I lost it, oh well.