TC Electronic VPD1 Vintage Pre Drive

I bought this pedal because I wanted a dual mode overdrive with high build quality, silent switching and buffered output (true bypass is overrated IMO). Usual beautiful TC engineering too.

The overdrive section only has mild gain but it's great for subtle, touch sensitive breakup through to Malcolm-approved "kerrang". The Tone control is usable at all points of its sweep, which is rare. The Boost section takes care of the higher gain sounds. The Bass control is nice to have, but for my rig I run it full up. The Resonance switch lets you select three different boost characteristics - flat, mid (500Hz - think Brain May honk) and top (1Khz - like a Rangemaster but smoother). All three modes have good cut with a band and the overdrive is quite smooth. Nice for vintage style soloing, not so for metal chug.

My main gripe with this pedal is that my wound strings sound a bit wooly/mushy. I use humbuckers (SD Jazz/JB set). The sound samples on the TC website were done with a Strat and they're pretty spanky, so I wonder if the pedal was voiced with a Strat in mind?

Otherwise, very happy. This pedal has ended the search... I think.

It is so simple. First of all this is a drive pedal not a booster. The booster placed before the drive so you can have a rhytm and a lead mode rather than a drive and a boost. Additional features a top and a mid boost in the boost section. It also has a speaker simulator filter wich can be bypass. With the unit you receive a manual.

The VPD1 has a really nice overdrive sound. The tone is close to the ts9 (the original one). However the ts9 has a bit warmer sound the VPD1 is really not changing the tone of your setup (mine is a Heritage Roy Clark, TC G-system and two Mesa's (F-50 and a Studio 22+.

I have no problem so far.

I had a several Tc units (G major, G Minor)in the past and now i own the G-System also. I was updating the G-System four times without any problem. I had questions about the products and i used there online support, they were really helpful and fast(within two days) all the time.

I'm a professional musician, i'm playing guitar for 18 years. I finished Music Academy as a jazz guitar player and teacher. I play mostly tradional(jewish, hungarian, romanian)based jazz music.
To compare the VPD1 with the pedals i tried out/owned (Fulltone Fulldrive2 Mosfet, OCD, Rat2, Carl Martin Hot Drive'n Boost2 and 3,ts9) it is pull devil pull baker the best with the ts9. Of course one has taste....that's mine.

no problems at all.

one litle nit : the speaker simumator is hard to find :

it's the little hole underneath the DRIVE pot. Just use a tiny little screwdriver to push or unpush it.

The remote socket is great. I use it in conjunction with my G-System, so it has total control of the VPD1.

Best distortion I ever had, - sounds exactly like a VOX AC30.
I use it in front of any valve amp ( without speaker sim ) or direct into PA or mixing console for recording ( with speaker sim on ).
Distortion is smooth with a little HiFi edge, and the boost puts the extra overdrive to it.
The Resonance Switch I keep most in the middle.
The tone pot is good for slight treble adjust, and the bass pot for reducing the muddyness when hitting deep strings.
The bass pot sits before the distortion.

Definatly not a heavy metall distortion. But post eq'ing can do wonders ....

rigid and robust. No problems so far.

Very good. TC has a new support board forum. Great !

I can only recommend this pedal for the serious guitar player.
I tried tons of distortion pedals, plus digital modellers.
They all suck against this one, tell ya.

Well laid out. I just couldn't find out how to turn on the speaker simulation - no knob, no nothing. It wasn't mentioned in the manual either, hm.

I had high hopes for this pedal since I have one of the old t.c. booster/line driver pedals that are really great. While I like the overall concept of the pedal, it's layout and the "dirt-range" from mild OD to loads of gain, the overall distortion tone is not my cup of tea. It is not particulary natural or amp-like sounding. Also you cannot use the boost function by itself, which is too bad. I gave it back for a refund.

Should be solid. I never had any problems with t.c. stuff, and I have/had a lot of them, pedals and rackmount.

Decent pedal, but didn't live up to my expectations, especially since it is not cheap.

As easy as it gets...just like a 1 channel amplifier: Bypass/Channel 1/ Channel 1+Boost.
In addition some nice features like bass/treble adjustment and a treble booster/ mid booster.

AWESOME! you don't need an amp for it. just turn on the speaker-sim and go directly in the mixing-desk. it just sounds like an original ac-30. never heard that before. i love that box. "boost channel" on makes a nice singing lead sound with a long sustain. with no boost, you can get a nice rhythm-sound or a nice crunchy sound if you turn the "drive" a bit louder. it just behaves like a real tube-amp.

no problems so far. everything seems to be built very solid.

never needed costumer support for that.

i play different styles from rock to progressive rock. i'm using a burns red special and a fender american strat.
definitely would buy it again if it gets stolen. thinking about a second vpd-1 for some stereo stuff.

the vpd-1 is definitely better than all the amp-modellers on the market. though you "only" get the sound of vintage-tube amps (mainly ac-30, but you can make it sound like a marshall too), you have these sounding good.

for 250-300 euros it's really a good buy. i also have a marshall amp, but i prefer the vpd-1. my best buy for a long time.

First of all, unlike other TCs, this one needs 9V 120mA power adapter to get powered on, and with no battery compartment, no way to use it without the adapter...

You control over your tone is done via three knobs on the normal channel (gain, level, and tone) and on the boost side you have 2 more knobs (level and bass) and a switch (flat/hi/middle range boost). Another pinhole is there to activate the speakersim, which I think I would never use. You can turn it on and off via two switches, one is master power on, and the second switches boost on and off respectively... 1 led is there to show you have electrical power available, 2nd is to show the unit is on, 3rd is to show the boost channel is active. Even when the unit is switched off, the boost led stays lit to warn you.

It is a very very lightway unit, at least half-weight of any standard size boss pedal, which was a surprise for me, honestly, I was expecting a heavier unit for this heavier price :)

The manual is a 10 page, double cigarette pack booklet with a diagram :) on how to plug it in, with some usefull info, and sample tones.

I have heard many things, and good feedbacks on TC Electronic products, therefore I was looking for an overdrive, and boost pedal, and I have mail-ordered it as soon as it became available in my country, Turkey.

I have right-away added it into my simplified signal chain, to be able to here its raw sound, without getting affected by any other pedals. The signal chain is Gibson Les Paul Standard Limited Ed. > 3 mt. dimarzio cable > VPD-1 > 3 mt dimarzio once again connected directly to the input of my 1991 Marshall JCM900 100W combo amp.

On the clean channel, always with a light blusier gain (knob around 3 to 4 out of 10), volume around 5/10 I have pushed the pedal on for the first hearing... Even the level on the pedal was set around 6/11, my volume cut down by half... I have directly turned the level knob to its max, it was even low then the original volume. I have repeadately pushed the pedal on and off, and the unit was cutting me down, which I didn't like at all... Then gave a try to the boost channel, its level set to its half, it really got boosted my volume, and my sound, full of treble, which I do not like also. In order to catch my standard level, I had to increase the gain, which really added heavy gain, and the only way to get the volume that level was to keep that gain knob on high, which I really do not like :)

Then I have had to add my TS-808 (analog man true vintage modded) into my setup, which is true-bypass, to be able to compare and test them together.

Spent 2 hours, playing with the knobs for the right tone (by "right tone" I mean an acceptable, and on-stage usable tone, not any tone I used to expect and/or dreamt), I gave up, and turned the unit off forever, continued playing with the TS, and planned to get another one, to be used as a boost.

From an overdrive/distortion pedal, I do always expect to control the level also, not only to boost it but to adjust its presence in the active signal chain, as it would always be used with other stomps.

The unit, which is not a true-bypass, I think its buffered, can successfully change your Hi-Impedance signal to low, and has a distinctive drive tone, probably usefull for hard-rock players, but not for blues, nor heavy metal.

Jack connection plugs looked very reliable, but the knobs were very thin, and senseless. For the two small knobs to control overall tone, and bass response on the boost channels are really small, and they dont have a mark on them for you to see its setting, I have had to turn them full clockwise or counter cw to figure out what was the level.

The push on and boost buttons are far away from american made quality, and its easy to step on the knobs togeter with the pushes, they could easily break.

Never needed to deal with the manufacturer, but after the first 2 hours we have spent together, their distributor did not created any problems when I called them to say that I am returning it.

Being a big fan of SRV, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Johnny Lang together with rock classics like Deep Purple/Led Zeppelin and so on... the unit and its sound was just not right for me, and for my setup... I do always wanted to keep the fat and low-gain punch/punchy crunch of a tube amp, which in my case is a marshall all-tube one. The unit just acted like a digital fxbox, instead of an analog responsive and characteristic circuit.

The same day UPS delivered me, the same day UPS took it back (even the same guy!) to be delivered to the distributor back.

It's pretty straightforward. It has a DRIVE control and a BOOST control with separate swtiches..kind of like a Fulldrive. Tone controls are present and are useful. A speaker emualtor mode is available if you want to go direct in. The unithas a wall wart, which disappointed me as the TC electronic Chorus pedal was direct plug in. It is not true bypass, but it adds nothing to the signal in off mode and is very quiet.

I am running this unit on a pedalboard between a strat and a sequence of pedals which feed into a Fulltone Delay and a modded Fender Reverb Unit and then into a modded Fender Bassbreaker amp. It does not add any noise to the signal at reasonable levels. If you push it beyone 2 o'clock on the drive or boost, you will probably be happier with a noise reduction pedal in the path. It has a very unique sound, not unlike Marshall overdrive. It's a nice way to add a little Marshall kickass to a Fender setup.

I don't do any gigs without a backup guitar and a couple of distortion pedals in my rollaway case. This unit sems pretty sturdy and idiot proof.

I can't say much about this as I visit their website from time to time and download stuff for my studio processors ( I use Powercore) and it's all pretty straightforward. If something breaks early in the game, I usually return it and deal with somebody else. So far so good with this unit.

I play blues, rock and a little country. I'm in a constant state of flux with my add on pedals. I readded the TC electronics Chorus pedal to by board because it frankly sounded better than my Fulltone chorus. I decided to add the TC Elec distortion because I have always been a fan of their products. This unit is superior to the Fulltone 2, the Route 66 IOverdrive, the RAT pedals, the Keely modded Bluesdriver and the Reverend overdrive

very straight forward and easy to use.......

for a pure lead sound its spot on........i leave the pre amp and boost on with a high gain boost and everything set on full...what an amazing sound,,,so clear and thick yet there is hardly any background hiss or hum .....i am well impressed with this unit

only had it 3 days

i use a koch multitone 100w combo,ibanex jem 555,tc electronics g system,fender highway strat .....
the vpd1 was the missing icing on the cake....i just couldnt get that lead sound...it was annoying like something was missing..the vpdi is perfect and it has a speaker sim on it for when you want to record directly from its output..
it has a mid/high boost.........both sound good.......the mid boost is a bit like brian may and the high boost is like leaving your cry baby tilted forward.......
its a very expensive solo pedal and hardly weighs anything but the sound quality will just astound you...