Visual Sound Double Trouble

This is one of those pedals that sounds quite good pretty much however you set it, and the controls are dead simple: each side has drive, tone, and volume knobs and a bass boost switch, plus the on/off foot switch. (Those foot switches are awesome, by the way.)

My favorite little touch: each side has a different color light. The right side is red, and the left side is blue. And they are BRIGHT???way brighter than the Tube Screamer.

The only thing that keeps this from being a 10 is that it's actually really hard to see where the line on the knobs is, because the top of the knobs have a finish that is sort of reflective. Doesn't bother me too much because I kneel down to set it before I play anyway, but it seems like an odd design decision for an otherwise brilliant pedal.

This thing kills on blues, alternative, classic rock, just about everything other than metal. It's creamy and thick and fat, but still clear and articulate. When I got this, I replaced the TS9 and Bad Monkey that I was using because I like this better than both of them (plus it's one unit that's smaller than two pedals).

It has plenty of volume. 10 o'clock on this pedal is the same as 12 o'clock on the Tube Screamer. The character of the overdrive is a little fatter than the TS9. It's actually very much like the Barber Direct Drive.

I play two electrics: a Hamer EchoTone (think ES-335) and a Tele Custom (solidbody with dual humbuckers). My amp is a Fender Blues Junior, and in addition to the Double Trouble, I use a Crybaby wah, a Rocktek tremolo, and a DigiTech digital delay. This pedal plays nicely with the whole rig. I generally use one side as a mid-gain overdrive and the other side as a solo boost. Works great both ways, and stacking the two together is killer.

It's rock solid. Fantastic build quality, ultra-reliable switches, a sweet sounding little tank of a pedal. I'm not a heavy gigging musician, but I am totally confident in this pedal.

I have never dealt with the company directly, but a good friend of mine sings their praises and says he gets a reply from the owner whenever he emails them about his amp. I'm rating it no opinion since that's not firsthand knowledge.

Dang, I love the sound of this pedal. This is my "desert island" pedal: if you told me I could only bring one pedal to a gig, this would be the one. Give me my hollowbody, a clean tube amp and this pedal, and I can do a lot of damage. It's one of those pedals that inspires you to play more.

I play a variety of rock styles and some blues, and this pedal is perfect for what I do. At this point, it's the only part of my rig I never dream about changing. And if you love guitar gear, you know that's about the highest praise I can give.

You can easily pick these up new on ebay for about $150, which is a ton less than you'd pay for two Tube Screamers at Guitar Center, and it basically gives you two boutique-quality overdrives for the price of one. It's a no-brainer.

It's a really easy unit to find a good sound. only 3 controls per side so you can't really go wrong, but if you want to mix the 2 together take some time to taylor the sound a bit.

I use a PRS singlecut with a Mesa Stiletto Duece, so I already have a great distortion, but i was wanting some variety. It's not bad for noise but you will notice a little bit on higher gain settings when you mix the overdrives together, but still,it's one of the quietest unit's i've ever heard. it has a built in noisegate, but you have to take it apart to access it, and i don't like the way it chops of the ends of the notes. i bought a rocktron hush, but find i don't even really use/need it. for overall tone, it's very consistent. it'll emulate that smooth ts-808 drive nicelly but doesn't "thin out" the tone at all...plus the bass boost is great. lot's of volume, unlike the tubescreamer's. i'll use it for anything that requires alot of high end down strumming or blues since it doesn't get muddy when you play a 4 note chord. it's not for metal or hardcore, but alternative, classic rock, and anything in between should be covered.

I only had a problem once. the ribbon cable had some issues, so i wasn't abe to mix the 2 together. i was touring when it happened, but i would still tour without a backup. both settings were still fine by themselves.

This company is amazing to deal with. i called and they guided me through how to troubleshoot, and since i couldn't find the problem myself, they didn't hesitate to tell me to send it to them.

I currently play in a christian rock band, but we do alot of worship set's and it suits the sound amazingly. i can do alot of driving rythmns without it taking over the other instruments, but i find a really strong point is for alot of 2 note leads. it has a very fat lead sound, without getting muddy. i have a MXR dyna comp, a boss dd5 delay and a line6 dl4 and this is the only overdrive(s). it's great having 2 settings in one unit, really keeps the board cleaner. if it ever got stolen, i would definitly buy it again. two things i wish it had was a bit more gain and that the tone would be more effective sooner ( seems you have to crank it up there to keep it clear if the amp has a fat clean sound), however some won't have a problem, just depends how you eq the amp.

This pedal is extremely easy to use, very plug and play friendly. The only thing 'difficult' to edit is changing which side of the pedal gets the noise reduction (which is a joke, this pedal is full of noise).

I run an Ibanez AS73 > Vox Wah > VS Double Trouble > ROSS Compressor. I use the compressor at the end to better control the guitar's tone when it's overdriven (amp or by a pedal).

This pedal is EXTREMELY noisy. To put into perspective, my ROSS actually picks up a radio station (subtly, but enough that if you have the guitar volume at 0, and nothing else on, you can hear it coming through a bit). On the flip side, roll down your guitar volume to 1-3 (barely sending a signal through your chain) and this pedal SCREAMS with annoying noise. Even when using less overdrive, and more volume, the pedal is still; literally, the noisiest pedal I have ever heard.

If you turn all the knobs on the pedal to off (as far down as they will go), you will hear what I am talking about. It's like you're playing with a fuzz pedal at the lowest volume possible. I thought this pedal was the bee's knees until I actually started playing at lower volumes and not just rocking out.

If you never play with your guitar's volume (who honestly never does?) then you won't notice at all. If you play at a high overall volume, you won't notice the noise. However if you're not some pos 12 year old kid playing Blink 182 power chords all the time, you're going to hate this pedal.

Do yourself the favor and actually buy a REAL TS 808 pedal. You will not regret it, howver if you buy this pedal, you will regret purchasing it.

It actually has fubered a couple times on me, quite randomly. I wouldn't have a problem gigging with it because I'm not a professional musician. However, if you actually play shows and don't want to have to stop playing because your pedal decides to turn off when you turn the 2nd channel on, or if you're just trying to turn a single channel on; don't buy this.

6 because it's not quality, and has screwed up on me multiple times, with not a lot of play hours, and I haven't even owned it six months.

I wouldn't bother contacting them, this is the first and last Visual Sound pedal I will ever buy.

This pedal is great only if you do not care about being able to adjust the guitar's volume knobs to control the tone or volume (and overall tone).

I wish it didn't sound like crap when you turn down your guitar tone, and I also wish it was true-bypass.

I didn't compare it to other overdrives as I knew I wanted to have two (one normal OD tone that I usually leave on, using the guitar's volume knob to control if the tone is overdriven, or more clean); therefore this seemed like the most obvious choice. I should have, that way I would't have wasted any money. There's a reason why good Tubescreamer pedals (modded, hand-made, etc) cost as much as this pedal, which is supposed to be two tubescreamers...

However, it sucks.

This is a fairley easy pedal to use but if you want to combine both sides take your time an experiment. The manual is well written and easy to understand.

I've been a fan of the tube screamer and it's variations for years.
But the people at Visual Sound have evolved it and made it far more versitile and not a one trick pony.
This pedal does not lack for tonal quality and the eq sections again bring it beyond the realm of a TS clone.
Its very quiet with no noise when switching and even the fact that it is not true bypass switching doesn't effect the tone of your chain.
It will be a regular on my board. My signal chain is Strats through a bunch of pedals (depends on the mood) to Dr Z amps.

I've opened it up and the build quality is great. Give these guys credit where credit is due. You won't need a back-up. The only thing I did is put a piece of foam in the battery compartment so the battery won't rattle.

Ive dealt with them before for my J & H and they were great.

I've been playing for 35 years mainly blus rock and classic rock.
See above for gear. I would replace it immediatly if stolen. I own approx 70 pedals most of them boutique and most of them overdrives distortions or fuzzez. This pedal with it's own personality belongs right up there with them.

This is a relatively simple Pedal to dial in. It has 3 knobs for each side. I was amazed at how quickly I was able to get a great Tone.

I play a Strat with Lindy Fralin Vintage Hots thru a couple of Maxon pedals (OD808 & OD9). I run them straight to a splitter box wich runs into a Torres modified Super Texan Head with a 1x12 and the other goes thru a Dumble ODS. The First Cahnnel is warm. It has a nice slight overdrive that is easily dialed in. The Second Channel has a nice bite. It is also very tweakable. I have run the gammit of pedals. ( Line 6, Barber, Boss, Zvex, Fulltone, etc.) This pedal dials in the Blues Sound that everybody wants. I play in a Blues band. This is definitely a keeper!

Haven't used it on any gigs yet.

I play Blues. I am looking for pedals that cut thru the Mix. I want to be heard. Especially during solos. I think this is a great pedal for anyone hungry for a great clean overdriven sound.

Very easy to use. It only took a few minutes to get a great sound. I haven't read the manual yet. There are only three knobs per side of the pedal Drive, Tone, and Volume. Oh yeah, and a bass boost switch for each side as well.

I used it for the first time today with my Fender Custom Telecaster FMT and Peavey Classic 30 Amp. The other pedals I've used with it are the Boss GE-7 EQ pedal and Boss DD-20 Mega Delay. I did not notice any noise from the Double Trouble. I had modded Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive and modded Boss BD-2 Blues driver on my board prior to getting this pedal. I took them off after I heard the tone I was getting.

I don't know yet but the casing, knobs, and buttons seem very solid.

Haven't had to contact them.

I play in a blues rock band and also play some rocking worship music at church. I really connected with this pedal. It is very responsive to my playing and sounds great in my rig. I orginally was looking for the Visual Sound Jekyll and Hyde but they are sold out everywhere. I tried this one at Sam Ash after watching the You Tube Video on it online and was very impressed. I'm used to using the two overdrive setup but this pedal is a great improvement over my old setup. If it were stolen or lost I would definitely buy it again.

It's easy to get a good sound out of this pedal. It's basically 3 knobs on each channel and bass boost for each channel. There are also options available if you want to open the pedal up and changed the noise gate settings. I power the pedal off my pedal board supply, but one of the nice changes in the new V2 series of the Visual Sound pedals is a new battery compartment that is easier to access. The pedal is also about 10-20 percent smaller than the last version of their pedals which helped tidy up the pedal board a bit.

I have been playing the Visual Sound pedals for the last several years. I currently play a custom shop Fender strat through a 65 Deluxe reissue amp. I initially fell in love with the Route 66 pedal when it first came out after struggling to find tone nirvana modding my tube screamers. I eventually wound up with a Route 66 and a Jekyll & Hyde on my board but typically used the Jekyll side in combination with the Route 66. The two together made my strat come alive... add a touch of delay from the analog qualities of the H20 pedal and magic happens. I couldn't wait to get my hands on the Double Trouble as it combines my two pedal worlds in to one and I was able to clean up the pedal board a bit. They also added a noise suppressor circuit, which has cleaned up the only other issue with the other two old pedals combined. I pulled the Route 66 and J&H pedals off my board today when the Double Trouble arrived and put it in place. It sounds dead on like the old TS808 pedals... but with a base boost. I have only had the pedal for a day, but so far I got a sweet sound right from the start and then after about 20 minutes of toying with the two pedals in combination I found a tone that suits me well... sort of Clapton meets SRV. The pedal with my texas special single coils is very responsive to slight volume adjustments on the guitar and pick attack. The Double Trouble seems very transparent.

I have only ever experienced one problem with a pedal from Visual Sound and had to call support. They connected me directly with Bob, the owner of the company and he walked me through the issue and send a replacement part immediately. The pedals are build like tanks and I gig without a backup... although every one of my musician buddies that tries my pedal board runs out to buy their pedals and so If I had a failure I could borrow a pedal for the weekend.

I have only ever experienced one problem with a pedal from Visual Sound and had to call support. They connected me directly with Bob, the owner of the company and he walked me through the issue and send a replacement part immediately.

Wow, I get to be the first one to review this pedal! I'll be truly interested to hear what others have to say. I play in a worship band at a very large church. The styles in a given set range from slow old school to r&b to fairly shredder new style stuff. I have been playing for about 25 years and don't have much time to mess around or practice these days so I rely on a tasteful tone and the "less is more" theory when competing with the kids. I'd have to say that after years of fiddling with different pedals, amps and guitars I have settled on the basics and simplicity. The Visual sound pedals with my strat and blackface amp "just work" and have the tone that I have always been after. Bob Weil and the Visual Sound folks seem to have a knack for getting it right and listening to their players. This is my first day with the new pedal and so I will come back and update, but so far I love it.