Vox Cooltron Big Ben Overdrive

Only 3 knobs but be weary of the tone knob. Live with a 2x12 or 1x12 or 2x10 I always kept it around 3:00 (after I realized below that sounds woofy)Manual is ok at best. Doesn't go into changing tubes but it is absolutely important to put a nice nos 12au7 and it will sound amazing! Try not to dime the gain, try it at about 4:00 or 4:30. You will be rewarded with 1.A nice tube 2.tweaking 3.Tube amp

I have had this a year and a half and actually got rid of it to go back to amps with a good od built in. Well I bought it back and a spare!! I am presently running this through a lonestar Special and it is awesome. Very amp like, using the volume knob really works (better than my jcm 2000 distortion channel)Let it warm up first like an amp. I am getting great modern rock tones with all out bridge attack and with bridge and neck it sounds bluesy (especially with volume knob adjustments)

Never a lick of a problem. pops sometimes but alot of true bypass pedals do. When you are playing live it doesnt matter

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I play EVERYTHING from Rock, Rawk, R&b, blues, funk, country, rap and Jazz and this is a HUGE part of my setup

Easy as 1..2..3

Sound is awesome. I wouldn't call the sound muffled at all. It's warm though. The Tone knob works very well, and the character of the amp is kept. No heavy metal gain, but from overdriven blues to nearly punk I get all the rocktones I wanted (my Amp is a Vox AC30 CC1). I also use this pedal in front of my Line6 Toneport for recordings at home. Works perfectly with the Marshall amp simulations as well.

Looks reliable to me. Looks like you can change the footswitch easily if it's broken.

To me it's the perfect Overdrive pedal. Give it a try. Price is too high imho (that's why I give it a 9), but maybe you can make a deal at ebay. If it were stolen or lost I would use my Ibanez TS again in the meantime and try to get another Big Ben OD.

I just like to say :
After switching about ten times the "plop"-sound of the
by-pass is allright (duel overdrive-user) !
Try it, perhaps it works.

This unit makes fun to play with.

It looks reliable.

Only 9 points because of the bypass-switch.
I think it??s possible to make this work better.

Hard to get a good sound out of it. Too DARK. Even changing tubes(pain in the neck) doesn't improve the sound.

Why are you all fooled by the tube? I think it's just there for show. Open the box and you will find cheap components, including 4 or 5 cheap surface mount ic's. When I tried many different tube screamers and their clones I could hear the dielectric noise but mostly at high gain settings. This pedal even with Mullard tube has dielectric noise. It is a bad idea to screw up the signal of your guitar with cheap ic's, caps, and resistors in hopes of putting magic back in with a tube.

I think the enclosure could be smaller and tube access better. The cheap pots and switch might soon break as well.

n/a

Avante/garage. Beatles-esque. I have owned many of the cheapest and most expensive stompboxes and amps. Don't waste your time with cooltron. Just get a real tube amp. Sell off the other stuff. I tried this box direct into my speaker sim and Mixer and it sounded worse.

If you can't handle 3 knobs, you better..... Very easy and simple to operate.

I've tested this device with VOX, Marshall and Fender amps. It doesn't seem to like every amp and thus I'm going to describe the best match for this pedal. I used it with my vintage Silverface Princeton Reverb, Deluxe Reverb and Vibrolux Reverb amps. This is a fantastic combination. Enjoy the natural sound of these sweet amps and then kick in the pedal: Warm, rich, wide, harmonic, growling sound! Pretty cool compression here.

Teles are my main guitars. Hence I'm somewhat averse to trebly sounds. Tone control on my amps is usually set quite low. On the pedal I have it on 12 o'clock while gain is at about 3 o'clock. Yes, it's a bit dark but hey that's exactly what I like about this pedal while playing a Tele. It adds a lot of bottom and ground! Wonderful for Rhythm, partly usable for lead sounds, too. After 3 o'clock the sound turns from overdrive to distortion.

Not overly tube-like feeling but that's the job of my all-tube amps. Like other reviewers said, the on/off switch is annoyingly noisy. VOX should have clearly done better here.

Seems to be built well, has great looks

Never dealt with them

Classic Rock and Blues. Too much gear to list. I think I know what's good and what's not. We all paid a lot of money for stomp boxes and went through many disappointments. However, I recommend this pedal to vintage Fender amp owners who play Teles/Strats. BigBen seems to like Fender amps more than Marshalls. Good pedal but still behind my Fulltone OCD. Easy handling

only 3 knobs, easy enough but read on

I agree with the review below, sound is pretty good but a bit to warm, muffled. The treble knob works but adding treble gives it a kind of boxy sound. The gain kicks in at one o'clock but delivers the overdrive only at the last 20%. I did some A/B testing with my Chandler tube driver and Ibanez tone king. The Ibanez has the most agressive upfront sound, the Chandler is the most natural open and smooth. The Vox doensn't color like the Chandler but lacks the open woody character or the sweaty in your face of the Ibanez. Too polite and boxy. Still a nodge more natural than your average green box. Still a nice overdrive though but this thing misses a good mid/bass knob

big and sturdy, reminds me of my Matchless hotbox. Well, that didn't sound better but it sure sounded more like tubes in heath.

It has three knobs. Very easy to use. Comes with batteries installed so it works right out of the box.

Muffled. I play into two 1950s Gibson BR-6 tube amps with humbucker and P90 les pauls and flying Vs. With Big Ben's Tone control dimed, my tone was still muffled. Too bad the control didn't go to 12 or 13. The amps have no tone controls so there's no adjusting treble or presence or anything to make up for a pedal's shortcomings. They kick out whatever comes in.

The pedal's overdrive is created by an opamp (read the literature), and that signal is sent to the tube. So you're still getting plastic overdrive. It's just colored by the tube. Plastic overdrive sounds too perfect in how it breaks up. It's like the micro-second gaps between sound are all exactly the same size. A tube amp's gaps are crazy random--organic. Big Ben does not deliver on the organic.

The ads or reviews that say the pedal sounds like your clean signal when Gain is on zero and Tone is on ten must not have played the same unit I got. There is very apparent grind at these settings--it is not the same as playing your guitar clean.

Low rating based on plastic and non-transparent sound.

Nice box. Sturdy enough.

NA

Blues and old rock. Some fast stuff (Satriani) when the rare mood strikes. 21 years of play time. Own: 57 Historic Les Paul, '54 Historic Les Paul, Faded V with P90s, White V with Burstbuckers, 2 x Ibanez 540R, bunch of pedals, two amps mentioned above.

The sound of this pedal kills it for me. Other features of this survey bump the rating to a 7.

this is an update to my previous review I left.....this pedal is still kicking tail and taking names. here are few that have bit the dust in the Big Ben's shadow: Modified Vox Valvetone, Modded Maxons, Peanut Butter, Barber Direct Drive, Barber Direct Drive SS, Barber LTD, Keeley BD2, MIAudio Blue Boy, Chandler tube driver, Butler Tube Driver, tone bone classic tube, and numerous others. They have all sounded so plastic and sterile in comparison and for good reason (the solid state ones). Its impossible to get true tube sound because of a little known and talked about phenomenom called dielectric noise. Look it up boys and girls and you'll see what I'm talking about. Tubes don't suffer from this since the electron flow is in a vaccum. The tube pedals ive used don't even compare with the exception of the Chandler tube driver...but that is extremely expensive if you can find one.

For the money this is absolutely the best overdrive pedal out there. Nothing has come close and this is a statement from a Fuchs overdrive supreme owner. This pedal in front of a good tube amp sounds like a boutique amplifier with boutique overdrive. I've also owned several tube overdrives and the only pedal that beat the Big Ben...and not by much in my opinion, was a vintage Chandler tube driver, and that was 3x the cost of the Big Ben and that was used and very noisy!! Vox really has a winner here. Some reviewers have complained of popping footswitches (mine is quiet) and low quility parts. Its the sound that matters to me. I've owned handwired pedals with high end parts and sounded like crap in comparison to the Big Ben. One wish though, I wish the Big Ben had a easy latch to swap out tubes. You have to take it apart to change the tube. For that I give a 9.

Extremely easy. Nothing hard about it at all....Manual not needed...

Have a 95 Fender Evil Twin...79 Les Paul CSB Standard, 87 62 RI Strat in Vintage Cream flame neck.

Big Ben is VERY well done in my opinion..

As someone stated, there is a pop when you switch it on or off, especially one way or the other, however, I had a very old Rat pedal that did the same thing. I think that is the nature of TBP...

I have to agree with other people here, it is extremely transparent, works well on clean channel (SRV would roll in his grave) AND overdrive channel (Does ZZ-top come to mind) of my Fender Twin...I set level at 12, tone at bout 2, gain at 2-3 and that is the Bees Knees...Not noisy whatsoever...

However not intended for shred type of guitar techniques, even with gain dimed. From 2 o'clock on to max it is somewhat of a distortion device... Shredders look elsewhere, that includes myself...

Who knows??? It is a new technology and a new pedal...However I think Korg makes these so it should last a few years...

Who me????

Great for Blues, Blues Rock...I have been playing on and off my whole life...Don't know what is a ten, however this is pretty close to ten as possible....Would probably buy it again, sounds great...Smokes my modded ts-9. That TS-9 is gonna get some dust and rust I suppose....Very warm round overdrive, very tubey, somewhat remarkable I might add..Would like to get the new Vox Compressor, the Bulldog and Wah, then I will have all the bases covered except delay...I REALLY really like this Vox stuff...How often do amp builders build effects of equal value and quality??? Not to mention the sound is great!!!

Easy to use, it's got the standard overdrive control setup.

Here's where I ran into a bit of an issue... I think the unit sound excellent as far as tone goes, it's a warm-sounding pedal and not harsh at all. Perhaps a little too dark though for some applications. The problem is that the unit makes a loud pop when you switch it in or out of operation. The switch seems kind of cheap and does not have a solid feel to it, it feels a little mushy and like something it would wear out fast perhaps. Anyhow, it sounds nice but the popping is unacceptable, it's quite loud when the volume gets cranked. I ended up returning this unit and picking up a Barber LTD Silver, it's a very nice transparent overdrive for much less money, which is true-bypass. Sure, it's cool to have the real tube in there but in the end if you find something that's smaller, lighter, and cheaper that sounds just as great and will have better reliability in the end most likely then it makes sense to switch. Mostly it was the popping thing though...