Vox Cooltron Dual Overdrive

Easy to get good overdrives with good tone out of this pedal. I didn't bother reading the manual, as it's all obvious what things do.

Fender Strat with Texas Special pickups and a Fender Tele with dual humbuckers through a Vox AC30 CC2 amp (Chinese manufacture -sounds almost like my old '60s UK model). I like overdrive but not too over the top, and not with loss of guitar tone,and this pedal really does deliver the goods. The extra boost channel is flexible and the selectable bass boost on either channel is a bonus.

Still need to take it out on gigs, but so far it is fine in the studio and seems solidly made.

No need

I play rock, pop and a bit of country, and this pedal really enhances the tones I like without losing the nuances of the string picking and chords. I had a Fulltone Fulldrive 2 mosfet, but found it too brittle sounding and lacked roundness in tone. I use a new Vox AC30 CC2 amp which is great (so what if it's made in China -its sounds brilliant) the Dual Overdrive pedal has a nice warmness about it's sound and is very controllable. I've been playing in bands for 30 years and tried just about everything out there..but at the momoent the Vox pedal into a Vox amp is very nice indeed.

Pretty easy to use. One volume, tone, and gain per channel, plus an assignable bass boost. Pretty simple. There's not really much need for the manual; everything is self-explanatory.

Okay. I used a Fender Telecaster with Texas Special pickups into the pedal, and straight into a Peavey Classic 30 from there. No other stuff to color the sound. And let me tell you, that guitar and that amp by themselves sound really nice, and definitely have their own color that they add to my setup. I plugged into this pedal, and I was just a little bit unimpressed. Even after messing with the tone on the pedal, the bass boost, and the EQ on my amp, I couldn't really get the clarity I wanted, especially at higher gains. I play in my church's praise band as well as recording in a home studio, and I couldn't even get enough distortion for our typical praise band repertoire. I'm not a metal fan at all, but even so, my biggest disappointment with this pedal was that there just wasn't enough drive. With the gain at full, not only was it not saturated enough, but the amp and guitar lost a lot of their natural color. However- at lower gains, I did like the sound I was getting, maybe for blues or jazz, or really some of the spacey leads you hear in The Shins. It had a nice liquidy fullness there; however, it just wasn't versatile enough- I want to be able to get those tones along with heavier ones.

I can only echo what everyone else has said- looks solid, but has the tube exposed, etc. One thing I can clear up is I definitely did NOT hear a click or pop when changing channels- this must be a weird thing that only happens to some, or maybe Vox fixed 'em or something. I don't know.

Never dealt with them. Vox has a decent website though. Audio samples an a lot of stuff. Whatever.

The main thing I can say about this pedal is that you better know exactly what tone you want and only want the tone that it gives you. It really has a good beefy sound for lighter stuff, but definitely don't get it if you want heavier distortion. Let me say that I only tried it in a store- but I tested it intensively. 30 minutes was all it took to decide to move on. My thing is, for $200, I should be able to get a couple good sounds out of it. I've been playing guitar for three years, but have been exposed close-up to music for all of my life. I play mostly the stuff that I write and record myself, which is sort of-kind of comparable to The Shins, Coldplay, but not really a whole lot alike. I'd like to see a little more gain, and more of a contrast with the tone knob. Good pedal, just not versatile.

Very easy to use this pedal knobs are in the right position and the overall layout is simple.Switching is soundless on pops or hiss.
Not enough options for tone control and assigned EQ.

Here is where this pedal falls flat.I own two other extremley good tube overdrives (Radial tonebone hot british and the new radial dual classic). The dual cooltron overdrive pales in comparison, the overdrive is passable enough but is really no better than a modded TS9 or countless other distortion pedals at half the cost(and i own about 14 od/dist pedals).
There seems to be no character to this pedal and when switching between Channel 1 & 2 there is really no audible difference unlike the tonebone classic which has a selectable eq boost to the solo channel 2.

The sound is best described as "GENERIC" Distortion also the fact that you have to turn the gain knobs almost all the way up to get any real sustain is also troublesome.There is also an option to have a bass boost asigned to one channel or the other or both and this to is lacking any real substance.The bass boost takes your tone straight to the bottom of the swimming pool and is in my opinion an unusable feature..Even for Metal.
Dont get me wrong i was really excited about getting this pedal but was crestfallen after a few short hours.
Just so you know my aim is true.. here is what i play through 2 Marshall heads and 1960 cab's 1st is a handwired 1959 re-issue 100watt and my trusty 2203 50 watt 1981 and also tried this through my 1977 Fender Deluxe reverb, Peavy Classic 30 & Kustom HG65.I also used both single coil and doubleHB PuP's lespaul pro,SG, and assorted American strats.
I have been playing guitar for over 25 years and play mainly rock and blues.

Looks fairly well built on the out side and has a cool blue light inside....posibly the only unique feature on this pedal!.
The interior is a different story and again i have to compare this to the Radial pedals, the consruction looks like it sticks to budget.

Have not had to talk with them about this type of pedal however they did take good care of me in regards to a broken Vox847 wah pedal.

I am going to rate this pedal overall at 4. It does what it says and gives you generic overdrive tone...But is that what you want from a powered tube overdrive?.
Be your own judge and try it out at a music store before you buy.I wish i would have tried it out first.Other sugestions for a good pedal in this area are vast, in the end it boils down to personal taste. One thing i think we all agree on as guitar players is that in the end a really good tube distortion should blow you away...but this Vox just plain blows.

a very straight-forward design is employed here: two channels, each outfitted with its own gain, volume, and tone controls. both channels share a bass boost switch. basically, you can have bass boost in channel two or in both channels, but you cannot use the bass boost in channel one alone. however, that doesnt matter if you do the math. you are still able to customize two channels in any way that you see fit. there are two foot switches, one to activate the effect, and one to switch between the channels. red lights indicate that the pedal is on and which channel is active. the tube glows blue whether the effect is being used or not (really nifty, actually. for me, it says "hey! youre using your batteries"). the manual is pure crap, but i cant see how most people would really need it.

this overdrive sounds great! there is no noise unless the batteries are dying, in which case you get what sounds like a bad ground. this unit is indeed versatile, and coupled with your amps gain, you can get some really thick distortion out of it. i like to use it in a more subtle way, but metal-heads would be satisfied too. the pedal does have an obnoxious click while switching channels, but i found that if you switch in betweeb strokes on your guitar, the sound is not that noticable. still, this is not good. guitar playing should be as intuitive as possible, and having to change the way you play to suit a pedal is a bit much for me to swallow. it really does sound great, though, better than any overdrive ive ever used. i give it an 8 despie the clicking thing, because of its amazing sound.

hmm. . . it seems sturdy enough to me. just take care of it. the tube is exposed through little vent holes in the top. this is a double edged sword, however, as it looks so cool! as i mentioned earlier, the tube itself glows blue, which really adds to the cosmetics of this pedal. i would say that i trust its sturdiness for the tasks in which it was designed, but a beer gone astray could be disasterous. i rate a 6 because of the lack of foresight in this department.

this pedal is worth the money for its sound alone. it looks awesome, too. aside from the clicking, it is a silent threat in your arsenal. extremely customizable, versatile, and easy to use. i never play without it.

Very easy to use, individual controls for each channel of overdrive, seperate gain and tone for each channel is very useful making it easy to have one channel e.g. trbly distortion and the other bassy.

Very good distortion sound, it's the first tube pedal I've used so can't really compare it with any others, but compared to my previous Boss OD-2, ProCo Vintage Rat and Peavey amp distortion it is much more versatile than the previous. Boss was way to tinny, Rat was good but too beefy.

I play mainly Sonic Youth, The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Echo & The Bunnymen etc type of stuff, all original stuff in semi-pro band. It's been very good for me mainly for versatility, as can get very subtle overdrive effect, and tube like tone, through to very fat & beefy distortion. I mainly use the first channel gain at 1 o'clock, tone 2 o'clock, then Channel 2 gain set at 3 o'clock tone at 1 o'clock, so basically Ch. 1 is standard distorted and Ch. 2 is beefy, works really well for me.

I wanted to give this 8.5 because sound quality is much better than anything I've had previous but I need to compare to some other tube distortions!

Only real criticism is when switching distortion on it makes a very audible clicking sound that goes right through the amp, very annoying at gigs, especially if switching mid-song. Once distortions on though it makes no noise when going from Ch.1 to Ch.2 for some reason.

Seems very reliable so far, although despite appearances I wouldn't want to drop it or bash it about or anything, not as sturdy perhaps as price suggests should be. I do without a back up pedal but I use my amps distortion as a back up per se as I don't use that if I'm using the VOX pedal.

Also, bad design leaving the tube open to dirt/spills etc from gigs, would be very annoying if anything spilt near it as tube is not protected enough in my eyes.

N/A

Been using it 6months, done me well so far, reliable good versatile sound and no hiss. Downside; Audible click when turning footswitch on; tube not well covered.

I would consider buying a replacement if this one got stolen, its definatley worth having a go on one of these as before hand I thought Vo would be useless for my style of music but was very pleasantly suprised.