Vox Satchurator

Simple operation, as you would expect from a drive pedal. The chicken head knobs (Gain, Tone & Level) are useful cos it's nice to be able to view your settings at a glance... something that other manufacturers don't always consider. An 'on' switch, a 'more' switch and a 'pad' switch (I won't bore you with their functions as others have explained them very well). If you have good technique and can tease out vocal tones using your fingers, pick attack weight and angles from your nicely overdriven valve amp then this pedal will amaze you. It responds beautifully to your touch and cries in a really nice way during solos. I got a great sound from this unit within around 15 minutes, most of which was spent experimenting with extreme settings to judge the pedals parameters.

I use either an Ernie Ball BFR Luke, an Ibanez JS1000 or a Jackson SL1 into a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier with a TC Electronic G-System to manage drive and digital effects. The pedal is surprisingly quiet with only a mild hiss with the gain fully cranked and the 'more' switch engaged... not enough to irritate. If you are searching for a particular artists sound and tone (OK then, if you want to sound like Joe!) then this is a good starting point but you will need more than this to achieve that kind of goal... if copying is your bag.
Compared to the sound of my Mesa with a Keeley modified TS Flexi 4X2 in front to provide a little 'more', I notice that the Satchurator handles the low end of my sound a little better, with a nicely controlled punch which retains the guitar's tone. It's harmonic qualities across the board are impressive. My rating for this section is based on the fact that I can tease out vocal tones a tiny bit easier from the Mesa.

It seems very well made although I haven't had it for long... but I always have alternatives available in case of equipment failure.
Because I have never experienced the failure of a drive pedal and owing to the fact that this is made from steel I have rated it highly.

As of yet there has been no need to bug the Vox team and I don't think I will need to any time soon.

I have been playing the guitar for a very long time. I play rock music but no covers, just our own particular brand (www.myspace.com/thecageuk). I went for this unit over others owing to it's promise of high gain, harmonic response and the 'more' switch (because I know exactly what Joe means when he says that sometimes you just feel that you need a tiny bit more)
My advice for what it's worth, is to make sure that you have a good compressor in front of the Satchurator and a good multi-band guitar EQ pedal in front of that.

I was unable to get a "good sound" out of this pedal.

Tone is subjective, so I don't normally "trash" products on HC. However, this pedal is so bad that I'm compelled to make an exception. To quote the gentleman below: "It sounds gritty, buzzy and harsh all at the same time." That's exactly right. Regardless of setting, it completely sucked the life out of my THD BiValve and made it sound like a little transistor radio. For the first time in 30 years, my wife looked at me and said, "Wow, whatever you're playing sure sounds ughly." It was the Vox Saturator.

It looks real nice, and the switches operate especially smooth. I'm sure it would continue sounding awful for a long long time.

I've been playing for over 30 years and own all kinds of guitars, amps, and effects. I currently play classic rock/blues in a couple cover bands. I'm not that good, but I do know when something sounds bad, and this is the worst sounding OD pedal I have ever encountered, bar none.

This is a review of the Satchurator after doing some minor mods to improve the sound of the pedal. The pedal is very easy to use, but I was initially a little disappointed with the lack of output volume and limited range of the tone control.

The pedal has a good sound to start with. It has a lot of smooth distortion and it cleans up well with the guitar volume knob. This is pretty much what Satch does when he performs live - you never see him make any adjustments to his amp or pedals during a performance.

The two things that bothered me most about the pedal were the tone control and lack of output. The tone control pretty much needs to stay at about 10:00. Any more and things get harsh and buzzy. Less goes into the muffle zone. When the gain is maxxed, cranking the output volume barely puts it over unity compared to the bypassed signal.

I've modded and built quit a few pedals in my 30-something years of playing, so I figured this would be a good candidate for tweaking. When I opened the pedal (you have to remove the knobs and all the nuts to get to the circuit), I was greeted by a CNC manufactured circuit board with mostly tiny surface mounted components! "Bummer, not easy to mod." I thought. On closer examination I found two back-to-back 1N34A silicon diodes. Yay, a clipping circuit!

Now the Mod...

I carefully desoldered and lifted out one of the diodes, added a 3mm red LED in series with it (a la the Keely DS-1 Seeing Eye Mod), and soldered the assembly back in. I also removed the other diode and replaced it with two 1N4148 germanium diodes soldered together in series. The GE diodes help to give the pedal a little bit of compression and "tubeyness". I used two to closer match the voltage swing of the stock silicon diode. Testing time....WOW! Big volume increase! A little less saturated distortion sound due to the large voltage swing of the LED, but with the gain at about 2:00 I could get a big, crunchy rhythm tone with better mid range than stock. More of a hard rock tone than high compression shred. A big improvement IMO.

Now to that tone control....

I experimented with different cap values to tame some of the harshness in and settled on a 0.05uf ceramic cap soldered in parallel with the diode setup. I soldered this on the back side of the board to the diode leads poking through the board. The location is marked "D5" on the top of the board. This really helped to tame the buzzy highs and made the tone control more of a midrange control than a buzz blaster.

Stock, I would have given this pedal a 7, but with the mods it's at least a 9 (nothing's perfect).

It's pretty well built and likely to last a long time.

Don't know, don't care. For $129 bucks, I'd buy another.

A good pedal, but could of been better. I guess it works for Joe though. With my mods, I'll give it a solid 9.

Hard for me to get a good overdriven tone. Tone control above say 10:00 oclock is harsh, brittle.

All tube 30 watt single channel, Celestion speakers and reverb. A fender strat with 2 stock single coils, and a pearly gates humbucker. I was hoping to get a pedal that I could get various tones from grungy blues, to searing leads. I will say I DID get an o.k. blues sound where the the overdrive was just barely breakin' up. That tone was actually useable in a live environment. When I tried to get anything close to a good "Brown" sound or lead tone, the pedal could not do it. I could only get REALLY fuzzy based overdriven tones. Not my cup of tea at all. I'm not here to rip on those players who have gotten good results with this pedal as there is a lot of factors to any given tone, and a lot more from a player and his hands than is ever given credit for in reviews. With that being said, I returned it and bought a "fulltone fulldrive 2" for $30.00 bucks more than I had in the satchurator and WOW what a difference.

I play a mix of mostly jam band based, blues, rock, and jazzy jams with a lot of improvised playing. I use a lot of various pedals just for inspiration and FUN. This was just a grab off the shelf to try it out unheard first. Just not for me. Maybe I got a dud!! Anyway, congrats to those who love it. I'll stick with my fulldrive for now.

There are three knobs, two footswitches and one miniswitch. Effortlessly simplistic.

I tried this pedal through a Marshall JVM with a PRS SE custom 22, a LTD EC1000 and an Ibanez Telecaster-type guitar that i do not know the model name of. I also tried it with an Epiphone Dot Natural through a Mesa Lonestar and an Epiphone Valve Junior Special.

The pedal can do satch very easily but that's not what it does best. It is a rich pedal that is clear and crisp and has a beautiful analogue tone. It takes your guitars tone and layers gain in such a way as to preserve the original tone of the guitar. You really notice this when going from passive to active pickups.

The pedal cleans up unbelievably well when the volume knob is rolled off, and works really well with different amps and guitars. I aimed to get a tone i liked as opposed to hunt for Joe's tone, and with tweaking on each rig setting i could find my own voice. I also didn't find myself trying escape satch's tone all the time.

The 'more' button is a blessing. it takes your pre-12 o'clock gain to max gain, or your max gain to 11. It also adds a new harmonic texture and really makes your leads sing out loud. The pedal took whatever was thrown at it and just loved it. It even gave room to complex chords which, under normal distortions, wold just become a jumbled mess. It is a crystal clear pedal, and it can do so much.

It's a chunky pedal with little to go wrong. I would happily gig it without a backup.

Not Vox, but Andertons Music Store who are always willing to help.

I play a lot of different styles of music, from metal to indie, blues to rock and i have been playing guitar for 3 years, bass for 6-7. This pedal, with small adjustments, can and will do all. Don't expect ultra-heavy from this pedal, but it is such a versatile little box. And for the price, there aren't many pedals that can touch it on value for money and tonality. I would buy this pedal again if it were lost or stolen.

It's pretty simple to use, Has all the controls you need from a distortion pedal (gain,tone,level), all these controls act very responsive.

Tt also has a pad control, which is a tiny toggle switch you can whack on when you've got some high output pedals (e.g. Wah) before it in the chain that create some noise.

The manual is great, the presets recommended are great a real solid sound.

Distortion pedals are a risky thing, as really nothing compares to a good valve dirty channel, having said that i think this pedal is a great one!

I have 2 Amps,my main one is an Orange Rocker30, now i love my rocker its great for basic rock and blues and jamming to some Pearl Jam and Bruce Springsteen but when i wanna play heavy stuff which is my main love like Thrice,Vai or Deftones the orange dirty channels dont really cut it so i thought id try some distortion pedals and this works great.
I run it through the clean channel and use it as a flat out channel switch to distortion and it sounds sweet, its got great sutstain and presence and gives a great ambient metal sound.
I also use it with my Epiphone valve junior as a straight distortion pedal for practise or recording and sounds great too.
If you put it with a cheeky delay pedal you really get a great sustainy Vai sound!

My only issue is, is that i'd like a little more bass so maybe 2 tone knobs would be great but it's still a great pedal.

hav'nt had it long enough to make a decision.

dont know.

This is the best distortion pedal i've ever used,my points of comparision are the Boss DS1,Boss metal core,Big Muff and the marshall Guvnor, and these beats them all hands down!

It has great sustain volume and brightness you can really hear each string and note ring, and the boost gives it that little extra.

also it looks great (real classy) and isnt too badly priced either.

This effect is easy as it gets to use. Turn the controls until you like what you hear! There is only Tone, Volume, Distortion.

I use either a Strat or Les Paul and it responds well with either. Like others have said it's sounds DS-1ish, but it can get a lot louder and have a better bottom than a DS-1. The more switch is ok for the house but does not cut it while out gigging. I use a Fuzz Head after the Satchurator for lead work. This has turned out to be my main tone generator for my band, I think it really rocks and it can play the smokey blues thing because it will clean up with volume. The DS-1 can't do that unless you mod one. It can get very close to Joe's sound with a little effort. Here's a clip I did using a Les Paul of all things, of course I ain't no Joe :-)
http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=7107448&q=lo
So I like it and will keep it on my board.

No problems yet.

Never used them

A great little box for the peso
It is in the vein of the MIJ Boss DS-1 which I own and I have several other DS-1's including a Keeley that Joe himself signed for me and even set the controls for me. The switching system is silent and it IMVHO is several steps ahead of any DS-1 in overall pinch harmonics, sustain, and ability to get more distortion when needed. So it's a cool ride and will take you into new jams and add some mojo to the old ones.

Its a simple pedal but it is quite difficult to find a great tone, takes a fair bit of playing to get a shit hot sound.
Knobs are easily bumped and move too easily, is a pian in the ass.

Mixed feelings about this, its sounds good depending as to what you are playing. It is a high quality distortion, i use it a fair bit and im happy with it, its great for cutting solos, very high powered and emotional solos. It however is very noise as it has such a high gain. Personally i find it practically useless for solos.
I use it for soloing.

Hasn't died on me yet.

I like its:

Simplicity
Soloing Sound
MORE switch
Pad swtich
Tone control is great
Huge amount of gain to be had


I dislike:

It's noisyness (however i have a noise supressor now so not a problem)
Difficulty finding the perfect sound
Useless for rhythm (doesnt have that low/mid mid crunchy rythm sound)
Pad switch i find doesnt really do a hell of a lot.

Very easy to use and to get great sounds out of - right out of the box. But after a few days, it'll get even easier and you'll like it even more - I did!

I've been playing my Strat with Duncan Antiquity Pickups or my Strat with a Duncan 78 bridge humbucker through my Fulltone Clyde or Vox 847 Wah and that into my Satch plugged into my blackface Princeton Reverb, blackface Deluxe Reverb or '51 tweed Super. 18 to 25 watt amps.

I use Fender amps.

I can get Joe's sound, Jimi's sound, Jeff Beck's sound and most importantly: my sound.

As far as I can tell, it's very well made.

I'd trust it without a back up, but my pedalboard has an Ibanez Jemini, Fulltone '69, Ibanez TS-808 and a 80's Rat. So I have plenty of back ups.

I play mostly rock and blues.

Been playing for over forty years

I'd get another Satch in a hearybeat if I lost this one.

I love everything about it but especially the way it makes getting pinch harmonics so easy.

I don't dislike a thing about it.

I've compared it to all my pedals and the only two that compare are my Fulltone '69 and Ibanez Jemini. I love the Jemini Green channel but wish the Jemini's red channel was the Satchurator. In truth, the Jemini's Red channel does sound a lot like the Satch.

Its pretty easy really, the GAIN control gives you from a small nest of hornets to a larger nest of hornets tonality, the tone just kind of does "something" , nothing remarkable or outstanding , the volume does as it says on the tin and the more switch does pretty much absolutely nothing, it should have been labelled the "nothing" switch. I give it a 1 because its a pretty lousy pedal.

A very very underwhelming pedal. It sounds gritty, buzzy and harsh all at the same time. I put it front of my Two Rock custom reverb head and man did it blow !! Those familiar big sounds from my 4x12 sounded like a waspy 1x12, I couldnt get it out of there quick enough. I think the pedal is total pants and purchasers of it are in for a reality shock.

Lost interest in it super quickly so it wouldnt be appropriate to give a rating here.

As stated, it went back out the door at breakneck speed, some other player might like it and the Satchurator was disposed of. I never bothered to contact Vox, so again, I wont give a rating.

Its a pile of trash. I despair when I read comments from the fanboy quarter who are just blinded by the word Satch on the box, it could have been a pile of horse droppings , but so long as it has Satch on its cover, all is well in the world as they see it.. Joe is laughing all the way to his bank account im sure, if he has that pedal in his rig, ill eat my hat for breakfast , lunch and dinner.