Vox V810 Valve-Tone

How easy it to get tone out of? Too easy! The Level control is basically a boost or volume; the gain adds distortion; tone is a nice EQ control. The EQ is balanced towards the treble end (I believe because it favors that Voxie type of tone. The manual was great. Came in all the right languages with all the right pictures, lines, and stuff.

I run a Reverend Rocco (yummi!) thru a DOD 280 Compressor --> Wah pedal --> vox Valve Tone --> either a HiMu 7 watt combo or my work-in-progress, a DIY 20 watt 2x6V6 amp (2x10" speakers, Jensen C10Q's).

I am not a young stud anymore, so I was looking for something to just add a bit of dirt and edge to an already nice, clean tube tone for leads and rhythm. With the compressor set to just below average compression and plenty of level, the amp set to 5-6, I can cop some wonderfully juicy blues-tube crunchiness. If you push the distortion level much past 12 o'clock, it really starts to get out there -- but in a nice way. Push the level into the afternoon part of the dial and it just sings and sings and sustains like crazy. With the compressor set a little higher than halfway, I can get swirling spikes of feedback and awesome harmonics. I found that if I was too timid (keeping the volume level on the amp too low) the distortion and break up started way too soon. When I set the main volume up past halfway, and increased the compression a bit, I had more control with the break-up level. If you twist the tone knob past 12 o'clock, it really starts to rain down needles. Shimmering British needles of overdrive. Back it off a bit and you have that early 60's Beatles bit. Chimey, crunching tone.

And the best part is I can hear the sweet tones of my axe thru the whole thing. Single coils (mine are coil tapped humbuckers) sound excellent. the 'buckers are a bit big, but dial off some low end on the guitar and it sounds lovely.

Working that Wah (using a GCB-95 now but I'm casting about for a Teese RMC-1... got one to sell?) sends the whole set up in to twisted squawking furies of shrieks and feedback. With a bit better wah I can almost cop Jeff Beck doing 'Aint Superstitious.' It's pretty damn quiet, but it is a distortion pedal, so there is a bit of noise there.

I like it.

Looks like a vox pedal (shiny stainless steel with a black rubber cover panel. As one reviewer mentioned... very sexy! When I look down, I love what I see (not that cheesy day-glo, mary kay colored pedal like most are... this is a manly looking pedal). It would hold up fine.

It's discontinued. Getting darn valuable as people discover their value and tone (better than some Tubescreamers). Don't rekon I will ever call the company.

Styles: Blues/Rock/noodling homebrew. Adds a nice edgey element to my mostly clean playing.
25 years of playing -- mostly acoustic.
Own a tenor by Gibson, Airline Cheese-ball amp-in-case.
Larrivee OM-5
Reverend Rocco
I listened to several other distorto pedal (Ross Distortion, TS-whatever, Boss MT stuff, Tube Works Real Tube. It has a nice controllable tone and adjustability..plus it doesn't color my tone at all.
I wish it had a bit more low end in the EQ, and like all overdrives, I wish when the gain was set to 'zero' I wish it didn't distort the tone at all... but that is really a non-issue
I love the way it looks, and I'd rather look good *ha ha*

notihng can be easier than 3 knobs vol/tone/drive

damn Kickass....think vintage blues rock, warm, classic, undoubtedly a Valve tone.....better than a lot of leading brands' overdrive pedal i used...

metal casing...chrome...its a beauty...wat can u say...

its just drives like a tube man....from my 62' jaguar reissued, fitted with 2 x seymour duncans JB jr stack, to my Fender Bronco...boss compressor/sustainer > zoom 5000 hybrid distortion > vox drive > Jim dunlop 535q > zoom 5050 choir > amp......kickass

duhh
if you cant get a good sound from this box
-do us all a favour-GIVE UP NOW!
very responsive controls.The secret is in the amount of gain

forget heavy meatal.Think
velvet underground or british rock.This thing has the best warm
crunch factor of any pedal i have ever heard.Breaks up perfectly.
Great combination over a clean Fender/boogie sound.
for some reason this pedal makes my signal chain sound good ,even when it 's not turned on--YUM

how can a pedal that looks so damn sexy not be reliable.

10 points for inventing such a machine.
now vox,if you had any brains-you would reissue these again.
That way,some dog wont be tempted to steal mine

been playing for 20 years and this thing is perfect.
for rock /alternative this is sonic nirvana
Get one and worship it!

This is the BEST overdrive pedal for a guitar with single-coils & a Fender amp.
'Nuff said.

I found a TS-808 in a shop and was getting ready to shell out the $280 for it when the Vox caught my eye. I decided to try it out because I had heard good things about it....but I wasn't prepared for what I heard.
This pedal SMOKED the TS-808 so badly that I HAD to but it. Sure was nice to have $200 left over!

I've had this thing for a year and must have used it on 75 or 80 gigs in that time. Changed the battery ONCE!

Vox has a customer support department?

This is the best overdrive pedal I've ever tried in my 24 years of playing guitar.
I use it for blues & roots-rock stuff, play Telecasters through a '67 Twin Reverb, a '68 Deluce reverb, or a '70 Vibrolux. I've also used this pedal with a Jerry Jones U2, a Silvertone hollowbody, and a few other guitars with single-coils. I don't own any guitars with humbuckers, so I can't tell you how well the Vox would work with them.

I had a Klon Centaur and I sold it on eBay after having this thing for 3 months. This pedal actually gives a better low gain boost than the Klon!
I'll take one point off for the footswitch, which makes a slight popping noise, but otherwise this Vox is THE overdrive for me.

No brainer... gain, vol, tone

The Valve-Tone has become one my essential pedals... It just nails the barely-clipped out tube amp tone. I have found it works great on my '65 Twin, '65 Vibrolux Reverb, other clean amps that don't break up easily. It actually sounds & responds like a real overdriven amp. My TS-9 just isn't as transparent at lower gain settings. The Valve-Tone is lower gain & retains the clean tone pretty well. The tone just fattens up as the volume on the guitar is rolled up. The Fenders have a bit of a scooped sound & the valve-tone helps fill in the mids a bit as well. I use it to handle the VOX AC30 parts, the crunchy rhythm parts, & powercords. Settings: Gain-0, Tone-2, Level-10. I use Joe Barden pickups most of the time which have plenty of output. With a stock strat, I usually kick the gain to 3 or 4.

For higher gain & solos, I put the TS-9 or Fulldrive2 ON TOP OF the valve-tone. The cool thing is it also works well to drive partly driven tube amps into full distortion. It sounds great on my Matchless HC/30.

Chassis is heavy duty, but the rest is cheap quality. It's a MUST to install a Carling or Fulltone switch, switchcraft jacks, & a RED LED so you can see the damn thing on brighter stages. I own two & both switches blew out in no time... Now they are pretty SOLID.

It's a pedal... If it breaks either fix it yourself or throw it away. You don't want to deal with VOX/KORG anyhow. (When they say "Backorder", they really mean they are getting ready to plant the trees that will be used to make the boxes that your parts will be shipped in.)

I have used this pedal for a few years now & I like it as much now as the day I bought it... I really can't do without it, especially when I'm using the clean blackface Fenders. Best part is that you could score one for $30-$40 for the longest time because everyone overlooked them. However, it seems they are going up in value now that they are discontinued. Enough said... OUT.

Very simple, 3 chicken head knobs, great tones are easily acheived w/
numerous settings. "True-Bypass" switching is something that the TS-808 and numerous pretenders cannot provide. Normally it costs hundreds for nearly "any" pedal featuring true-bypass. A "huge" plus!!

Amazing creamy overdrive that sends chills down your spine. AC-30 tones are quickly dialed in and Ibanez TS-808 like drive is also
attainable with minimal knob twisting. Tonal spectrum is huge on this
pedal!!

Housed in a nice shiny chrome casing & built like a tank!

Does Vox have customer support?

This pedal is great from classic rock tones to much heavier & dirtier
overdrives. It coinsides wonderfully with other pedals due to the "True-Bypass" switching. Blues players will never turn it off. If it was lost or stolen.....ouch........I would try to replace it, but I doubt I would have any luck finding one. Just a great pedal and an extremely good value. $400 for a TS-808 or $50 for this?? hmmmm.. this
pedal blows it away in overall value "and perormance". (and I love my TS-808) Good luck finding one!

Very easy to get a good sound out of this pedal. No manual.

As for my setup: I use a Fender Stat Ultra Plus, Fender American Standard Stratocaster, Charvel Fusion, and a Washburn acoustic. My guitar signal goes thru an A/B box, the A channel goes to a Fulltone 70, Vox V810 Valve-Tone, Boss Metal Zone, SansAmp GT2, Chandler
Tube Driver, Dan Echo or Echoplex, DeArmond volume pedal, and finally a Rocktron Intellifex. The B side goes to a Sabine tuner. I run 2 Marshalls in stereo (JCM 800 combo and Marshall Bluesbreaker). The Vox V810 Valve-Tone is extremely quite and does not color your signal. You get the sound of your guitar with as much of the effect as you want. I replaced my Fulltone Fulldrive 2 with the Vox, the Fulltone Fulldrive 2 sounded great on the lower notes but had a tendancy to sound thin when playing higher notes. To my ears this pedal sounds fantastic! Tone, note defintion, warm, fat, bite, it's a great pedal.

Don't know, from what I have read the Vox pedals are very well made. I am planning on buying another one, just in case.

Have not worked with them.

I have been playing for about 26 years and play all styles of music. If the Vox V810 Valve-Tone were stolen I would buy another one. The pedal inspires you!

For me it was very easy to get a smooth distorsion but with great attack and much overtones. It's got three knobs on it: Level, gain and tone. Level is just a volumecontrol and it doesn't affect the sound much for my ears. The gain control is from very soft distorsion to much distorsion (blues and rock) - this is not a Metal-pedal.
The tone control is very effective... just turn on the knob till you are satisfied with the result and then start to play!
The only thing that's bad with this pedal is that its checklight (the LED-indicator) is shining very weakly, so it's very hard to see if it's active or in bypassmode when you play in daylight.

I have used this pedal in Big Bandgigs for solos and also for playing chords in rockmusic. It's not noisy for beeing a distorsionpedal and you can hear that it's a quality product. I'm very satisfied with that kind of sound.

It's very roughly made and it's very robust.

I've been playing for eleven years and I think that if you're looking for a distorsionpedal with a good sound and you're playing , blues, jazz and rock this is it.

Stupidly easy to get a good sound. Just twidle and play. Puts the RI TS-9 to shame. Love that true bypass.

Using a variety of guitars and amps. Sounds very good. I use it as a lead pedal or as a light OD. Very smooth yet toothy. No midrange honk like the TS. It is still solid state, so no 10!

Sometimes can go pop (crappy switch), but plays like a champ. The chicken head knobs make it easy to adjust on the fly too.

Never had to use them and probably wouldn't. The "manual" is great if you like opening a map to find your language. Then once you find it, you realize the manual is totally worthless!!!

Well, I think this box is superior to the heralded TS-9 re-issue. It ads zip to a lead and sounds very good all by itself. Max out the gain and lower your volume pot on the guitar a touch and you are ready for great chord definition and searing leads.

This pedal is really simple to use and rather straightforward in all its functions. All pots run smoothly and they behave in a natural way, going from zero up to ott in a simple, accurate manner. Also -not like DOD - they have pretty simple names for the functions; tone, drive and level (ie Everybody knows what those words mean !!). Everything is simple and easy, just in the lovely old-fashioned way.

I used it with various different guitars and all of them sounded different through it.Not too noisy and with true by-pass. Although I own and play a Les Paul Standard and a Danelectro U2, my main guitar is a Fernandes Strat-copy, custom wired with a custom-made brass nut, loaded with Fender's Texas Specials single coil pick-ups and it sounds excellent on its own. I play it through a Marshall JCM 600 valve head and a 1*12" cab containing a Celestion Vintage 30 speaker. I used to use the amp's distortion, but after I bought the VOX pedal I now use a combination of both. Normally I use an old MXR DynaComp pedal or a BOSS Compressor/Sustainer and then the VOX on its own for slightly overdriven sounds, not unlike a vintage Fender combo, having that little edge and sheen different to the Marshall's own tone. When I want to have something a bit more juicy I use the Marshall's overdrive and if I want to go over the top for solos I would go for both, working at the same time. This gives me a really layered tone with plenty of sustain and guts yet having a very unique voice which sings and rips at the same time. On its own, the Vox sounds great, especially using the bridge pick-up, a tone that is rampant and crunchy, full of that wonderful Strat character that a lot of us really love. To my ears it sounds tighter and a more defiant version of my old Tubescreamer. Does it sound like the real McCoy (ie. a vintage AC30 combo)? I don't think so. I have always loved the tone of this brilliant English combo but this little pedal has no miraculous powers and my Marshall still sounded like a Marshall but in a very special way. I have tried it as well with my Fender Bronco solid-state combo at home and I can say that the lack of valves led the sound to the harsher side of things yet still pleasant. Using it with an Orange valve combo took me back to gorgeous peachy soundscapes again. Would Brian May like it? Maybe. Would The Edge? Probably. Me? I LOVE IT!!!!

I have been using it very often lately and it has been working perfectly all right. Nevertheless the little yellow light looks a bit dim to me. Sometimes I can't really see it on stage. I guess that affects in a way its reliability, doesn't it? Apart from that it is built really well.

I have been playing Psychedelic Rock for a few years now and I have found that this little beauty has helped quite a lot to find my very own sound. It sounds full of character, never brittle but bright, never dull but sweet, never complicated or troublesome but warm and inspiring. Still, if you want to get the AC30 sound go and buy one. On the other hand, using it with your present amp and guitar could lead you to some of the most pleasant and surprising tones ever. I know it, I have done it myself. Do you know something? Finding your own unique tone is probably the best thing that could ever happen to a musician. An excellent pedal to be used and abused.