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DHA VT1-Std. tube/valve overdrive pedal
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Recommended By
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Average Price
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Average Rating
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100% of reviewers
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None indicated
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8.0
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Description:
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Handmade 12AX7 tube overdrive pedal
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Author
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bongomania
OVNIFX
Registered: October 2005
Location: PDX, OR
Posts: 30219
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Review Date: Sun June 8, 2008
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 8
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Pros:
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great fat tone, good range of tonal effect
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Cons:
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bulky, requires odd power supply, "cosmetically challenged"
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There are a lot of tube overdrives and tube preamps out there which advertise how they "fatten" or "add vintage tube warmth" to your signal. At all price points -even from reputable brands- I have found a lot of those claims are terribly exaggerated. Sometimes the tube seems to add nothing at all to the tone.
The DHA, however, adds a really noticeable -and great sounding- amount of both fatness and warmth. IMO it's really an ideal answer for anyone who wants to add a "fat tube channel" to their solid-state amp.
It uses one 12AX7 tube in a "starved plate" low-voltage design. Often starved plates are reviled for not making full use of the tube's capabilities, and it is claimed that only high-voltage designs are really "worthy". That may be true in some common designs, however Dave's design really gets the results I wanted: while many of the high-voltage tube devices I've owned had too much of a gritty, buzzy, harsh sound in their clipping, the DHA instead sounds smooth, thick, and furry.
Where the tone falls apart for me, and this is where maybe a high-voltage design might do better, is at maximum gain. The drive/clipping sound stays smooth, but it also becomes way too mushy and weak in the lows and low mids. So this particular pedal excels at low gain (fat but clean) and medium gain (vintage dirty and thick but not grinding) but it loses its balls at high gain. I have gotten some decent results by putting the DHA at high gain in a blender loop (Xotic X-Blender) for more clean lows, but I actually feel it would make more sense just to get a different pedal for high-gain sounds, and use the DHA for the low gain sounds it does so well.
The model I'm reviewing it the base-level "Standard" model. It features knob controls for tube gain, input attenuation, and output level. It also has a switch for "bright" or "normal" modes; the normal setting has a slight (pleasing) rolloff of the high end, while the bright mode is quite cutting and crisp. The lows are about the same in both modes.
There is also a "boost" switch. Dave says the boost is there for players who want to overdrive their tube amp. However the amount of boost is so insanely high that I cannot imagine it ever being useful unless you turn the output level control most of the way down. And if you forget to turn down the output level, you run a serious risk of blowing your speakers and your eardrums. So use the boost with caution.
When I first received the pedal, I was using a studio preamp with an internally-floating ground. The power ground of the DHA pedal is connected via the instrument cable to the ground of the preamp; so the floated ground caused the DHA to fail and act "broken". No damage was done however, and as soon as I used a preamp with a more normal grounding system (signal ground common with power ground) the DHA worked perfectly. I only mention this in case you have problems when using this pedal with certain unusual studio gear- it will not be an issue for the majority of users.
The footswitch is "true bypass" according to Dave. For a variety of reasons I was initially unsure about that, but Dave has a pretty good explanation of the true bypass system he uses. The whole subject of TBP is fairly contentious anyway- regardless, the bypass on the DHA unit is clear and high-quality.
The pedal can be powered by 9 to 12 V DC, but it requires a fairly high amount of amperage- so you may have difficulty powering it with a daisy-chain like the 1Spot or Brick, or even with a better unit like the Voodoo PPII, which still has limited available amperage. For best results you'll want to power the DHA with an isolated supply (wall wart) which has high amperage capability.
Also the pedal is fairly large (about the size of two Boss pedals), and very homemade-looking. So it may not be the "prettiest" or most convenient pedal on your board.
But to recap, it does an excellent job of actually providing super fat smooth tube warmth, which is more than I can say for a lot of the competition. And that fat tone is useful at a range from "clear" to "furry", with great low end at the low-medium gain settings. So the positives far outweigh the negatives for me, and I will certainly be trying more of his designs in the future.
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