Venus is a real tube overdrive inspired by one of the greatest masterpieces of the pedal museum.

With ultimate versatility and tone shaping in mind, we set out to recreate a classic tube tone sculpture with modern refinements, generating anything from a smooth, light tube overdrive, to a high-gain, nasty distortion within the realm of fuzz.

First of all, size matters! Without sacrificing tone, we squeezed our circuit into the smallest possible enclosure, measuring 12.6 x 6.6 x 5.7 cm (L x W x H).  Instead of an internal step-down power transformer, we designed Venus to operate from a standard 9V DC power supply to minimize background noise and hum. The user can operate the pedal from the included power supply or any isolated 9V DC, center-negative power supply output with 500mA current capability. Then a properly designed internal voltage booster/inverter circuit provides the correct voltage conditions (symmetrical +/- 15V DC).

While the classic masterpiece that inspired Venus originally shipped with an ECC83 (12AX7) dual triode tube, users looking for a smoother, cleaner sound replaced the tube with a lower gain/higher headroom variant like ECC81 (12AT7) or ECC82 (12AU7). With that in mind, we selected an ECC832 tube as stock for Venus. This kind of oddball tube features half of an ECC83 and half of an ECC82. The tone is as close as possible to the original “tube sculpture” but with more clarity, string separation and a wider soundstage.

You can still substitute with all the "usual suspects" of dual triode tube types like ECC83/12AX7, 5751, ECC81/12AT7, 12AY7, ECC82/12AU7 for a different sonic flavor. Use the bias knob to set the tube bias/control the current passing through the tube cathodes. By adjusting this knob, you can find the sweet spot for different tube types used and/or set the texture of the overdrive / distortion: from gnarly, nasty and gated (counter-clockwise) to smooth and creamy (clockwise). The full clockwise setting of the bias knob has the cleanest sound for most tube types used.

A full 3-band EQ gives you total control over frequency response. With the mid control, you can sweep through the sounds of all the variants of the unit that inspired Venus and also comes in especially handy if you are using slightly mid-scooped clean amps. To sculpt the tone further and match the pedal to different guitars and/or pickups, we have also added a push switch to set the amount of low and low-mid frequencies boost that hits the tube gain stages between the stock fat or tight sound (when pushed in). A switchable low-output-impedance line driver (buffer/volume booster) ensures that your signal gets properly pushed through to the next pedal or your amp, and all your audio frequencies are retained. The bypass state of Venus is always true bypass regardless of this push button switch setting. The selectable line driver is only placed at the output of the effect when engaged.

Read the Manual