Since the Vahlbruch "Jewel Drive" is more a so-called "medium-gain"
overdrive pedal, the "Sapphire Drive" offers higher gain/distortion
sounds.
It´s still a very open sounding pedal with a great transparency,
also the 6 knobs are closely related to the "Jewel Drive".
The "Sapphire Drive" is a pure 100% analog hand-built two channel
distortion effect pedal, especially designed to offer you authentic
tube overdriven amp sounds ranging from sparkling clean to moderate
crunch to more distorted sounds. This pedal is extremely open sounding
with high transparency and wide dynamics. The "Sapphire Drive" reacts
extraordinary touch sensitive, the differences between softer and
harder picking are reproduced in every nuances. Due to it´s novel
and unique analog circuit, the "Sapphire Drive" creates a
rich, complex and beautiful singing overtone texture, while the
inherent tone of your amp and guitar you are playing is perfectly
preserved.
Used as on overdrive in front of your amp the "Sapphire Drive" gives
you the feeling of a cranked amp even at lower volume levels. Clean
notes now have a wider dynamic range and more overdriven sounds are
still pronaunced and rich with the right content of even-order
harmonics. By simply turning the guitar´s volume knob you can
blend through the complete overdrive spectrum, the "Sapphire Drive"
interacts very, very well, very similar to a good tube amp!
Basically you have the common overdrive controls to adjust your tone:
Drive, Tone and Volume. But there is an additional "Character" control
which makes this pedal again unique. Turning this knob influences some
dedicated electronic parameters inside the pedal at the same time. The
midrange spectrum, the overtone structure, the dynamic and frequency
response can be adjusted to perfectly suit your personal tone!
And this is realized by only ONE "Character" control and not many confusing switches and knobs.
And the greatest thing is that you have an additional foot-switchable
and adjustable Gain AND Volume Boost, e.g. for solo work, which makes
this pedal so versatile.
Thanks to its extremely large signal-to-noise ratio the Vahlbruch
"Sapphire Drive" shows very low background noise and is therefore
suited for any studio work and professional live performance.
The pedal has a true bypass switch for perfect signal transfer without any tone loss. A blue LED shows you the on/off status.
You can use a 9V battery to power the pedal or an external standard 9V power supply (ring +, tip -).
The power consumption is approximately 20mA.
The "Sapphire Drive" pedal has NO pcb-mounted jacks, NO pcb-mounted
footswitch and NO pcb-mounted pots! This certainly means more effort
building the pedal compared to industrial mass production but it´s truly
worth it!
Like all Vahlbruch pedals the "Sapphire Drive" is hand-made utilizing
only the best components available worldwide for high-end tone and years
of
trouble free operation.
