Vemuram Spiritone Overdrive

The Vemuram Spiritone was developed with Japanese guitarist Char and draws directly from the gear he has relied on for decades.

At the heart of the design is a carefully selected Klon Centaur from Char’s own collection, alongside several Centaurs owned by Vemuram, including one regarded as an especially strong example. But the Spiritone was never intended to be another Klon copy.

Vemuram also studied the gain and boost character of two pieces of equipment closely associated with Char’s sound: the Roland CE-1 and Watkins Copicat. Those different elements were blended and refined over a year of prototyping, with Char testing versions on stage and feeding the results back into the design.

The result is a medium-gain overdrive with plenty of character, but enough range to work as much more than a single-signature-sound pedal.

During development, Vemuram had access to a remarkable selection of Char’s own equipment, including vintage amplifiers, his touring pedalboards, Watkins Copicat and many of his best-known guitars — Mustangs, a 1959 Burgundy Mist Stratocaster, SGs and a P90-equipped Goldtop Les Paul. The pedal was repeatedly voiced and checked through this gear rather than developed around one fixed guitar-and-amp setup.

One of the more unusual features of the Spiritone came out of the prototype stage. Char ended up favouring two slightly different versions of the circuit and couldn't settle on one over the other. Instead of choosing, Vemuram incorporated both voicings into the production pedal.

The main channel has the warmer, more vintage character of the two. The B channel is brighter, more aggressive and more immediate, with a stronger attack and extra punch. Each channel has its own Level control, and the two voices can be switched independently from the footswitches.

There is also an internal/external SAT control for adjusting the amount of power-amp-style saturation, allowing the Spiritone to be fine-tuned around different guitars, amplifiers and stage setups. The input buffer can also be switched in or out.

As expected from Vemuram, the construction is extremely high quality. The Spiritone uses Vemuram’s custom switches, jacks and capacitors alongside selected NOS components, with specially made ash-white Bakelite knobs finishing off the enclosure.

It is a very particular kind of drive pedal: rooted in some famous vintage sounds, but developed into something broader, more flexible and distinctly its own.