Used EAE Surveyor V.1 from the first batch produced. This is no. 92 and has only seen light use. i no longer use it, hence the sale. The description is from the original manual:

The Surveyor began as half of our Dude Incredible pedal, which was a two-channel

homage to the guitar tones of Steve Albini. This incarnation does away with the

Harmonic Percolator channel in favor of a more compact and manufacturable form

factor – and not to worry, there are a number of excellent percolator clones on the market to mix and match.

The original IVP is a full-featured rackmount preamp with two input channels, an active Baxandall shelving tone stack for highs and lows, a four-band parametric EQ for mid frequencies, clean and “Tube Voice” channels, and multiple buffered patch points for external effects. The Surveyor distills the IVP down to just the input stage, Baxandall EQ, and Tube Voice drive circuit. In the IVP, the EQ is placed before the drive circuit, allowing for unique tone shaping. Rather than shaping the final overdriven tone, the user can emphasize which frequencies become distorted. Boosting highs brings forth

not just treble content, but midrange and presence as well. Boosting the lows can add heft at lower settings or overwhelm the drive circuit in a musical fashion. The Tube Voice circuit itself uses discrete transistors and a small, low-bandwidth transformer to generate clipping. This combination responds in a smooth manner at lower gain settings but becomes fuzzy and aggressive at higher settings. Thanks to the transformer’s sharp cut in the KHz range, it never gets too harsh. You will find that the Surveyor does far more than noise rock clang – it is in fact capable of a huge variety of saturated textures.

I am extremely proud of this pedal and hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading!

-John Snyder, EAE OPERATION

Only use a standard, reliable 9VDC supply (2.1mm center negative barrel tip) with the

Surveyor (e.g. Truetone, Voodoo Labs, Strymon, Cioks, etc). The Surveyor has a

current draw of 45mA. Supplies with AC output or a DC voltage greater than 9V risk

damaging the pedal and will void the warranty. The Surveyor does not use batteries.

The Surveyor has soft-touch relay switching with true bypass. In the event of power loss, the pedal will default to its bypassed state in order to mitigate signal loss in a live performance scenario.

The control knobs are as follows:

• Level: Overall output volume, with more than enough range to overdrive your

amp’s input

• Gain: amount of overdrive/saturation, highly interactive with the EQ setting

• Bass: active, pre-distortion low shelf boost/cut

• Treble: active, pre-distortion high shelf boost/cut

The Gain control determines the overall level of the signal fed into the Tube Voice

overdrive/clipping circuit. Lower settings yield a somewhat ragged “edge of breakup” tone characteristic of a good 1970s solid-state amplifier. Higher settings will verge on distortion or fuzz depending on the EQ settings and pickup type/position.

Note that extreme settings on the EQ can greatly extend the range of the Gain control – since the EQ is located before the clipping stage, adding gain will emphasize

frequencies to be overdriven. Boosting Treble will add crunch and presence as these frequencies become more overdriven. However, it never becomes too harsh due to bandwidth limiting in the clipping circuit hanks to the transformer in the Tube Voice circuit and boosting Bass can produce a blown out sound with a sagging attack, reminiscent of a fuzz pedal or an overdriven console.

What one might call “classic” IVP tones are from single coil equipped guitars – bonus

points if they have aluminum necks, though you can get surprisingly close with a good maple neck. If you are using humbuckers or a low-tuned instrument and desire a more focused tone at higher Gain settings, the Bass control should ideally be kept below the 12:00 setting. Reducing both controls down to 9:00 can also produce a satisfying midrange emphasis that is great for more traditional rock styles.

When stacking other pedals (probably a Harmonic Percolator as the obvious choice, though I also strongly recommend a good Fuzz Face or octave fuzz), you will want to reduce the gain slightly and keep the output volume on the fuzz pedal on the lower side in order to retain note definition. Of course, you are welcome to disregard this advice for truly apocalyptic results.

Finally, the Surveyor may be used as a dedicated always-on preamplifier and has

enough output range to easily drive a power amp at line level. It is not the primary use case, but experimentation is encouraged.

In conclusion…

The Surveyor pays homage to a classic rackmount preamplifier in the form of a uniquely versatile overdrive pedal.