Wampler Clarksdale Overdrive

Wampler Pedals from Martinsville Indiana, US is known for its high quality handbuilt boutique effects pedals and the Clarksdale Overdrive is no exception.
In its search for the perfect Tubescreamer sound the people at Wampler listened carefully to a great number of original TS-808 pedals and finally selected the one that sounded best to their opinion. The circuit from that pedal was painstakingly examined and recreated for the Clarksdale.
Instead of the usual tone knob found on all Tubescreamers Wampler included a full active EQ on the Clarksdale with separate knobs for Bass, Mids and Treble.
This makes it very easy to adjust the overall tone of the pedal to your liking and specific use of guitar and amps and maybe even other effects pedals.
Turning the mids up brings you straight into SRV territory and turning de mids all the way up gives a so called cocked wah effect.
With the gain set low and the volume turned up it works as a great boost pedal to push your Amp past breakup into smooth overdrive.
Turning the volume down and the gain up resolves into a heavier distortion sound but never fizzy.
On top of the already mentioned features Wampler have included a switch that can be set to either Lift or Smooth. The effect results in a more bity tone or a more rounded like tone reminiscent of John Mayer.
The Clarksdale is very well built and comes with a soft switch for on/off and has top jacks for easy application on any pedalboard.
It's hard to say that it's the perfect Tubescreamer but it sure comes close to my ears although you have to tweak it to get it right otherwise it can sound rather boxy.

I have a number of tubescreamers and clones and this is the one which is a permanent feature on my pedal boards. Unlike a standard Ibanez tubescreamer this has 3 band tone controls (bass, middle and treble) with a huge sweep in tone across each of them. The nice feature is the mini toggle switch which engages the FULL sound. THis takes it out of the usual tubescreamer and fills in the bottom end when the drive is quite high. For already distorted amps this makes it a bit woolly but for a slightly cranked amp, it gives a beautiful tone. On the normal setting this acts like a normal tubescreamer and can really tighten a a cranked amp. For the price, it is a bargain when compared to standard tubescreamer and it has the usual Wampler impeccable build quality. Highly Recommended.