Transparent Overdrive With Real Touch Sensitivity
The Mad Professor Royal Blue Overdrive Handwired is the first time the RBO has ever been offered as a hand wired pedal, and it is a fitting upgrade for one of the most versatile transparent overdrives around. Filtering in the drive circuit is kept deliberately minimal, so what comes out the other side is your guitar and your amp with more grit, not a new midrange voice stamped over the top.
What players fixate on here is the touch response. Like a good boutique amp, the Royal Blue lets your picking hand set the amount of breakup. Dig in and it snarls, back off and it cleans up, and rolling your guitar volume down sweeps the whole range without the tone collapsing. The gain span is wider than most transparent drives, reaching from a barely-there edge into genuine distortion.
How It Fits Your Rig
With Drive rolled all the way off, the Royal Blue becomes a boost with EQ, which makes it a practical always-on pedal for thickening a clean amp or driving a tube amp into breakup. The shelving Bass and Treble controls boost or cut, so you can add low-end heft for a bright single-coil rig or shave top end off a dark humbucker. In front of an already dirty amp it stacks into a tighter, more focused lead voice.
Features and Specs
- Controls: Volume, Drive, Bass, Treble
- Volume: sets overall output level
- Drive: sets the amount of distortion, from clean boost to distortion
- Bass and Treble: shelving-type boost and cut EQ
- Current draw: approximately 3.5 mA at 9V DC
- Input impedance: 140k ohms
- Output impedance: 25k ohms
- Voltage range: 7.5V to 12V DC
- Power: 2.1 mm center-negative supply, protected against reverse polarity
- Bypass: true bypass
- Build: through-hole components, Alpha pots and switches, Switchcraft jacks, custom sheet metal enclosure with top-mounted jacks
- Made: hand wired in Finland, limited lifetime warranty
FAQ
Is this the same circuit as the standard Royal Blue Overdrive?
Yes, the circuit is the classic RBO. The Handwired edition is built by hand in Finland with through-hole parts, Alpha pots and switches, Switchcraft jacks, a custom sheet metal enclosure, top-mounted jacks, and a limited lifetime warranty.
Can I use it as a clean boost?
That is one of its best tricks. Turn Drive fully down and you have a boost with a two-band EQ in front of your amp.
What power supply does it need?
A 9V DC supply with a 2.1 mm center-negative plug. The accepted range is 7.5V to 12V, and it is protected against reverse polarity.
How much gain does it actually have?
More than most transparent overdrives. It covers light edge-of-breakup grit through to real distortion, and pushing the Bass control adds a slightly fuzzy thickness at higher gain.
Plug in, dig in, and let your hands do the gain staging.
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BOOM!
