Copperhead Overdrive Pedal with NuTube Review

More than Marshall in a box.

Got this about a month ago, and couldn't be happier. Right out of the box with all dials at noon, you get a classic instantly recognizable Marshall tone. Explore with the eq, and you'll get to hear how many ways you can shape the tone. From classic Plexy to JCM 800, and beyond. I noticed that it's classified as an overdrive pedal, but make no mistake, this is a distortion pedal.… read more Sure, you can dial it as an overdrive, but why do that? In fact, this pedal straight up sings when boosted with a tube screamer. It's also pretty quiet, even with the gain maxed out. Like someone else mentioned, this pedal needs amps. It did take me for a ride when I plugged it to my voodoo lab and wouldn't power up. If you have a voodoo lab or similar power supply, make sure you use the higher amp outlets.

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Marshall sounds

It's like having a Marshall amp without the speaker. Touch and volume knob sensitive. I have the Mystic Edge linked the the Copper head and if you press one the other cuts out so you don't have to press both. I couldn't be happier.

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Awesome for Bass

You can dial in clean to fuzz depending on the gain and volume. Awesome tones with a wah or simply, especially, by itself. The display ids mesmerizing and if nothing else, you will learn about frequency and amplitude. YOU. NEED. THIS!

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True-to-life preamp in a box

I bought the Vox Valvenergy Silk Drive and Mystic Edge pedals last summer from Germany because they weren't available in the States, and they sounded fantastic - they have NuTube clarity, response and reliability with all-analog circuitry and full EQ. And maybe just a little warmer than the MV50 amps, which I also love. When Sweetwater finally got the Valvenergy line in stock I… read more bought the Copperhead Drive from them. Note that these pedals are power hungry - the manual says current consumption is 95 mA while recommending a power supply with 600 mA or more; the 100 mA jacks on my Voodoolabs ISO 5 aren't enough to even turn them on. Daisy-chaining two of them on the 400 mA jack works, but putting all three on the 400 mA chain makes them emit a stuttering hum until I hit the main footswitch on one of them. After that they run OK, but I just ordered a Strymon Zuma with 500 mA jacks to be sure. The little switch on the back that puts the pedal into preamp mode, along with the channel-switching feature, is a critical part of its appeal. When I ran the Copperhead in preamp mode into the effects return on my Marshall JCM 2000 it had the same clarity, responsiveness and tonal structure as the native Marshall channels. Like the Vox MV50 Rock, its voicing sits about halfway between the JCM 2000 Crunch and Lead I channels. The MV50 gives you a slice of the classic Marshall sound with just one tone knob, and now the Copperhead extends that with a Marshall-accurate tone stack and multiple interoperability options. Perfect setup would be the three pedals in preamp mode running into a class D power amp with tone cut and resonance knobs, and a nutube frontend for dialing in warmth and sag. This you'd run into your favorite speaker cab for organic interaction with your guitar. But until then, I'm satisfied running the pedals in preamp mode into the LINE input on my Vox Cambridge50 (nice and light, even when upgraded to a Celestion Greeenback speaker), in standard mode into most regular amps, as well as using cabsim mode directly into my DAW. This is very useful, and sounds like the same cabsim circuit the MV50s use. I once recorded a test track with the MV50 Rock going into my Marshall 1960 vintage cab miced with a Neumann KM84 into one channel and the headphone/cabsim output running into another, and it was very difficult to tell the difference.

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