OVERDRIVE- STRING THEORY FX KE/64 Overdrive ...completely transparent OD ???

$325.00 USD

 STRING THEORY FX KE/64 OVERDRIVE 

Yes ...a pedal that claims to have a totally transparent OD sound
Hand made from a new company that is about to change the casing and soon add a second pedal ....a Fuzz.

It has the simplest of layouts ...just volume and gain.
I have a few low gain drives but none are transparent because the one's that claim to be I find are full of artifacts ...a lot of grit and harmonics that keep coming in then droping out before the sound you made with a note or chord naturally fades away.
Well how does this stack up? Well to me it seems to be not much different then a good boost pedal with a bit of second harmonic distortion with just touch of compression.
I guess a lot of players will like the simplicity of it.
Me? I will stick with my Wampler booster.

CONCLUSION

The $325.00 USD price tag is a bit much for what I hear.
The Vertex Steal String Clean Drive is a better bet in my opinion.
It is a rip off of a the solid state preamp channel that you can push into the adjoining tube channel of Dumble's Steel String Singer amp. It does a very very surprising good fake Dumble sound if put in front of even a new Fender Deluxe.
Thru other amps it just adds a bit of sparkle and definition.

In my opinion the only OD's that work as a good substitute are very low gain OD's but are highly coloured.
The best I have heard (& own) is the Love Pedal Super 6 Stevie Ray Vaughn model. Put a Strat through it and you get Mark Knopflers Sulton of Swing tone dead on
...and I mean 'dead on' !!!