Wampler Tumnus V2 Overdrive & Boost Guitar Effects Pedal

This is a great pedal. It spans a lot of tonal range that can apply it to many styles of music; it’s not just a pedal for country, although it gets you really close to Brad’s fat, midrange rich tone right out of the box. I love how it’s actually two overdrives in one; that makes it a great value, and they each sound great individually. But they can also be stacked in either order to drive you solidly into distortion and high gain territory. This last point exposes its only flaw; to reverse the order for stacking you have to physically change the cables around and flip a switch, something no one would do during a live set. A single switch flip should be all that is necessary, but Wampler says they couldn’t find a way to do that without sacrificing tone. Okay, but it’s still inconvenient. It’s well understood that overdrive and distortion pedals all follow several well-worn design architectures. I have a dozen (or more!) drive pedals and I can usually find a pair that I can make sound pretty much alike by simply manipulating their controls. Either of this pedal’s channels however are both unique enough that it is much harder to emulate them unless I stack two other pedals together, and even then, there’s something about this pedal that I just can’t quite duplicate, and that makes this pedal a keeper for me! I’ve been thinking about getting this pedal for some years now…..I wish I would have bought it sooner!

This is easily the best Distortion/OD pedal I’ve ever used. The sound is incredible, and the ability to EQ the low, mid, and high frequencies makes it so much better. The hot switch in the middle of the pedal is also great if you want a bit more of a volume boost. The buffer switch on the side is great if you need to get rid of any unwanted whining or troublesome frequencies. And the volume and gain controls can change your guitar’s tone to fit whatever punchy sound you need. I’m using the pedal on my Nashville Fender Telecaster, and playing through a Vox AC30 combo amp. I write a lot of songs that have clean verses and distorted/overdriven/punchy choruses, so this pedal is a great fit for me. The way that the pedal manipulates the clean Tele tone is unparalleled in my opinion. Also, unlike a lot of pedals I’ve used, the Tumnus Deluxe has a very easy-to-press active/bypass switch. Overall, I highly recommend this pedal to anyone that is looking for a good OD/Distortion pedal. It’s way better than anything Boss could make.

It doesn’t quite sound like my Mesa Boogie but very closely emulates tube overdrive. Also, it seems quite expensive but no regrets. I play it through my clean channel on the Boogie and it sounds awesome.

I been playing the guitar for +20 years and I must say that this OD pedal is really good. Right now I'm using it as booster but it sounds great with every setting

The Wampler Tumnus Deluxe works very well as a boost to bring up the volume for solos or to push the preamp of an overdriven amp. Gain can be dialed in to add harmonic richness to an overdriven amp, or as the overdrive sound for a clean amp, or going into an audio interface for recording. The three band EQ of bass, middle, treble gives a lot of flexibility and control for getting either a scooped tone or a mid-range forward sound. I use Marshall, Fender, and Blackstar amps, so the EQ lets me adjust to the characteristics of each amplifier. The Hot switch and the True Bypass / Buffered Bypass are subtle but nice extra features. This is an overdrive, not a distortion pedal, so going into a clean amp or plugin is not going to give a heavy distortion sound. The gain does provide a lot of overdrive breakup, and it has a really good sound ... it maintains the articulation of individual notes and the dynamics from the guitar, and doesn't get fizzy or muddy.

TLDR - Great sounding pedal but had to completely disassemble it to clean the gain pot after moderate use. I have had this pedal for a year and a half and I can say I love the sounds this thing is capable of. I use it with the gain between 3 and 5 o'clock and the hot switch on. Stacking it into other overdrive pedals has been fun. I recently picked up the Wampler Plexi-drive which I've settled into using as an on the edge of breakup amp in a box that I push into glorious overdrive with the Tumnus Deluxe. Alone both pedals sound good but together they sound amazing. Think: complex rich harmonic overdrive. This pedal is versatile, you can use it like I've described or as a clean boost or like a tube screamer (gain low, volume high). It sounds better to my ear than a tube screamer when used like this but tastes vary. It sounds great, its warm but articulate. However I did run into an issue when going from using it as a dirt pedal to a boost pedal. The culprit was a dirty gain pot. When I turned down the gain, I heard a loud hissing noise that overpowered any guitar signal that managed to get through. I thought the pedal was ruined so I emailed the guys at Wampler to see if I could get it fixed. Jerry suggested that I use a deox cleaner on the pots. I was skeptical since I've heard dirty pots on a guitar and this was a constant loud hissing noise, unlike the temporary scratchy sound you get when turning the knobs on a guitar. I figured I might as well try it, so I dedicated a Saturday afternoon to take the time to disassemble it and spray the pots. Holy crap it worked! So aside from the somewhat tedious disassembly of the pedal to spray the dirty pot, I love this pedal. Its a little spendy but it does have a premium feeling footswitch, the construction and looks feel quality and the sound is great. The only reason I would (and probably will) buy another dirt pedal is because of GAS (gear acquisition syndrome). With all that said and assuming I had the power, this would be a deserted island pedal for me. Its great!