Hey Norio, played a VOX Satchurator at length on Wednesday for the second time, so now I can give my 2 cents on it.
It has a LOT of gain on tap, from blues soloing to classic rock to shred to metal, it can pretty much do all of that. It's not really a scooped metal tone, but it is plenty heavy with a lot of bottom end and it sounds like it would cut through a band well because it has a strong, but not over-bearing, midrange. It doesn't really do smooth light overdrive, because it's a bit too crunchy for that IMO, but it does respond quite well to lowering your volume control for less drive even at high gain settings which gives it added versatility. If you roll back your tone knob a bit, you can get a smoother tone.
With the gain control on the pedal totally off (fully anti-clockwise) it still would probably have too much gain for blues rhythm, but rolling back your volume gets you there.
The tone control seems to do more than just control the brightness of the pedal, but seems to be more of a low (turned left) to high-end (turned right) bias control. Also seems to affect the mid content a bit. I found that, if set over 12 o' clock and higher, it got a bit too bright and ragged on the top-end breakup for my liking. Those into Marshall amp distortion will probably love it though. Past about 3 o' clock on the tone it starts getting thinner sounding & a bit buzzy. Still cool at those settings for indie/ punk type tones if you're into that. At certain settings it does sound quite Satriani (obviously), but perhaps with a bit more depth of tone than I’d normally associate with him.
I has a lot of volume available if you want to use it as a boost into the front of your amp, but it can't do clean boost as even at minimum gain there's still a bit of OD. The "more" footswitch is exactly that. An extra gain-stage that kicks in giving you the same tone with more drive/ distortion and some extra compression. Great for solos or for setting up a lower OD and a higher OD.
It’s a dynamic, well-made pedal, which will suit many different styles of music and make many players very happy. And the metallic red paint job is sweet and it just looks so cool.
It’s not really my style, ‘cos I like more left field, crazy tones, but I can see it will appeal to 90% of guitarists out there and cover most of the tones the average guitarist wants, very well.
Tried it out at Turnkey. They have one on demo but it aint for sale. You can only pre-order against their new stock coming in September. It’s listed at R1295, which I’d say is a steal if you’re ok with waiting for the stock to come in.
Pretty good review if I do say so myself. :P
So do you want it now, Norio?
