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Not so long ago, the available flavors of stompbox overdrive added up to not many flavors at all. How things have changed. With pedal builders dabbling ever more creatively in clipping configurations, EQ, and voltage multiplying, overdrive is now a whole galaxy of sound possibilities—one that would boggle the mind of a time traveller who once had little choice beyond an OD-1 and a TS-808.
Wren & Cuff’s Two-Five embodies many of the divergent tangents and new directions in contemporary overdrive design. It uses internal voltage multiplication to run at 25 volts, lending power and headroom that can be startling. It also employs a passive amp-style tone stack that’s sensitive, interactive, and enables subtle and profound shifts in color. And if you play it alongside most of the mass-market, industry standard overdrives out there, you’ll fast discover that it sounds and feels quite unlike any of them.
I’ve played a number of Wren & Cuff stomps and always been impressed with Matthew Holl’s attention to design, detail, and quality. There’s nothing extraordinary going on under the hood of the Two-Five, but the circuit is thoughtfully laid-out on a through-hole board. Physical hints at the Two-Five’s high-power orientation abound. Two 8-pin op amps (the part numbers have been rubbed out) are situated at the top right and center of the circuit board. You’ll also see two yellow LED clipping diodes that are activated via the hotter setting of the voice switch. (The “mellower” voice mode uses smoother mosfet and germanium clipping). They add even more headroom than you’re already getting from the 25V circuit and contribute much to the Two-Five’s jaws-full-of-fangs potency. The circuit board is also home to a small slider switch that you can use to reduce the output. Given how flat-out loud the Two-Five can be, I suspect many will opt to use it.
The manual for the Two-Five cautions users that the pedal’s output can “scare the crap out of you” if you don’t start with conservative output settings. It’s no empty threat. The Two-Five is really loud. And it can make your amp sound and feel 10 times bigger without driving it into a compressed, collapsing-on-itself mess. Even a little Champ sounded dangerously huge without turning to mush. My 50-watt Bassman piggyback became a window-rattling monster—all with the pedal volume and gain knobs on the quieter side of noon and the amp volume at 3.
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