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The Red Crown is designed by an Italian guitar nut living in Japan. And if you told us little more, our imaginations would still be fired by the potential tone outcomes of that culture collision. Sure enough, this Zen Zero box sounds quite unlike anything else.
Mark of Solidity
Red Crown is a beautifully designed unit—from the elegant, subdued graphics to the soldering within. While you can’t use a battery, the builder positioned input and output jacks lower on the enclosure so you can snuggle the unit closer to pedals with jacks situated at their enclosures’ center points. Inside, the Red Crown is tidy, if a bit crowded. Two notable fixtures include a Texas Instruments LF353 OpAmp and a fat 516D capacitor—another component you don’t see in an overdrive circuit every day. If you guessed we’re headed for unique sonic territory, you’d be right.
For starters, the Red Crown is loud—very loud. And many of the most impressive, growling overdrive tones are found at impractically loud volumes. How loud is it? I had to dial gain and level settings back to about 9 o’clock or less to achieve unity gain. But for players that like leads to soar above everything else in a mix, or that relish extreme volume shifts within a performance, the Red Crown’s high volume ceiling will be a blessing from the guitar heavens. It’s also a good fit for underachieving small amps, in this respect.
One of the most interesting things about the Red Crown’s output is that it remains pretty transparent in spite of itself. For single-coil users—especially Stratocaster players who don’t want to sacrifice chime for extra muscle and a bit of dirt—the Red Crown can feel miraculous. It also does magical things with a neck humbucker, and the high gain profile and hot top end mixed with aggressive guitar tone attenuation generates scalding but smooth Cream and David Hidalgo sounds that will sing for an eternity.
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