I've been reading about Vox's Valvenegy pedals, which are essentially little amps in a pedal driven by real "Nutube" tube. Apparently they've been a flop for the company and are now being sold off heavily discounted, though most reviews say they're actually pretty great. Mostly seems they've been mis-marketed. In any event, I own Vox's more recent Continental, another product that has been discontinued but that I think is pretty great, and it has one of these Nutubes on board. I love what it does. It can go from barely-there subtle to giving organs and keys a nice harmonically rich thickening effect. When cranked all the way it's still a fairly light overdrive, but one that does wonders to warming up what's essentially a rompler keyboard.

So it makes me wonder what these pedals can do for other sources. Though the Valvenegy line is meant to emulate certain amplifiers, you have the ability to bypass the amp sim on the output so you're essentially left with the tube and some tone knobs. Which, in theory, seems pretty ideal for all sources. Drums, vocals, keys. Anything you'd run through a more expensive rackmounted tube saturation device. For just $200 you can buy two and run them in stereo. Not that I'm expecting total magic out of them, I know many of these more expensive units have several tube stages, but it does seem worth a shot.

Has anyone else considered this? Tried it? I've read that the Silk Drive (Bumble/Fenderish tone) has the most headroom before going into distortion so it seems like the place to start. I'm sure all of the pedals have some sort of EQ curves baked in to make them sound more like the amps they're emulating, but this does seem like a very affordable way to add real tube saturation to any source. Tossing it out there! I've long been a fan of using Sansamp pedals during mixing, so now being able to use a real tube instead of just a tube-like overdrive circuit seems appealing.