The Ernie Ball VPJR has been around for quite sometime and until recently has been the industry standard in volume pedals. Pretty much every guitarist, on every worship team, in recent history is using one or has used one so I won’t go into too many details here but here is my opinion and take on them.
For the price they are a great pedal. The tension and feel is incredible and to me it is the perfect volume pedal for swells. I also like the durability of the pedal’s frame.
The other issue with the pedal is the tone suck that takes place. It is most evident when running a tuner in the tuner out jack but it effects top end clarity whether or not you have a tuner plugged into it. There are a number of mods out there from JHS, THIS1sMYNE and more which take care of the tone suck but for the price of those modes I would just pick up one of the newer active pedals on the market. The other option would be to throw a BBE Sonic Maximizer pedal at the end of your chain and/or adjust the controls on your amp to suit your taste. The tone suck alone in my opinion is not enough to keep me from using the pedal. The tension string however is.
After a bunch of use the string stretches out or slips off of the potentiometer and needs to either be replaced or adjusted. The process of doing anything with that string is quite literally the worst thing about any guitar pedal ever. Ernie Ball has a video on how to change the string which is accurate and somewhat helpful. The only problem is that the pedal they are working on has the sides cut out of it. Well of course it would be an easy change which no obstructions. I am almost positive that if they conducted the change on an actual pedal the video would have lasted an hour and a half which is how long it takes me to change the cables.
So moral of the story is – buy one for cheap and use it as is. When it goes bad give it to someone who wants to fiddle with it or just throw it away. The second option is to just save a few extra bucks and get a new Tapestry Audio or Mission Engineering volume pedal. While these are a staple on almost every pedalboard Ernie Ball better start doing some R&D or these new pedal manufacturers are going to put these things out of commission fast.