Being worship guitarists you have all felt my pain. You love the feel of the Ernie Ball VP Jr but hate that it sucks your tone with your tuner plugged in. JHS then comes along and creates a mod for it that fixes the tone suck but it doesn’t cure the annoying process of changing the string drive that can cause anyone to lose their religion. Then there are a slew of other ones out there such as Mission Engineering that seem to have all of the bases covered but they feel too loose and sloppy.
Well the search and pain is over guitarists! Recently I decided to go out on a limb and order a cheap volume pedal on eBay. First reason was that I only had around $60 bucks and did not want a used VP Jr. The second was that I wanted to try something that I hadn’t used before. I scrolled until I stumbled upon the Artec VPL-1 Active Volume Pedal. It appeared to be well made and after reading a few glowing reviews on Amazon and decided to pull the plug. Being priced at $58.00 including shipping I was not expecting a lot out of this pedal.
I received the pedal today which was just 2 business days after ordering! As I opened the shipping box I was impressed by the packaging of the pedal. It was well thought out, fit the pedal nicely and was well designed. While this does not speak to the tone of the pedal I believe it says a lot about the company. Normally cheap products are thrown into boxes that they do not fit in and most of them are just plain boxes.
As I pulled the pedal out I was impressed with the weight. It felt very robust and well built. As I turned the maximum and minimum volume knobs the pots felt like high end pots. I then decided to do a feel test. I sat the pedal on the ground and did some faux swells without sound and was pleased with the feel of the pedal. It was a little looser than a VP-Jr but tighter than a Mission Engineering or Dunlop Volume pedal. This was the one area that was not to my taste. I love the tension of the VP-Jr and wish that it was a little tighter.
That brings me to the tone test. There is not a lot to say about the tone of a volume pedal but there are a few things to cover with this pedal. There is a max and min knob that allows you to set max and min volume levels. These worked very well. The max knob which controls the volume when the treadle is down and the minimum knob which controls the volume when the treadle is up worked flawlessly and allowed you to use the pedal as a volume boost as well as a standard on and off pedal. The second and arguably the most important test was whether or not it sucks tone. I used the pedal with and without a tuner plugged into the tuner out jack and there was absolutely no noticeable tone loss.
There really is nothing bad about this pedal other than the tension which I will get used to. It is going on my board right away and I do not see it going anywhere for a long while.
Pros
- Price: At under $60 there isn’t anything out there that can beat it.
- No Tone Suck: There is no tone loss even with a tuner plugged in.
- Build Quality: It is pretty beefy and appears to be built well.
Cons
- Active: It requires a 9v battery or takes up an extra spot on your power supply which could be problematic if you do not have a spare slot.
- Tension: It is a not too loose like a Dunlop or Mission volume pedal but it is a little looser than we would like.
- Minimum Volume Setting: When set to completely off it is not 100% off. There is a very slight amount of signal still passing through. As we had our amp mic’d it was not audible in a recording, or live but it is when you are standing right next to the amp and trying hard to hear it.
Should You Buy One
Yes! End of Story! There is no reason not to get one. At $58 it is a good way to save some money too!
1 Comment
Hi Aaron, of all the user reviews I’ve seen regarding this pedal, it seems that yours is the only one who gives it a good review. Most of them complain of tone suck, perhaps it’s with the pedal’s position in the chain. Could you share your pedal chain when you used this pedal?
Thanks,