Has it been a week already since the last one of these posts?! Oh that will never get old with me. I suck at scheduling these posts this year. Must be my age. Anyhow, something that is not affected by age is distortion. Ever since the first caveman plugged a club into an amplifier, distortion has been king. It’s the reason there are no more dinosaurs.
This is not based on evidence, but a theory I have which nobody has been able to disprove.
What I hope I will be able to prove though is that the R.O.U.S. pedal by Blakemore Effects is a kickass pedal. I’ll do that with words and video (of other more talented people than me). Who knows, you may walk away from this article feeling the need to get yourself one of these pedals. I know I do (and I haven’t even finished the article!)
The R.O.U.S. pedal doesn’t sound like your everyday modern distortion pedal. It instead reminds me of the very muddy or grungy distortions I loved from 60s/70s metal and even early 90s grunge. Saying that, the pedal does have a fair amount of versatility going for it.
There is a three-way toggle switch that allows you to select the clipping diode mode you use (including a complete removal). There are the standard gain, volume, bass and treble controls that you’d expect to see on a pedal such as this. But there is also a texture knob. The texture allows you to dial in the style of distortion you are outputting (ranging from a mid-scooped style effect to a full-blown distortion effect).
As usual, a picture is worth a thousand words. I haven’t written a thousand words and I don’t have a picture. But I have embedded video and I’m pretty sure that is worth 1,000,000 words. I apologise for therefore making this a very lengthy article. I think you’ll find it was worth it all the same.
That video is from Distortion Pedal HQ and it is currently one of the videos not on the official R.O.U.S. pedal web page. That may change. Who knows?
Being an Australian, it’s probably against the law for me to not also include a video review that the talented Brett Kingman did of the R.O.U.S. pedal. But I’m not a law expert though. Just in case …
Two videos that both make me want to try this pedal. That’s why it’s on the list. #want
Disclaimer: I’ve not played this guitar pedal. I have not experienced first-hand the sound or effects of this guitar pedal. That doesn’t matter. It looks awesome, it’s obviously played by winners and I want one.