There are many great overdrive pedals out there that can add some real crunch to your sound. But not all of them retain their clarity the more you push their gain.
So, today I’ll talk about my experience with the Wampler Euphoria, a transparent overdrive pedal that promises a warm, responsive tone, from clean all the way to super-overdriven.
I first watched the demo where Brian Wampler himself talked about it. It looked really good, transparent and seemed to have got some good meat to it, and he was using a tele. So, to me that said something, a thinner country sounding guitar with some meat!
I bought one shortly after, and now it's been quite a while since I started using it. In short, I love it for being a very potent as well as transparent overdrive pedal. Let's take a deeper look!
Overview
The Wampler Euphoria overdrive pedal is an analog pedal designed and built with high-grade film capacitors and resistors to be highly responsive to pick attack and volume control.
It has a fairly lightweight and compact design, and can powered by a single 9V battery, as well as a 9-18V DC power supply.
The Euphoria also features three types of overdrive: Smooth, Open and Crunch.
PROS
CONS
Tone and Controls
As I mentioned above, the Wampler Euphoria has three overdrive settings: Smooth, Open and Crunch.
Wampler Euphoria - pedal in hand.
Controls
The Wampler Euphoria has four controls:
- Volume
- Tone
- Bass
- Gain
On Smooth and Crunch, you’ll want to push the volume a bit more to compensate for the compression.
The bass can help add or remove the fat or ‘hairiness’ of the fuzz on Crunch.
The tone control acts as a standard control for the mids, and gain adjusts the amount of overdrive in the tone.
The Euphoria is Wampler's version of a Dumble tone. It has a very thick bass.
Wampler Euphoria - internal circuit
When you dial the bass knob all the way left, it is where most other pedal's bass knobs are at noon. As you bring up the bass, it gets thicker, but also adds gain until you get into a tone similar to a fuzz.
At first, I made the mistake of setting the bass on the Euphoria at noon. Found it too fuzzy. Dialed it back to 9:00 and really started liking it.
The Euphoria offers a good amount of gain and lots of tonal variety within the gain. So it's really easy to get usable sounds. It's also very dynamic, which is good for harmonics.
Smooth
As the name suggests, the Smooth setting on the pedal provides a smoother, more compressed sound to the overdrive.
This setting is great if you want a cleaner overdrive that leaves room for the notes and chords to have a bit more clarity.
Open
Open can be considered the ‘default’ setting of the pedal. This is just a straight forward overdrive that adds some grit to your tone.
The open setting is great for a crisp blues or classic rock style, and it allows notes and chords to ring out a bit more.
Open can also be used as a clean boost if you want to just add some volume to your clean sound, or to add a more natural sounding amp distortion.
Crunch
The crunch setting is a bit more compressed than the smooth setting, but it also adds quite a bit of fuzz to the overdrive.
Don’t think of it as a fuzz pedal on this setting, but rather more of a way to fatten up your sound and add a bit of fuzziness to it.
On the crunch setting, you can pair the Euphoria with a traditional fuzz pedal and shape its tone and push your fuzz pedal further using the Euphoria’s controls.
Touch Sensitivity & Versatility
Another big plus is the touch sensitivity. This pedal responds to your picking dynamics and guitar volume changes like a dream, so you can clean up or dirty up your tone without even touching the pedal.
It’s got that amp-like feel, especially when you’re playing right on the edge of breakup, making it feel like an extension of your amp rather than just another pedal in the chain.
What’s also great about the Euphoria is how well it works with different guitars and amps. Whether you’re plugging in a Strat, a Tele, or even a Les Paul, this pedal adapts beautifully (I've tried it with SGs and PRS SE Customs as well).
It also stacks really well with other pedals, which is a huge plus if you’re into building more complex tones. For example, I've regularly used it with a Tumnus or a Red Dirt stacked into it for a couple of flavors of overdrive. Yes, even the Tumnus is a transparent OD, but it is a K type while the Euphoria is a D type pedal.
Size and Build Quality
At only 1.5 x 2.5 x 4.5 inches, the Euphoria is no bigger than any other pedal and can run on a single 9V battery. This means you can easily throw it in a backpack to take it to gigs or band practice.
It uses one 1/4 inch input and one 1/4 inch output.
You can also tell it’s built to last, whether you’re dragging it to gigs every weekend or just keeping it in your studio. Wampler really nailed it with the construction on this one.
Final Thoughts
The Wampler Euphoria is easily one of the most versatile overdrive pedals I’ve gotten my hands on. This thing covers a massive range of tones, from clean boosts to gritty overdrives, making it perfect for everything from blues to classic rock.
The Euphoria offers an excellent playing feel. It has some push to it. Great for single coil lead tones! Even with humbuckers, it gets a nice low level overdriven sound.
Whether you want to use it as a standalone overdrive pedal, or as a companion to boost other pedals on your pedalboard, the Wampler Euphoria won’t let you down.
Dedrich really nails it with this review! This pedal is a beautiful work of Art from a famous Pedal Geek-Wampler!!