Electro Harmonix Hot Tubes Nano 5-stars Reviews

Big recommendation

Colorful clean boost, a bit of grit, or saturated and fuzzy, it does that. Love that you have the option to bypass the tone circuit. Have to take away a point on quality, despite it being a nicely built pedal, because after a couple years the footswitch started having an odd issue - not properly passing the signal in bypass sometimes. Fixed that, not sure quite how it happened though.

Inexpensive, great sound (works on bass)

This is an underdog among the other widely known EHX pedals.

It has dinamic response and is transparent to lows (in case you are a bassist and considering this).

I tested it on P-bass and was able to get out those sounds from it that I use on mine standard OD which costed me 3x more.

It goes a full range from a light clean boost > mild and heavy overdrive > distortion > very hard clipping.

Recomended!!

EHX Hot Tubes

I love this pedal, wonderful sharp tone with a small amount of gain. Perfect type of amp break up/overdrive. I needed a pedal that had the sound of a tube amp just beginning to break up. I spent a lot of time watching reviews etc and this looked like the best option. For me it is absolutely perfect. It has a slightly harsh sharp kind of break up, exactly what I like. Works perfectly with single coils and fender style amps.

Amazing drive / boost pedal!

I had heard about the original Hot Tubes pedal but never got to try one. After reading lots of review online I decided to give the Nano version a go.

I have to say, I was not disappointed. I use this pedal in front of my VHT Classic 6 and it sounds great! It can be used as a drive pedal or simply a boost as it offers a volume and tone switch so you can use it to boost your leads. The overdrive on the pedal can be a little buzzy if you crank it up but if you use it in a subtle way then it can give you a nice gritty tone. It more or less just drives the amp a little harder so it's best used with a tube amp.

It's definitely not a metal pedal though. I play blues and rock and would recommend it for that style!

Why limit yourself to guitars?

I once read an interview to modern composer Max Richter where he discussed his setup and mentioned the HotTubes (possibly the original version from the 70s?) as a way of coloring digital sounds. At the time I was shopping around to put in place a small setup for doing electronic music, so I decided to give it a go, attracted by the low price. Since then, I used it to color a Moog Minitaur synth, assorted line levels signals from tape recorders and cd players, and also digitally synthesized sounds coming from my soundcard.

First impressions: the pedal is compact, so it won't take much space in your pedalboard, and it is very well built. It was obviously designed to resist muddy boots stepping on it, and that is probably the reason why the switch is a bit though. A minor nuisance if you are activating the effect using your hands (like I do) rather than your raging feet.

Controls: Volume, Overdrive and Tone. End of story. My approach is lot of simple effects, rather than huge overly complex pedals. The HotTubes is perfectly aligned with this philosophy. The Tone knob is activated by a dedicated switch, which I tend to activate more when I work with sounds on the higher side of the sound spectrum.

Sound: this is an overdrive, not a distortion pedal. If you're a guitar player, your setup is likely a Strato or a Tele jacked into a TwinReverb, if you know what I mean. You want to enrich your clean sound with harmonics, improve its presence, make it aggressive, but without trying to smash someone?s face. Combine the HotTubes with some ambient effects (I use it with a T2 reverb), and there will be magic.

Last note is about power consumption: I'll soon be moving to a power supply unit for my effects, but this pedal is still running on with its original battery after several hours of continuous usage. Oh, and the original battery is pretty cool, try googling for "Electro Harmonix batteries" :)