Electro Harmonix Hot Wax Dual Overdrive

Massive Tone

If you are after massive tone from beautiful crunch tones to classic overdrive/distortion this is the pedal you want!

Great sound

I wanted a warm tube like sound with a bit of sparkle. Hot tubes covers the first and Crayon the latter. I appreciate the articulation of the drive from transparent boost, especially the crayon, to warm crunch (hot tubes) all the way up to hard rock, when played stacked together. Only improvement would be to have a separate tone for each drive. Last thing is the blend knob which is really interesting and let’s you mix the clean signal with the processed one. Can give you more clarity even when you crank up the drive. Great pedal altogether!

so the crayon is a fairly dirty drive but the tubes is not, this is when all the vol and drive at noon.

i usually have the crayon vol at 9/10 and drive at 3 and just use the tubes as a clean boost

It sound like valve based overdrive...

I have used many years SD1 and I stil think that it is great overdrive. Ok, Hot Wax is more expensive, but result of using id is perfect. At first, it sounds vintage, but it is possible to set it modern. Another thing - many stompboxes are doing almost everything, distortion, overdrive, metal (it is music genre not sound efect) even fuzz (come on!). Hot Wax is only overdrive with plenty of "colors". Ok, sometimes it is similar to distortion but distortion is result of overdrive so...

Pros:

vintage sound

valve taste

very strong distortion

nice design

great possibilities for customization

meaningful price

Cons:

None

I have tested it on:

Fender Stratocaster Deluxe

Gibson Les Paul Faded 2018

Marshall DSL40CR

Marshall MG10

Great dual pedal

I chose this pedal to save some space on the board, dual pedals always offer more features in a more compact format. Anyway, I use the Hot Wax before my OCD and my Op-Amp Big Muff. The chain is perfect. The "Hot Tubes" side, the left, offers a very slight break-up of the clean signal, also useful as a boost for the clean lead lines. The "Crayon" side, the right one, sounds like a BB Preamp/Tube Screamer kind of pedal, can be distorted but still remains transparent. Stacked together they sound like the crunch channel of a Marshall I'd say, but in a good way, nothing cheesy there. And they stack great with the OCD and the Muff, the combinations available are so many, it's so convenient.

The pedal offers a Blend option, to get some of your clean signal in there too, and probably that's a treat for the bass players. Works great for guitar too, just a tad could be enough to retain your original eq. And finally, there's a post-drives EQ section - bass & treble - that I love. Being a touring musician, lots of times I don't get the amp I asked for. And this EQ section has really saved the day for me in occasions.

An excellent choice for the pro guitar player, a pedal that - especially in low gain settings - can give you a ton of layers and stages.

The cons are the regular EHX cons, pretty much none but the really hard stomp. For some an issue, not for me though.

Excellent pedal, get one.

Perfect combination of overdrive

This sturdy box have inside an amazing world of overdrive tones for you to explore and can really endure your feet!

Super easy to understand and to set it up.

Also, the combination of this to pedals is just perfect (you can use one at the time or both combined).

It works as a boost as well!

If you want two different types of overdrive, with the possibility to combine them, you should go for it.