Silk Drive

Silky Smooooooth

The Valvenergy range from VOX is a collection of 4 pedals based on four famous amp types, American low gain, British high gain, American very high and Vox … well they didn’t need to beat around the bush on that last one.
These pedals aren’t any ordinary Amp in A Box (AIAB) pedals though for several different reasons. Chiefly among these factors is the Nu-Tube which we’ve seen in some Vox amps over past couple of years and can already be found on TonePedia in the Ibanez Nu-Tubescreamer.
The Nu-Tube is a modern approximation of a vacuum tube (or Valve in the UK) yet in a much smaller surface mounted component and whats more … it sounds great! Each of these pedals create their tones via the Nu-Tube’s giving us a very organic feel from the pedals.
Each pedal features an OLED screen showing the oscilloscope waveform read of the tones being produced, nice touch as it looks great.
Vox have added unique ability to link these pedals up via a small trs cable which allows them to turn each other on/off when you wish to switch between the pedals, of course if you would like to stack them that’s perfectly possible too.

The Icing on the cake is each pedal has 3 modes, standard stomp box mode, pre amp mode which you can run straight into the power amp of your beloved amplifier and lastly “cab” which allows you to use the pedals in place of your amplifier. This last feature is great for recording and allows us to have 4 classic sounding amps for less than the price of a single full blown amp.

The Silk Drive features the classic lower gain American tones we would associate with companies such as Fender, the bright switch is great at taming single coils or adding a little sparkle to humbuckers.