TC Electronic YELLOW Vintage Distortion i INDYGO Vintage Dual Distortion – guitar distortion.
One day I came across two effects in a music store, which immediately caught my attention. The first reason was fact, that both were designed to get a heavily distorted guitar sound - in short, to throw rubble and sulfur. The second reason for my interest in them was their pedigree - after all, T.C. Electronic is famous for its professional equipment, also for guitarists. So I had no choice but to get along with the guys from the store, to provide testing equipment. It worked 😉
The effects feel solid: heavy, massive, metal housing, metal buttons ... the whole thing makes a really positive impression. Due to the plastic knobs of the potentiometers, however, I wouldn't put these cubes to the tank test, to which the G-System was subjected :D. On the back of each of them there are input sockets, outputs and power supply, while on the bottom there is a solid piece of rubber preventing the effect from "running" behind us and the battery compartment cover. There are already differences on the front - the Vintage Distortion has one footswitch, potencjometry drive level, output level, color filter and a tiny boost button. The Vintage Dual Distortion comes with two footswitches, for switching the gain section and the color filter knob, output level, gain A level oraz gain B level. The arrangement of these elements is a model of ergonomics. All parameters are very easy to adjust, with large knobs with a clearly visible indicator.
Let's get to the most important, that is, to the sound of these effects. These devices are very similar in parameters. In principle, one can be tempted to say, that the Dual version is just two Vintage Distortions in one. This is almost an accurate statement. Almost. In both cases, the timbre of the tone works very interestingly (color filter) turning this knob, I immediately thought of the association with the wah-wah effect. The spectrum of "colors" begins on the suppressed, dark, stripped of high harmonics, and ends up shrill, saturated with the mountain, sharp and bright.
Let's move on to the differences. The yellow effect has a boost button, after pressing which only the effect turns into a monster. So, so. With the boost turned off, we are dealing with almost overdrive, nevertheless very enjoyable. After turning the "gain" knob to the minimum, we get a basically clean sound, however, it is enough to apply more force to the strings and a slight hoarseness appears. When we add distortion as much as the factory gave, we can start playing metal, maybe even sulfur, but metal ;). Pressing the boost button throws some more fire into the stove and it's fun. Then in vain to look for crunch with gain. The amount of distortion is large, probably too big for some.
The purple effect allows you to get the same distorted sounds as the previous one in boost mode, however, the lower limit of this parameter is slightly higher. What distinguishes this effect from the yellow brother, are two gain knobs, between which we switch using solid footswitches. A useful thing even then, when there is a need to increase the gain on a solo. The distortion sound is definitely coarse, contour. They are definitely not devices, that everyone will like. However, everyone will surely be positively surprised by the reaction of the effects to the attack. The dynamics are not drastically flattened, as is the case with many cheap devices. These effects basically have only two disadvantages. The first one is quite substantial, like a distortion in a cube, prices. Around six hundred for yellow and nine hundred for purple, that's quite a lot in my opinion, for this type of device, but I don't know each other :D.
The second disadvantage is common for yellow with boost and purple "overbasing". This is definitely a personal issue, however, when playing with these cubes, I turned the knobs of the amplifiers responsible for the bass sharply to the left. That's what I did when recording samples, in which I wanted to get the best possible - of course subjectively - sound. So I invite you to listen to the prepared samples, because in terms of sound, they certainly have a higher value than the written word ;).