Vox Joe Satriani Ice 9 Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedal  

Figured if I didnt like it, I would take it back. Well, thats not happening. Removed every other overdrive from my pedalboard. The Ice 9 is all you need. Its not a Heavy medal pedal, but if you play anything else, it is fantastik. Warm, sweet, smooth overdrive tones. I have a Fender Hotrod Deville with Celestion Vintage 30's. Best tone I ever had..

Biy it

A little pricey, but worth it.

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Built like a tank.

I've been using many different distortion pedals over the years and never found an over drive pedal that impressed me. But I've been looking for a different sound for some of the songs that I play and so I set out looking. First, if you love the Joe Satriani or do not like the Joe Satriani sound, and yes this was designed with his imput, it is not just for his sound. With so many controlls you can dial in your sound, and Joe's sound and a lot of sounds. I'm basically a rocker, but I also like Jazz, Blues, and on Sundays I play Christian Rock at my church, (It kind of makes up for what I did at my Friday and Saturday night gigs) You can go from clean with great sustain to break the windows. And with the "more" stomp you can give it a boost instead of messing with your guitars volume all of the time. And as you know if you change the volume on your guitar, you also change what come out of your pedals. Sometimes you want that, and sometimes you don't. I'm not going to give you a bunch of settings, you can do that or go online.

I gave it a 10 for features. I really like the switch for Modern/Vintage at the top and the MORE switch as well. The controls are really noticable. I have had other overdrives including a Fulltone Fulldrive2 Mosfet and a Robin Trower Overdrive. The Fulltones for me didn't have the juice or could I notice them that much. they are nice but I like what Vox has done here with Satriani. I run my Vox Ice9 overdrive with my Saturator into a Morley signal splitter and into two 5150 IIIs by Fender. With the gain up on my amps I keep both of these pedals off for it will mush out. But in the cleaner modes or green channel or Blue channel within my amps, These two pedals really are a sweet kick. I think it makes a difference what amps and speakers a person is using. I even have used a couple of different Tube screamers but I like these Vox units better. The controls make much noticeable changes. The switch for Modern/Vintage is also very noticeable and I like the Vintage mode. The MORE button again gives you more without making the unit sound worse. Really nice features.

Like I mentioned...when My amps are not on Channel 3  (RED) channel I can use these units. The gain from the units gives me that needed edge if I was going to play a single coil strat and want to do some blues. Or even get in that mode with my Gibson cuts. But I usually have them off if my Amp channels are up higher. With the channels in the amps up higher I sometimes step on the Satchurator red distortion for gain for high pitch squeals like the Dime squeals or as such for needed gain for a certain run. And by setting the volume on the pedals I can step on it and it is not louder ya know. Just effect without making the signal volume jump up. Thats important to me. To me thats one of their best qualities. The other pedals I have used will not do that and have the same amount of effect with what Im running when you try to get it to come in more suttle with just the needed effect.

So far their great. I have had no failures yet in two years and now a few weeks with the Ice 9.

Ive never been a big overdrive pedal guy. usually I get my overdrive from my amp with maybe some parametric EQ or a BBE Sonic Max looped within the back. Or try a MXR stomp box type EQ looped through the back of the amp. This makes for some warm overdrive. I probably use these pedals 50% of the time and it will vary. For the pedals that they are I like them the best. I have played guitar for just over 30 years and I have owned and sold a lot of pedals. I plan to keep these. Satriani collectors down the road I bet. Think about it...years from now they might not crank em out any more for business of the usual enviornmental regs etc....

I would keep em clean with the boxes. Keepers.

i got this pedal expecting it to be another overdrive similar to the myriads of other pedals and i wasnt far off. Overall it seems to be a little bit overhyped but it does deliver. This alone wont give you satriani's tone. It will provide a good deal of options for the average working guitarist. There is alot you can do with it. paired with other effects there are alot of different sounds you can work out. With an octaver you can really get a humongous wall of tone with a deep lower end. Pair it with a rotary speaker effect and back off the gain a little and it gives you kind of a creepy organ sound. Overall it warms up the tone a bit and allows you room to choose what you want to get out of it. The vintage and modern settings are nice and i actually found there to be a significant difference between the settings which i wasnt expecting. Flip it up to vintage and you get that sweet warmth a digital effect can't provide. Flip it down to modern and it sounds a little more synthetic but definately has a modern electric feel to it.

The pedal is solid and the metal feels durable. The only thing i don't really care for is the chickenhead knobs. They turn smoothly and all bu i would have preferred a regular dome knob

there are alot of other overdrives out there but this pedal is exceptionally built and worth keeping for the tone it provides. It opens up a few new doors and has increased the natural tone of my digital effects. It was really able to warm up the tone and make it sound more natural. On top of that you can really work with it to do some interesting things. I look forward to playing with it further and seeing what happens!

overall i rate it around an 8-9 its a good pedal and if your in the market for an overdrive it is worth looking into. The options this pedal provides are significantly greater than your average stompbox and i can see it being a reliable addition to my rig for recording or possibly live performances. It wont make your jaw drop from the first strum but it gives you options which for any tone hound is what it is all about.

This pedal works like a normal 3-knob tubescreamer, excepts its got a couple tricks up its sleeve.  The first is the bass knob, and the second is the dual footswitches.

Unity setting is to turn the bass all the way down, put the tone knob at about 2/3rds (facing the toggle), and volume facing west (9 oclock), gain at zero.  With this setting, turning the pedal on/off will alter the tone almost imperceptibly.

The two footswitches can be used for progressive amounts of clean boost into a drive channel.  Turn the level up a bit past unity.  If you set the gain low on your tube amps lead channel, engaging the Ice9 gives you a nice medium gain tone, and hitting "more" gives you a high gain tone.  This pedal will effectively turn a single channel amp into three channels of progressive gain.  I dont know of any other overdrives that can be used to add two levels of clean gain.

Used into a fender style amp, you can use the gain knob to add another gain stage.  So you have the option to add an additional gain stage, or push the existing stages harder, for lots of tone options.

Used with a clean channel, the gain can be used to add the slightest bit of warmth (for a jazzy sound),or some grumble, all the way to a nice med/hi gain rock tone.  When used with a clean channel, the "more" switch will add a bunch of clean boost, about the amount of difference between a humbucker and a single coil.  So the more switch is great way to bring up the level of single coils to the level of your humbuckers, when used this way.

The bass knob is pre gain, so when added, it has a tendency to fatten and round out the tone.  It lets you get some very liquid and smooth lead tones at apparent low volume.  This solves the problems that most overdrives have when used at low gain, where they sound grumbly or "farty".  This pedal is a smooth, low gain "monster."

The bass knob when used in contunction with the tone knob, it gives you a nice range of tonal options, although the majority of the sweep will make the tones darker and fatter.  The tone knobs are not that versatile by themselves, and errs on the side of "doing no harm" versus ultimate flexibility.  But together they are very effective and more versatile than a single tone pedal.  When adding treble with the tone knob, it avoids that "wah mid" cutting tone you might get with an SD-1 or TS9, I think the frequency boost is lower and/or wider.

The vintage/mod toggle adds another dimension to the tone.  In the vintage setting the pedal is more transparent, and in modern seems to add some mid push.

I have used a BOSS sd-1 for years, and this pedal solves the main problems I had with that pedal.  The Ice9 can sound really smooth and fat at low gain settings (not "farty" or grumbly), and when used as a tone mod with your lead channel, it avoids that icepicky over-enhanced mid.

The ICE 9 also gives me a bunch of gain versatility.  I set the cruch channel of my Peavey XXX at low gain, and use the two levels of the ICE9 for progressive amounts of gain.  I tweak the tone and bass so that all levels of gain sound round and smooth.  Kept engaged with the clean channel, it fattens and rounds out an otherwise sterile clean channel, and the "more" switch lets me bring up the level of my single coils to that of the humbuckers so my sound doesn't drop out of the mix when playing clean.  This pedal is pretty amazing.

Before getting the ICE9 I was using a Radial Tonebone Trimode fro low/mid gain, which despite all the knobs and settings, sounded smaller and harsher than the ICE9.  It also surprisingly didnt give me the same level of versatility.  It was more of a preamp than an overdrive designed to work well with an amp's channels.  The ice9 is much better.