Vertex Effects Boost MKII Pedal

Clean boost. Does not enhance the tone like a Katana. It is quiet. No buzzing. Have it at end of my pedalboard chain. Now no more buzz from my pedalboard. Used for bass guitar 5 string. This pedal is full range frequency response.

TL:DR - Very nice pedal. Seems pricey, but is in keeping with the current market for boutique sound gear.I bought the Vertex Effects Boost pedal to solve a specific problem - my bass' low output pickups sounded thin, uninteresting, and struggled to push strong enough signal to drive my pedals. The Boost pedal more than solved that problem. The clean, entirely transparent, signal boost not only solved the problem of my bass not driving my pedals well - it made me realize that I actually *really* like the tone of this instrument when the signal is strong enough!Problem solved: my signal strength is great and can easily drive the plasma pedal now! Using my volume pedal as an expression control for the Boost also *drastically* improved my tone. This also helps me get the most out of my preamp. Oodles of wins with this pedal.The plugs issue: the back of the pedal is really congested. If you're used to using all right angle plugs, you will need to make some concessions here. I found an inexpensive stereo 1/8" cable that is *just* the right size to sneak around the pancake 1/4" cable ends. If you search this website you should be able to find something very similar for less than ten dollars. Since the volume pedal is acting as an expression control, not handling actual audio signal, the cable quality is less important here. Even with that, I plan to make a power cable with a straight barrel DC input for cable management.Context: I practice at home with headphones. I've gone through a lot of "solutions" before landing on a nice preamp/di unit with a built in headphone amp and cab sim. You could say it Simplified my rig. Across all the solutions I tried, my output volume was always very low, which led me to overplaying and tiring out my hands. I'm of the Gary Willis school when it comes to gain - crank the gain until you're on the edge of breaking up, back it off a couple minutes on the dial and you're done. My bass simply couldn't pull that off (passive electronics and low output pickups).Other solutions: My last, best, solution was putting compression at the front of my effects chain before the preamp (tuner -> comp -> vol -> dist -> ovrdrv -> preamp). I cranked the input and gave a healthy push on the output. That gave me a similar signal strength to the Boost pedal, but also compressed my signal at the beginning of the signal path. A lot of players like that. I don't. I like to keep the transients and dynamics untouched before the preamp. Instead I use compression after the wet/dry split in front of my wet effects. I can use the compressor to control the signal strength going into an analogue spring reverb.

I bought this pedal, knowing that it could tame an amp. It really can. As long as your amp has an efx loop you can reel its tone at bedroom level volumes. A regular volume pedal can take tone away.

The 3.5 jack is just dumb the older model was just define with the regular trs cable.How do they think I’m going to plug-in on small pedalboard? When they are demoing the pedal they use regular patch cables and that’s fine with the pedal by itself but understand that in a real life situation we need space for more pedals and that’s the reason why you use L style cable.No bueno

I did a side by side comparison and was able to hear that some well known boost pedals actually suck tone. This Vertex Boost MKII pedal does not. The signal comes through as it went in, just boosted. Nice large boost control knob that is easy to see and use. It has passed the test against the competition, and has earned it's place to go on my pedal board. Five Stars!

The Vertex Boost is a great little boost pedal and Electric Mojo's customer service is top notch. I had an issue and they quickly resolved it. I would recommend buying from them.