We tried two amps and two different guitars. They were: a Boogie MK IIC+ and a Dumble Overdrive Special both set clean on their own and a Hamiltone Deluxe (Strat style) and a vintage '50's Fender Strat guitars. The simple controls are: Level for output level; Drive sets the amount of overdrive over an extremely wide range. This ability expands the pedal's sonic usefulness because you can go anywhere from a slightly dirty clean to a Blues breakup crunch and then on to a super-saturated lead sound full of sustain.

The Blues Ranger's Tone control is a high cut filter and it dials in the overall timbre of the sound depending on your guitar's tonality and whether you're using single coils or humbuckers. This pedal "lives" in the Tube Screamer universe with a good dose of mid-range "nose" in most settings. With Drive maxed out; we found the sound to fill back out again with top and bottom in a better way than a typical tube screamer. At this setting, you are standing at the gates of the Metal arena--especially if your guitar has humbuckers.

We liked this pedal because it has a Texas Blues sound and is great for Classic Rock tones--much like a Blackface Fender when cranked. The Blue Ranger employs a true bypass switch with no buffering stage--while in bypass, what goes in comes back out the same.