Aura Amps White Sugar Drive / Distortion turns out to be a really smart and great sounding secret 3-Channel MIAB Pedal

I just recently reviewed the excellent Aura Diamond - which is likely the most authentic Dual Rectifier distortion I’ve yet encountered - with 3 classic Dual-Rectification modes onboard. And it turns out that Aura’s White Sugar is an equally smart 3-in-1 Marshall-in-a-box style Overdrive / Distortion pedal - covering Plexi and JCM800 flavours in particular. And where the really handy ’Power’ (Boost) Channel can be deployed independently - which means you have 3 voicings at your disposal - with just Power, just Drive, and then Power + Drive - giving you 3 increasing levels of complementary gain.

Controls - Bass, Middle, Treble, Volume, Power (Boost), Gain.

Generally I dial the Drive (Left Footswitch) Channel to be my core Plexi sound, and then set the Power (Right Footswitch) high enough to drive my core voicing to JCM800 style levels of saturation. In this way I can beautifully run through 3 gears of gain - and ramp up and down as I need to.

I only have one tiny niggle with this pedal in that there is a very slight somewhat ’buzzy’ component to the output texture - which you need to somewhat carefully dial out - or at least I need to for my preferences - which makes this pedal just a little more fussy than it needs to be.

Overall you get plenty of range on all the dials - so you can easily ’go to 11’! - there’s certainly no shortage of volume or gain - while the breakup texture does have a very slightly buzzy timbre to its tonality that I really feel the need to dial out.

Of course this pedal is supremely versatile - and besides one tiny niggle it has a tonne of sweet-spots onboard - and makes for really smart usability, flexibility and versatility overall.

There’s obviously dozens of Marshall style pedals out there, and most are going to struggle to compete with the new Sinvertek N5+ MGAT-1. That is relatively pricey though and highly limited, while the Aura White Sugar will really deliver the goods superbly - in a far more useful and cost-effective way than most of its competitors. The fact that you can deploy it as a pseudo 3-Channel pedal makes it relatively unique. And it’s calibrated in such a way for you to be able to use all 3 channels as such - seems like the EQ applies to both channels.

Its price is also highly appealing at R$740.00P which is circa USD $140 and equivalent. Available for order of course from the Aura Amps Webstore. It’s also avaialable in a Limited Gold Edition which currently goes for R$785.70 or circa USD $150.

I feel that this is a really smart and versatile MIAB pedal that lots of players are going to love - it certainly has a beautifully rich and complex breakup texture.

My own preferred settings tend to be Bass @ 10 o’c, Middle @ 8:30 o’c, Treble @ 1:30 o’c, Volume @ 4 o’c, Power @ 3 o’c, and Gain @ 10 o’c. And then like I said - up through the gears - first Power, then Drive, and finally Power + Drive!