Decibelics delivers more of its mini magic with its superb sounding extended range Rivus Overdrive Mini take on the BluesBreaker

My good friend Guillem is never one to do things by halves - especially when working on next level Hi-Fidelity Mini Format pedals. His Golden Horse, Reverend, and Angry Swede are already legendary, and here we have another one to join them on that lofty podium.

These magical creations will compete with any size pedal - where the Reverend and Angry Swede are already extended formats, and we may still get a Golden Horse with a couple of toggles - like its new Rivus Sibling.

I was very privileged to have participated a little in some of the final decision making on format - mostly just about knob size, and whether the stock mode should have Symmetrical and Asymmetrical clipping. While there was still a fair degree of due diligence to be done, and I feel we ended up in exactly the right place!

Also - I had Black and Blue variant prototypes, were the latter seemed to sound sightly better most of the time - where Guillem had fully recorded the exact component values for each of my prototypes, and then based the general production run specifics on my ’better sounding’ blue variant!

So at its core this is a classic but high-fidelity take on the Marshall BluesBreaker pedal with extra features onboard. It share the same 3 core controls - Gain, Level and Tone, but then adds a number of fantastic extras.

Controls - Gain, Level, Tone, Clip : Hard / None / Soft, Mode : Pre ’95 (more bass / less gain) / Post ’95 (more gain / less bass), Internal Gain Structure dual dip-switch : I (stock), II (More Gain), III (Most Gain).

Firstly you have the 2 external switches - the 3-Way Clip switch : Hard / None / Soft, and the 2-Way Mode switch : Pre ’95 / Post ’95. The clipping options are wholly self-explanatory. While the Pre ’95 Mode delivers slightly lower gain but more bass, and the Post ’95 delivers more gain, but less bass - but more of that later.

You then have a further internal dipsiwtch which allows you to ramp up the gain structure - from Stock I, to More Gain II, and Most Gain III. Generally the middle option is the one that best suits me - as the Rivus has superb guitar volume cleanup - and the Middle gain option delivers my perfect max gain voicing, but I can then roll that all the way back to clean. The Middle voicing seems to add a few more harmonics and more vibrancy into the mix, while the top gain mode adds a little too much compression for my humbuckers, but may better suit other configurations.

I had two early prototypes - a Blue and a Black one - where the only difference - apart from the colour - was that the Black one had Asymmetrical Soft clipping versus the Stock Symmetrical variety. Asymmetrical adds a little more grit into the voicing - where Guillem and I decided that the pedal was better off with the sparkly quality of the stock Symmetrical variety - which also exactly matches the original.

I so loved 2 specific settings on the Rivus - where I wanted to use that as a 2-Channel overdrive - so Guillem is sending me a second stock Blue one for me to be able to deliver that cool Dual-Channel thing.

As mentioned - I set the internal Gain Structure permanently to the middle position II where I use my guitar volume to control the gain level My two setting are then :

• Lower Gain : All the knobs @ 3 o’c, Clip on Soft, Mode on Pre ’95
• Higher Gain : All the knobs @ 3 o’c, Clip on None, Mode on Post ’95

Even among some really stiff competition in this genre space - this Rivus really stands out. It definitely and authentically has captured that BluesBraker sound - but the Rivus really gives you overall a much expanded and improved palette of tones.

This is for sure another top notch Decibelics joint - some beautiful attention to detail and refined calibration here. And the price is really good too!

The Rivus is available in both Blue and Black colourways as pictured, both retail for €180 / $190 / £150 plus shipping - and both should be available for orders on the Decibelics Webstore immediately upon this article going live. The First Batch is expected to sell out very quickly. While Guillem has already scheduled 2nd Batch preorders to go live on December 2nd!

I feel a lot of you are going to really love this mini wonder - and if you already own any of the previous three - Golden Horse, Reverend or Angry Swede - you already know the quality - so it should be a no-brainer! I say get 2 - so you can do the same 2-Chanel setup as me!