Foxpedal Delivers its first new Guitar Pedal in Years - The Highly Appealing Vixen Dimensional Drive

In fact back in 2018 Todd Billow seems to have suffered some sort of personal setback and for many months Foxpedal was effectively shuttered, dusted and done. Yet some brave souls seem to have rescued the business from disappearing down the annals of time - and Foxpedal was back at the 2019 Winter NAMM show touting an updated version of the Quiver - which is still not ready for release - that must be some significant R&D to have been going for all those years - admittedly while there would not have been much movement during Foxpedal's enforced hiatus.

In any case a new crew came in and steadied the ship - and I've had various sales notifications and the like which looks like a concerted effort is going into keeping this enterprise afloat. So it's somewhat heartening to see that there is now a new pedal on offer - in what has to be said is a rather glorious looking royal blue enclosure with stunning artwork and suitably fine gold accents.

The new Vixen Dimensional Drive is actually a revival and considerable evolution of the earlier Foxtail Articulate Overdrive - which was originally launched back in 2014. The use of the 'Vixen' moniker dates back to a single custom Foxpedal made back in March of 2014 - actually for what was quite a different circuit then, indeed a clone of the Systech Harmonic Energizer - a filtered distortion pedal from the 70's. In the interim the moniker 'Vixen' has been adopted by Sitek Guitar Electronics's excellent Vixen Germanium Booster / Treble Booster. I'm sure the two brands though can equitably share the name - as those two pedals are really so entirely different - much in the same way as the Anasounds Ages Harmonic Tremolo which I have, and the Walrus Audio Ages 5-state Overdrive - which I will likely fairly soon have.

This time around the circuit centres around two very specific flavours of clipping Diode - the well-known 1N4148 - which is used in a number of OD-1 and SD-1 style circuits - in fact to be found in quite a number of Japan-originated circuits; and then the much more rarely deployed Nanolog N3 Diode - a derivative of quantum physics no less. Nanolog - the Quantum Diode manufacturer has its own Carbon Series of Gain Pedals which carry its unique Diodes, and in fact during the early stages of development they collaborated on the Dr Scientist Heisenberg Molecular Overdrive which I believe was the first to feature this technology - obviously long since discontinued but a really interesting find if you come across one - also somewhat pricey. So there are only a handful of pedals currently in production which featured the Nanolog style of Diodes.

I see this Vixen very much as a sort of Harmonic Overdrive - with just the very slightest hints of fuzz texture on the edges of its tone profile. Besides the 2-way Diode selector - you have controls for Volume, Presence, Gain, Bass and Treble. I personally would have preferred to see the clipping switch as a second footswitch - with a level matching circuit to ensure even output. I like the look of this one for sure - and will likely look to add this to the collection at some time soon. All the pictured pedals are available right now from the Foxpedal Webstore. The single footswitch pedals here are priced at $199, while the dual-footswitch varieties are at $239.