I finally Managed to Track Down a Snouse Electric Co ultimate Limited Edition Gold Hardware White BlackBox 2 Stage Pro Overdrive
You may recall from my recent ’32 Best Compact Overdrives’ article that I had all of those in the reference collection by then besides a White & Gold Hardware Edition of the Snouse BlackBox 2 Stage Pro. I’d had a standard Black Stage Pro edition for a few years but always wanted the limited ’Arctic Black’ (sic) edition - which consisted of just 2 batches of 20 pedals each - for a total of 40 out there in the wild. In my opinion this is the best looking version of this flagship Blues Breaker style overdrive and surely the most coveted. While when it was originally released I was somehow totally oblivious to it at the time!
And since only 40 were made - there weren't many second-hand ones to be had in the meantime. I relayed how I had contacted Joshua Aragon - Mr Snouse himself - to enquire as to whether he would be willing to make one more of those just for me. He rightly replied that these were always considered to be a proper one-off limited edition run and he would never make any more - which I actually really admire.
And since only 40 were made - there weren't many / any second-hand ones to be had in the meantime. I relayed how I had contacted Joshua Aragon - Mr Snouse himself - to enquire as to whether he would be willing to make one more of those just for me. He rightly replied that these were always considered to be a proper one-off limited edition run and he would never make any more - which I actually really admire.
I then took to scheming on how I could get something close to this edition - say by buying one of the plain white editions made (non-gold-hardware) - which occasionally popped up on Reverb.com - and see if I could pimp that up instead - by further buying in the same sort of gold knobs, and going for one of those mini gold footswitch barefoot button overlays. Yet the plain white editions that were materialising on Reverb.com were somewhat over inflated and priced at nearly $600 or more - so that proved to be somewhat impractical - I always set myself a cap / ceiling on what I feel is a fair and reasonable price for each pedal - and if the quoted amount exceeds that it drops out of consideration.
I therefore felt incredibly lucky a few weeks ago when one of the proper Limited Gold Hardware Editions - #8 of the 40, appeared for sale on Reverb.com at a price that I felt was relatively fair and reasonable within the context. It was actually priced lower than the two plain Jane white editions that had materialised on Reverb.com within the last half of the year - so I acquired it on sight.
It's the fourth pedal this year that I've been chasing really hard and incredibly fortuitously managed to snag - the other three being the CKK Scream Honey Gold, the Free Fall Driver Huge Mini (from Japan), and Zvex Yvette Young Edition of Instant Lo-Fi Junky (3rd time / 3rd batch lucky!). There are quite a few more pedals I missed out on at the time of release - that I'm still trying to chase down (and which I will be including in a forthcoming article). I really wanted a Venuram TSV808 for a while - but those are so inflated now - trading at between 3 times and 8 times the original price - that their acquisition just isn't practical unless you're some kind of millionaire - they're certainly nowhere near reasonable value currently.
Fortunately with that one I've managed to find a really decent clone in the guise of The Tone Geek's Above Top Secret ATS808 - which I'm just waiting to come back into stock again. That has all the controls very handily on the top surface (including former internal dip-switches) - so it's much more practical than the original - of course you have to forego Vemuram's elegant green-tinted brass enclosure - but them are the breaks as they say - I took too long to decide if I wanted a TSV808 and they were all gone by the time I made my mind up. That's half the problem here - as with a lot of these limited releases you have a split second to make up your mind - if you hesitate in the slightest or take some time out to do further due diligence - the pedals will be sold out in the meantime and will have entirely passed you by!
These sorts of things are quite idiosyncratic and often a lottery really - as a lot of the time I'm not really in favour of limited editions - but when a really attractive variation of a sought-after pedal materialises - that sort of eye-candy can be quite persuasive!
Controls - Gain, Volume, Tone, Preamp Boost (Standard Mode Only), Presence, Bright / Smooth Switch, Deep / Tight Switch, Overdrive / Clean Boost Mode Switch, Standard / Classic Mode Switch (Classic is only the Gain, Volume and Boost knobs active, with Presence Optional, and Boost out of the circuit).
Like I said - I've had the standard black edition of the Stage Pro version for a few years now so I'm well versed with how well this pedal works. I have a number of favourite Blues Breaker style pedals and this is certainly one of the very top options among those.
Lots of players really love this pedal - where there is currently a waiting list of over a year for the standard version now. All things considered, I truly feel lucky to have got my hands on one of these - seems to have been largely a lucky year so far - while I often don't get my way in these limited edition lotteries - and there are a number of pedals that I've missed out on over the years - some of those aren't so appealing any more fortunately - but there are several that I still want - which of course involves a lot of stalking the various resale resources - including Ebay and Reverb.com in particular.
Who among you is a BlackBox 2 Stage Pro fan - I know at least a couple of you have the Gold Hardware White edition too - I feel proud to finally be in that club!
Demos
