Pedaltrain's Daylight Overdrive and Nighlight Distortion make for a superb effects pedal debut - with beautiful harmonic textures and superior dynamics

Readers will know that I’m often one for all the bells and whistles, and while I generally enjoy some of the more complex and extended range of pedals, I still love it when a simple 3-knob gain pedal gets done just right! Don’t forget that my all time favourite Overdrive is the Keeley Modded Boss BD-2 Blues Driver, and the Daylight reminds me very much of that - in terms of its superb guitar volume cleanup and dynamics. In fact both Daylight and Nightlight have incredible dynamics with beautifully harmonic textures - while they are accurately monikered light and shade!

The Daylight is your perfect bluesy overdrive - with a bright and open-pored delivery - it loves to linger on notes and reacts in an incredibly touch-sensitive manner where you get beautiful texture and sustain while slowly bending notes. You can see from my setup notes below how intrinsically different the two pedals are in their core character - while both have a beautiful breakup texture with plenty of harmonics that responds well to touch-sensitivity and guitar volume cleanup.

Where the Daylight is Brighter and more Open, the Nighlight is rather Darker and Denser - but still retains that similar warmth and rich harmonics of its sibling. When I first played the pair of them - I very quickly came down in favourite of the lighter side of the pair - while latterly I’m spending more time with the Nightlight.

For the pair of them it matters to set them up right - to get the very best out of your rig - and you can set up both at kind of a max desirably gain limit - where volume roll-off will give you a really decent gain range and allow you to nimbly sweep down to clean or near clean.

The controls are very well calibrated - while the denser nature of the Nighlight makes for fairly rapid onset of compression after about 1 o’c. And while the Tone controls have similar range - with a decent sweep of dark to bright, you obviously need to set the Tone control slightly higher on the Nightlight.

Both pedals have identically labelled controls - Level, Drive, Tone - all with even and predictable tapers - really easy to dial in - while it’s worth exploring the extremes of each pedal before you settle at you ideal sweet-spot/s.

Pedaltrain follow the Boss playbook - where everything sounds already great with all dials at noon.

While optimal positions for me are :

For the Daylight - Level @ 2:30 o’c, Drive @ noon, Tone @ 2:30 o’c.

For the Nightlight - Level @ 2 o’c, Drive @ 1 o’c, Tone @ max.

The pair of these were actually a really pleasant surprise. The Daylight is probably a little more immediate and more versatile than it sibling - but don’t discount the Nightlight which excels in its own way too - with the same gorgeous harmonic textures and cleanup dynamics.

If you only get one of these - then probably the Daylight is the likelier of the two - while I encourage you to get the pair as the Nightlight is a grower for sure.

Each of these is fairly priced at $199 on the Pedaltrain Webstore - you can buy them individually or as an early serial number matched set - for which you pay a $100 premium on top.

I am genuinely very impressed by Pedaltrain’s debut showing. Note also that both pedals have a cool black sparkly paint job as their base coat - which is less obvious on the Daylight as most of its front facia is covered by a flat white overlay paint. The only thing I would change here is to make the white paint on the Daylight slightly sparkly too - otherwise these are actually really well thought through - cleverly engineered and exceptionally well calibrated - all-round a really great debut. You might not thing you need another 3-knob gain pedal or two - while these beg to differ!