The Walrus Audio Voyager is a workhorse with more than a touch of Renaissance man wired into the circuit. It fills the relatively unglamorous roles of treble shaper and booster, clean boost, overdrive, and distortion— all with personality and a sonic and dynamic range that can surprise. The build quality is outstanding and it works exceedingly well with other pedals. There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye with the Voyager, including the ability to give your existing rig voices you never knew it had. And that’s what the search for tone is about—on this world or any other.
The Stars Align
You can’t help but notice that Walrus Audio’s Voyager is well made. Its heavy-duty true-bypass switch makes a nice, mechanical clicking sound when engaged, but remains inaudible through an amplifier. The white LED indicator is super bright and can cut through the thickest of stage fog. And the 9V, Boss-style power-supply jack is thoughtfully placed and recessed at just the right depth to work with right-angle cables.
The control set is nothing complicated— just volume, gain, and tone—and the black, anodized-aluminum knobs exude quality. Nicely spaced for their size, their fluted sides make setting the controls a snap with your feet. And the potentiometers are extremely smooth, providing just the right amount of resistance. These thoughtful and practical touches, along with the mint-green powder-coat finish and cool graphics, suggest the creators have more than just a passing interest in design.
So what’s inside? Unlike a lot of classic overdrives, there are three op-amps covered by a clean coat of epoxy on top that obscures their model designation. Most classic pedals used one or two chips and some discrete transistors. Walrus Audio, however, uses modern chips and highprecision resistors on the heavy-duty circuit board. This could ultimately be a key to the pedal’s range and agreeable nature.
The Walrus Audio Voyager delivers rich, well-balanced preamp gain designed to push your amp into sweet sounding overdrive.
- Volume, Gain and Tone Controls
- True Bypass
- 4.77” (12.11 cm) x 2.9” (7.36 cm) x 2.3” (5.84 cm)
- 9V DC or Battery Operation
Why We Love Walrus Audio
Walrus Audio is a collective of artists, musicians and engineers attempting to find the balance between art and performance in sound manipulation. Throughout the years they have been inspired by sounds created by our favorite companies: the perfect breakup on an overdrive; a thick, punchy distortion; an endlessly sustained reverb; a self-oscillating delay. Of course, they had to give it a shot. Through many months of late night breadboarding sessions, circuit problem-solving, and sonic tweaking they have come up with a range of guitar pedals as versatile as they are functional. We love Walrus Audio because they create products that have a specific flair and make guitar effects that are as interesting to play as they are to look at. Look for Walrus Audio products at Lucci Music, online and in store located in Colorado Springs, CO. If you’re looking for pedals and power supplies that bring new, old sounds to the table and look like they were created just for you, check out Walrus Audio.
