VS Audio Royal Flush Dual Overdrive Pedal Review

I’ve had a chance to test hundreds of overdrive pedals over the years. I’ve also owned and tested many dual overdrive pedals but many of them fall short for several reasons. Either they are too complicated, they feature weird and unnecessary switching, they have a noise gate that doesn’t always work, or they simply don’t sound very good stacked. I wonder sometimes if people put enough thought and real world testing goes into these dual pedals sometimes.

Take all the issues mentioned above and reverse it. The VS Audio Royal Flush pedal is a dream for folks like me who believe simple is better. The pedal features two channels which are in theory very similar to each other. The right side of the pedal is where the “off-clean” tone lives. It reminds me somewhat of a Tubescreamer without the high end roll off but with a lot less overdrive. The right side makes it very, very easy to get the off-clean tone that you can’t get usually without cranking your tube amp to 8.

The Right channel kind of takes off where channel one ends. You get a very similar tonality but with more gain. If you’re like me then you’ll probably want to start with a great clean tone and have an overdrive pedal that doesn’t re-eq your amp. You can literally get a great off-clean tone without having to modify the settings on your amp. This is one thing I can’t say for a lot of other pedals on the market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvmEXHdkXf4

The left channel then kicks your tone into overdrive (literally!). You’ll get more gain, more sustain, and overall a lead tone that is perfect for blues, classic rock, and also some modern rock sounds at higher gain settings.

The tone controls are musical without being shrill or weird. Trust me, you’ll get a killer tone with everything set to even 12 O’Clock on the Royal Flush overdrive and then you can shape your top end with the tone controls depending if you use humbuckers or single coils.

Overall

This a very easy to use, versatile, and great sounding dual overdrive pedal. The attention to detail in the gain staging, build quality, and overall design is amazing. This pedal is in my top 5 favorite pedals of 2016 without question.