Blacksoil FX Alpha Centauri Overdrive

Today’s little piece of overdriven glory comes to us from a long ways away – Voronezh, Russia, to be exact. The crew at Blacksoil FX sent their first creation across the pond for us to check out, and what arrived was the excellent Alpha Centauri Overdrive.

This little silver bad boy is based on the legendary Klon schematic, so the controls are a cinch to understand, but there’s also an added bonus feature to mix things up (more on that in a minute). Volume, Tone and Drive make up the familiar knob selection, and produce a rich, crystal-clear, non-compressed overdrive sound with a ton of headroom. Using a buffered bypass based on the low-noise precision of the BurrBrown OpAmp, the Alpha Centauri emits a broad range on the gain spectrum, from a glorious clean boost when dialed back to a warm and rich-sounding overdrive tone. There’s also a toggle switch present here, which lets you select either regular or “turbo” drive mode, which adds in an extra bit of oomph to really push your amp into that sweet-sounding spot you love.

100% handcrafted in the heart of the black soil lands, the Alpha Centauri was a welcome surprise in the Klone department, and we loved the extra toggle switch to boost it up with a little more power, too. We’re excited to see what else the guys at Blacksoil FX release in the pedal department, too, and we hope to review more of their effects in the near future. For now, hear over to their Reverb shop and pick one up for yourself (after you watch the demo video, of course). Thanks again, guys, for sending the Alpha Centauri our way to check out!