Luxury Tone FX Sunrise Overdrive Distortion

Last month, I checked out my first pedal from Luxury Tone FX, the Overdrive Sustainer 2, and was pretty damn blown away by it. Today, I’ve got another pedal from this crew all the way from Spain: the Sunrise Overdrive Distortion. Keeping with the simplistic layout/control theme, this tan gem features three knobs and one toggle switch, allowing you to free up your time by not having to dig through a 100-page manual, and focus on rocking out. This one’s a true amp crusher, let’s dive in and see what mysteries are locked inside…

The Sunrise is an overdrive & distortion effect loosely based on the early effects of the late 70’s. With an additional switch to change between two different modes, upwards a clean style overdrive, and downwards a more compressed tone, a little more saturation, reaching more than enough for multiple musical styles. Cut controls the treble cut, and is tuned to be more musical and less extreme, allowing for smoother handling of high frequencies, especially when using high gain. One of the keys to the Sunrise is its ability to perform across a wide spectrum, from a clean, textured boost, through a medium-gain overdrive, to a crunchy, defined distortion.

Clarity and Definition: Unlike some distortions, which can become a bit “fuzzy” or muddy at high gain, the SUNRISE maintains excellent clarity and note definition, even in complex chords.

Low Gain: At low settings, the pedal works brilliantly as a preamp or boost with a slight texture and grit. It’s excellent for adding that “amp about to break up” feel without completely saturating the sound.

Medium to High Gain: This is where its essence shines. It offers a powerful, hairy crunch and pleasant compression. It works very well for genres such as Indie Rock, Post-Rock, and Emo.

The Sunrise has a very good response to pick dynamics and the guitar’s volume knob, allowing you to go from a clean sound to a saturated one just by modifying the intensity of your playing. It is a pedal designed for guitarists who love powerful, musical character with better treble handling, an effect that can be used not only as distortion, but also as a low-gain overdrive with great texture. Its circuit operates fully at 18v, made possible by the voltage doubler implemented inside. It basically doubles the voltage supplied by the power supply to 9V. Inside it has a “charge pump” to raise the DC voltage from 9v. to 18v. this gives it much more headroom, more dynamics, and a natural tone that’s full of harmonics.

Three-knob pedals can sometimes be dismissed as “simple”, “basic”, “boring” – whatever word jokers with no imagination want to use to describe them. In reality, however, most of these types of effects, like the wonderful Sunrise Overdrive Distortion, actually have seemingly limitless potential, opening a sonic gateway to new exploration and sound enhancement you’ve been dying to try. Really digging the stuff from Luxury Tone FX – be sure to visit their website, as well as their sister company, M Pedals, whose Colossus Overdrive Dumbleit I also had the pleasure of recently demoing, and it’s a beast! Don’t forget to visit our YouTube channel for our killer demo as well, have a great day and ROCK OUT!!