Who doesn’t love handmade boutique guitar effects at a reasonable price? In any case, VS Audio Effects from Greece is a company to keep an eye on!
For the story of VS Audio we go back to the year 1946. Not that they have been around that long, but 1946 is the year Project Diana of the US Army Signal Corps starts. Project Diana was the first experiment in radar astronomy and aimed to bounce radar signals off the moon and receive the reflected signals. It marked the birth of radar astronomy that later mapped Venus and other planets.
Start of Versus Pedals in 2011
Fast forward to 2011, the year in which Panos Sotiropoulos first met Costas Theoharis in Athens, Greece. Costas was still a guitarist at the time and Panos was just starting out making guitar effects. They discussed a lot about music and especially about guitar effects. After only a few months, the first prototype pedals were already available and they were very promising. Together they formed the Versus Pedals company and decided to be the first pedal to create an analog delay with tap tempo. The goal here was to make it sound like a 60’s tape echo.
Project Diana Delay is born
After much research, several prototypes and revisions, they brought the delay pedal to the market. The name of this analog delay pedal was inspired by the documentary about Project Diana. The concept of the US Army was so similar to the delay effect that they did not hesitate to give the delay pedal the same name: Project Diana Delay was born. The stereo(!) analog delay pedal uses Bucket Brigade Devices, has 6 presets where you can save your favorite modes, tap tempo, modulation and a maximum delay of 550 milliseconds and it sounds great!
VS Audio Effects is born in 2016
After finishing Project Diana, they designed four more guitar effects in about 2.5 years: a fuzz called Fuzzytale, a chorus-vibrato pedal Vibler, a distortion Operation Trinity and a double overdrive called Royal Flush. The Royal Flush is a two-channel overdrive with separate controls for each channel. The first channel is a low gain overdrive designed for the early breakup sound of a tube amp. The second channel is a rich overdrive with a nice crunch. Both channels can be turned on and off separately. The pedal is one of VS Audio’s bestsellers at the moment. In 2016 they further decide to change the name of the company to VS Audio Effects.
Range expands with Aftermath, Alchemy and Straight Flush
Meanwhile (September 2020) the VS Audio range consists of 8 different pedals. Aftermath is an overdrive/distortion/boost pedal where you can smooth overdrive as a lead can get distortion sound out of. The pedal has a dynamic, velocity-sensitive frequency response, reminiscent of an overdriven tube amp. Operation Trinity is also a distortion pedal and produces a warm distortion. The pedal has fewer buttons (Tone, Volume & Gain) than the Aftermath and it also has a more rock / metal sound. There is also a small (one channel) version of the Royal Flush on the market called Straight Flush and a stereo Chorus, with presets named Alchemy.
Fun and innovative features
All VS Audio pedals with presets (currently Alchemy and Project Diana) can communicate with each other. This makes it possible to control the presets of all your pedals with one pedal. For this you have to connect the pedals with TRS cables and choose which pedal is the MASTER. This pedal then determines the presets of the connected pedals (SLAVE).