“A wealth of features not seen on a Klon-style circuit before”: Walrus Audio wades into uncharted waters with a fresh take on one of the world’s most cloned overdrive pedals
The original Voyager caught the ears of Ed O’Brien, Joe Bonamassa and more. Now, an updated version hopes to add new levels of customization to the crowded Klon clone market
(Image credit: Walrus Audio)
Klon clones are incredibly common in the overdrive pedal market, but Walrus Audio has now attempted to master Bill Finnegan's illustrious stompbox with an updated Voyager MKII that offers “ a wealth of features not seen on a Klon-style circuit before”.
It’s a bold statement considering how many recreations (both faithful and reimagined) there are available today. But Walrus Audio, which first launched the flagship Voyager as its first-ever pedal in 2011, is confident it can make good on such a claim.
The new-and-improved pedal, says its creator, benefits from “thoughtful” new features, including a quintet of overdrive textures accessible via an on-board dial, and a foot-switchable parametric midfrequency EQ.
Position one delivers 1N34A germanium diodes as per Voyager’s original compressed sound. Position two offers the same diodes with a bass boost – “Trust us,” the brand says with that mode in mind.
The next trio all feature symmetric silicon diodes, offering “more open and dynamic”, “less compressed and driven”, and “less compressed and driven with a bass boost” tones, respectively.
Away from its versatile innards, the pedal also now has a host of new controls on its exterior, too. Its input and output jacks are now top-mounted for better pedalboard placements and it has been given true bypass, soft-touch relay switches for good measure.
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Described as a “mid-focused overdrive/preamp”, the “mythical magic” of the MKI has been bolstered with “a uniquely superb amount of clarity for any playing style”.
That clarity is best in low-gain settings, while cranking the gain promises to deliver a “thick” and depthy overdrive for chords without harming guitar solo articulation.
The Gain dial is joined by Volume and Tone knobs for further tone sculpting, while its parametric Mid EQ offers a boost/cut range of +/-12dB. Partnered with a Frequency dial with a 250Hz-2kHz range, the pedal helps cater to humbuckers and single-coil pickups and a greater variety of playing preferences.
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(Image credit: Walrus Audio)
(Image credit: Walrus Audio)
The Walrus Audio Voyager MKII is available in two colorways: a seafoam green casing with black ink and satellite artwork by the pedal’s original artist, Nathan Price, and a matte black with cream ink edition. The latter is illustrated by Christi Du Toit.
A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.
