Not all those who wander are lost
Man, the universe is random! Consider the following: An endless expanse of space constantly pushing further out. How might a couple of weirdos grow legs, walk out of the ocean, and end up smashing stuff together until they made things like agriculture, algebra, and the Great American Scream Machine? What are the odds of that?
On a long enough span, enough time spent wandering will eventually snowball into something notable. That's math, I suppose. On a long enough timeframe, eventually you start gluing your overdrive pedals together because they might sound good together – and wouldn't you know it, they just might after all.
This is the JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive.
Where No Man Has Gone Before
Introducing the JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive
For many, the pedal on the docket today is a long-awaited and welcomed addition to their arsenal. JHS, overdrive fiends that they are, have long peddled some of the world's favorite overdrive effects. Look just about anywhere in the JHS story and you'll find entries like the Morning Glory, JHS's premier Bluesbreaker-style overdrive. Look a little more recently and you'll find their NOTAKLÖN DIY Klon Centaur overdrive. Both effects play into historically popular flavors of overdrive with distinctly amp-like qualities and characteristics beloved by players looking to drive their amp or give their whole rig that extra kick.
While overdrive is a specialty of JHS, another realm in which they've certainly made a name for themselves is dual overdrive. Such pedals like their Sweet Tea and Double Barrel have earned their own place among the pantheon of popular dual drives for their masterful answer to an overdrive fanatic's favorite question: "What if we put 'em in one box?"
Enter the Wanderer. Something of a spiritual successor to JHS's retired Double Barrel dual overdrive, the Wanderer combines the overdriving powers of the JHS Morning Glory V4 and JHS NOTAKLÖN. Splitting the rent on a downtown walk-up, the Morning Glory and NOTAKLÖN share the Wanderer's compact footprint with independent footswitches, their full gain-shaping experiences intact, and a few surprises along the way. Let's talk about it.
Wander Over Yonder
JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive Design and Controls
The JHS Wanderer is one of those pedals that has a lot going on and a lot to go over, but is blissfully simple to actually use. Fans of past JHS double overdrives will find quite a bit of familiar ground to cover, here, but for those not in-the-know, let's go over some basics.
JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive Morning Glory Side
By now, it's probably safe to say that the Morning Glory is JHS's most popular effect. The long-standing Bluesbreaker transparent overdrive has been with the brand for so long, it almost goes without explanation at this point, but for the sake of the Wanderer, we will.
The Wanderer's rightmost Morning Glory overdrive side brings the authentic, transparent, boosting powers of Bluesbreaker-style drive circuits. This style of drive historically introduced a full-bodied lift to put some noticeable oomph in front of an amplifier without saturating or coloring a signal too heavily. The Morning Glory's flavor of overdrive has often been chosen for its touch sensitivity and overall accentuation of the best parts of your individual amp tone. What's more, Bluesbreakers like the Morning Glory have been among the most historically popular ingredients in dual overdrive pedals for these reasons. They make a great plus-one, what can we say.
On the rightmost side, we have the Morning Glory's classically simple control scheme. Controls for Volume, Drive, and Tone open the field for balancing clean, full-bodied boosts, more brawny drives, and really anything in between. The Morning Glory V4's two-way Gain switch appears with the Wanderer for switching into a higher gear of gain – denoted by a red LED rather than its default blue.
JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive NOTAKLÖN Side
One of the most coveted tones in effect pedals, the Klon Centaur has many, many admirers. Plenty of models have popped up over the years all recreating the "mythical" effect. A couple years back, JHS took it upon themselves to throw their hat into the ring, but with a different spin on "centaurian" overdrive. The JHS NOTAKLÖN came together as a DIY pedal kit in a box to hand-assemble your own (Not a) Klon. The tone in question belonged to JHS's own "Shamrock" Klon KTR modification – delivering an authentic mythical overdrive experience with an added bit of JHS pizzazz.
The Wanderer's leftmost side carries the NOTAKLÖN mythical overdrive tone. Familiarly warm, tube-like, and borderline fuzzy, the Wanderer's NOTAKLÖN side serves as a means to get your "screaming" amp tube tone with straightforward Volume, Gain, and Treble controls. The NOTAKLÖN's two-way gain switch appears to up the ante on saturation for an added kick – again, with a red LED over blue.
Hopeless Wanderer
JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive Tones and Playability
If you were one of the many surely sad to see the credits roll on the JHS Double Barrel, the Wanderer is likely a spin-off you're quite psyched for. Those familiar to the kind of doubled-up overdriving powers pedals like the Double Barrel toted are sure to find fast friends with the Wanderer. Fire up either side of the Wanderer and get to work, though it surely won't be long before you've got both those switches stomped and you're rolling through gains and tones to get everything just right to start riffing.
Believe it or not, the Wanderer plays similarly to past JHS double drives and is thus very quick to work into your board. The two drives play swimmingly together for a doubled-up overdrive pedal to perform across the board admirably. Not terribly hard to guess that two classics of dual overdrives – the Bluesbreaker and the Centaur – might hit the ground running on a pedal like this, but the ease of operation is something certainly worth noting.
Where the Wanderer starts to really make a name for itself is in some of its smaller details. Though of course, right? "A dual overdrive's smaller details? What about bein' loud and overdriven?" We'll get to that also, but a good couple things show themselves on the Wanderer to enhance the overall experience in impactful ways.
It Might Get LoudFor one, the Wanderer loads in a huge amount of volume and gain on tap. Though the Wanderer's overdrives commonly get sorted into the "transparent" persuasion of tone, each side offers a heaping dose of volume and saturating potential. Working each effect's Volume and Gain controls lets you in on the overdriving muscle at hand. Where this loudness lands us is with a dual overdrive pedal with plenty of room to negotiate with the rest of your rig on smaller scales. Generally, the Wanderer's individual control sweeps present opportunities to get in the weeds with its individual drives, other effects on your board, and your amp for a holistic look at your rig. The Wanderer can certainly wander off the proverbial cliff into raucous, distorted ends, but it is worth mentioning that it also offers the precision of a fine-toothed comb over your sound.
Red, Red RemoteFor another, the Wanderer offers a couple of quick ways to get its overdrives playing more dynamically with greater interaction. These ways manifest through things like the pedal's two-way effect order switch. Run the Wanderer from its Morning Glory into its NOTAKLÖN or vice versa to hear the immediate changes something as simple as signal order has on the overall tone of the drive. Other ways to get the Wanderer blooming into its most robust forms come through the pedal's two Red Remote connections. Route in a JHS Red Remote expression footswitch to swap between either effect's low and high-gain modes with your foot for, effectively, four overdrives in one box!
One-Hit Wander
JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive Further Functions
As we start talking about the Wanderer as "four overdrives in one box," there is another JHS innovation here that makes that descriptor all the more literal. Sharp-eyed readers might notice the Wanderer's four top-mounted input and output jacks. "The Wanderer's not a stereo pedal, what could that mean?" What indeed.
For as long as the dual overdrive has existed, the concept of "two overdrives in one" has tagged along with it. Until now, that's meant that with a dual overdrive, you have two overdrive circuits in one box, one running into another, one in and one out. The JHS Wanderer breaks the glass ceiling on this concept with independent input and output connections for each drive circuit. Now, what does that mean? Grab your ¼" cables and use the Wanderer's leftmost and rightmost ¼" connections and you've got a dual overdrive pedal, one circuit into the other. Grab two more ¼" cables and plug into the two other connections and the Wanderer becomes a true "two-in-one" pedal.
Add cables to the two inner ¼" connections on the Wanderer and the Morning Glory and NOTAKLÖN get some well-deserved time apart. Using these two extra connections, players can place other effect pedals in between the Wanderer's two overdrives – effectively working as a pseudo effects loop and performing as if they were, say it with me, two overdrives in one box. This addition breaks the mold on dual overdrives, allowing the Wanderer to be your classic two-in-one overdrive, two separable overdrives with other effects between them, or even literally one overdrive at a time. Plug in the two leftmost or two rightmost connections and use either side of the Wanderer completely independently, if that's your prerogative. In any case, the Wanderer exponentially expands on the dual overdrive connectivity experience so long landlocked to one input and one output.
JHS Pedals Wanderer Dual Overdrive Final Thoughts
Alright, okay, that's a lot to say about two dirts in a box. What have we learned today?
Firstly, I think we've learned that even some of our most popular and poured-over effect archetypes still have something new to discover. For what's for a long time seemed like such a spelled-out and solved effect equation, the Wanderer proves there's still more to squeeze out of the classic dual-overdrive experience while retaining everything that keeps such pedals so beloved. Secondly, I think we've learned that JHS knows their stuff when it comes to overdrive. Maybe that's not as big a revelation, what with the Morning Glory and NOTAKLÖN being such stars on their own, but still. Those holding out for JHS's next big step in overdrives can let go and start riffing with the Wanderer.
If that sounds like a lot, if you're feeling a bit lost, just remember that not all who wander are lost.
