December Birthdays 
As I see it, Surf and overdrive have a delicate relationship. In 1962, OpAmp powered, soft clipping pedals were not a thing, but one of the first things I learned when I joined this forum was the unmistakable sound of a Showman cranked up, and how there was degree of grit, and a stronger midrange than many would associate with Fender amps.
Getting close to a ‘62 Showman sound is a challenge, and I recommend a Surfy Industries Blossom Point as a starting point. But if you want to control overdrive levels, and don’t have a huge venue to fill, a bit of light overdrive can come in handy.
Overdrive pedals, with soft clipping diodes have been with us for a while, and the venerable Tube Screamer has long been a standard bearer of this type. Most soft clipping pedals that have come since bear a strong family resemblance to the Tube Screamer circuitry, and in many cases, these pedals come in green enclosures, to play upon the Tube Screamer’s appearance.
Many years ago, Boss built a soft clipper called the Super Overdrive, AKA SD-1. This used asymmetric clipping diodes, but still had a lot of the Tube Screamer in its DNA. It’s one of Boss’s most long-lived products, and still sells for a very friendly price. Roughly 20 years ago, Digitech produced the Bad Monkey, another Tube Screamer based pedal, but with a two band EQ, which made it more versatile. The Bad Monkey has its fan base, and quite a few detractors. Some say that it kills your tone, others praise it in nearly worshipful terms. I owned one for a while, and it was a pretty decent pedal. There were no huge negatives that I ever encountered.
A while back, Wampler came out with the Triumph Overdrive, which is based upon the Bad Monkey/Boss SD-1, but has a three band EQ. There is a toggle switch marked “Smooth” and “Punch”, and this chooses between the smoother Bad Monkey symmetric clipping diodes and the punchier Boss SD-1 asymmetric clipping diodes. But the three band EQ is the star of the show, and helps to make this pedal well suited for Surf. As overdrives go, I would place this in the middle, not a transparent ethereal overdrive, but not as distorted as some that I’ve played through.
Playing directly into this pedal with a Jaguar, I noticed that the Volume control is very sensitive. I usually start a pedal test with all knobs at noon, but with the Volume at noon, this pedal provides some serious clean boost. If I roll the guitar’s volume back and use this volume setting at the pedal, the sound remains clean, and even with the Drive control dimed, there is very little breakup. This is a useful sound, and possibly even good for Surf. In this mode, the Triumph would serve as a clean boost and the overdriven sound mostly happens on chords or double stops. It’s a nice arrow to have in your quiver, but not down the centerline of overdrive, as most people use it.
Backing the pedal’s Volume control down to unity gain, and increasing the guitar’s volume control brings out a completely different behavior. Using these settings, the breakup ranges from cleanish to fairly heavy breakup. Finding a specific level of overdrive comes down to a balancing act between the pedal’s Volume and Drive controls, and the guitar’s volume control, which is pretty much the case with every overdrive pedal.
The Smooth/Punch switch is well named. I can’t think of a better way to describe difference between these two settings. The Smooth setting is a nice creamy overdrive, with no rough edges. Punch has a bit more grit and a bit more presence. Even at the same volume, Punch adds a greater sense of immediacy. My expectation was that I would avoid the Punch setting, but it turns out that I like it more than I had imagined possible.
Wampler doesn’t appear to publish much in the way of specifications for their pedals, but an email inquiry revealed that the pedal is true bypass, but has an input impedance of 333 kilohm and an output impedance of 25 kilohm when engaged. By way of comparison, a Tube Screamer has 500k in and 10k out, so this is ballpark close. I tend to use a 15’ cable from my guitar to my pedalboard, and like to see higher input impedance than that, in order to minimize the capacitive losses of the patch cable, so for my money, the Triumph doesn’t get to be first in line.
I ended up with a signal path that starts with: Plumes, MXR Sugar Drive (buffered bypass on), Triumph, Boss DM-2 delay (buffered), Mercury Flanger, True Spring reverb, Ross Compressor (RI) and Blossom Point. The true bypass Plumes is usually on in non clipping mode, and offers a 10 megohm input impedance, along with a very low output impedance, making it a very good buffer. When the Plumes is off, the signal hits the 600k front end of the always buffered Sugar drive and then on to the Triumph, when it’s engaged, or passing through transparently when disengaged. This seems to work well from a signal integrity perspective.
Testing with a Gretsch Tennessee Rose equipped with Supertron pickups. The higher output of these pickups results in more breakup at any given Drive setting. The Triumph is very responsive to the input signal, probably to a greater degree than any other overdrive I’ve tried.
A nice Surf sound can be had from light to moderate overdrive settings, and by manipulating that Midrange control to taste. The Plumes, in the mode of no clipping diodes, I can also get a pretty good Surf sound and I’m not backing away from that pedal,as a good Surf overdrive solution. As I said, the three-band EQ is the star of the Triumph’s show, and may be used to good effect when midrange issues need to be addressed, and this is an equally good overdrive solution.
Playing the Triumph in series with the Plumes
My most used board has an EarthQuaker Devices Plumes overdrive up front, and with its 10 megohm input impedance, I could easily run a 50’ patch cable with no losses. In my thread about the Plumes, I allude to the purchase of the Triumph, but I waited 2 months while it was on back order.
A bit over a year ago, Josh Scott, of JHS Pedals, did a YouTube video about the Bad Monkey and used one to emulate the sounds of any number of other legendary overdrives, up to and including the revered Klön Centaur. That video set the Internet on fire and Bad Monkey pedals were selling for as much as $200 apiece, with asking prices going through the roof. Later on, he made another video about the Triumph overdrive and the Phenom distortion which specifically mentioned that the Triumph was a better Bad Monkey, because of its three band EQ. That video, and a casual test play at GC, the day I bought my Plumes, were enough to make me want to have one of my own.
With the Plumes FET preamp sans clipping diodes, feeding into the Triumph, the breakup becomes more prominent. Testing the three clipping modes of the Plumes into the two clipping modes of the Triumph gives a lot of options, and results in a lot of different levels of breakup, available at the flick of a pair of mini toggle switches.
The Plumes might as well be welded to my pedalboard, it’s a great preamp and offers some nice overdrive options. The Triumph is a nice complement to the Plumes. They cover a lot of the same ground, sonically, but each has something the other lacks. The Plumes offers a very useful mode with no clipping diodes, and the Triumph has a three band EQ. Together, they offer a lot of possibilities.
—The artist formerly known as: Synchro
When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.
Last edited: Jul 28, 2024 17:35:40
