tc electronic El Cambo Overdrive

I already have a couple of drive pedals of varying degrees of distortion. I was looking for more of a blues overdrive that would not colour the original guitar tone too much.
There are so many tube screamer clones around it is hard to choose. But the price point here is great and the build quality is excellent. The name is derived from a famous Canadian live show that Stevie-Ray Vaughn played, so this gives you an idea of where it is aiming. There are drive, level and tone controls. The drive is not too harsh and relatively mild, providing dirt without altering the original guitar tone too much. The tone knob does let you colour it for bass or treble and has a surprisingly wide range. If I have the level at 12 o'clock , drive at 3 and dial in a little bass at 11, then on a neck/middle position single-coil I can really start to get the tones this is trying to represent.
For those looking for more bite in the overdrive, you should probably look elsewhere such as other TC models like the Cinders or Mojo. If you want to put this before another gain pedal as a boost or to overdrive your amp gain (which is what tube screamers are for), this will work very well. And of course if your are looking for those SRV tones from your single coils this will probably get close to what you are looking for. Recommended!

I have a tendency to be laid back and that’s my tone : thus laid back you can’t even find me anymore. This sometimes leads to me losing track of the midrange and high end. I figured I’d get a pedal that might help cure that problem... And I found it.

I run it through my Laney IRT Pulse and TC Electronic Skysurfer Reverb into my amp, but even when you turn all of that off and run this straight into my solid state amp that normally sounds flat and can only be made to sound minimally good with maximum tweaking, it sounds superb.

This is a pedal that doesn’t just sound good with a solid state amp and excellent with a tube amp, seriously, it sounds excellent with a solid state amp and excellent+ with a tube amp. This is one cool pedal that gives you a clear and resonant boost in the mids, an organic overdrive sound all the way into sweat bright blue distortion or maybe you should call it ”fuzz without the breakup?“

It’s just one of these pedals that based on the price make you ask yourself whether it might really be this good and it outperforms your expectations even though they weren’t really all that low. Like with every pedal, it has to be your kind of sound. It made me immediately feel it was mine.

I’m happy.