Bogner Ecstasy Red Overdrive

The Bogner Ecstasy Red is an overdrive pedal from Bogner, built to put the red, high-gain channel of the company's Ecstasy amplifier series on a pedalboard. It launched in 2012 alongside the Ecstasy Blue, each pedal based on a channel from the Ecstasy series, and it is designed by Reinhold Bogner, the designer and namesake of Bogner amps¹²³.

Where the Blue covers the amp's smoother territory, the Red aims at what Premier Guitar called "the searing overdrive tones that made Bogner a household name among high-gain players," with a thick, chewy drive character and an EQ section sensitive enough to drastically reshape its voice¹.

What it does: the Ecstasy red channel in a pedal

Bogner built the Ecstasy Red and Blue pedals from real channels of his own amps, which gearnews describes as boutique hybrids of classic Plexi-style circuits⁵. The Red pedal distills the amp's red channel into a stompbox, so a player can get that high-gain character into a clean amp, or use the pedal in place of an amp's own gain stage. gearnews' writer, who owns the Red, reports using it instead of actual amp gain on many occasions⁵.

MusicRadar noted that the pedals "seriously impressed us" upon their launch back in 2012³.

The controls and the footswitchable boost

The main tone-shaping is done with five knobs: volume, gain, treble, mids and bass¹. Beyond those, the pedal has a mode switch offering three different EQ curve and gain presets, which Premier Guitar's reviewer found noticeably different from one another, "like having three amps in one"¹.

The boost is the pedal's second footswitchable layer. It can boost volume and gain at the same time, and it is set by two small potentiometers located beneath the main volume and gain knobs, with LEDs built into the mini-boost pots so you can see where each is set¹. MusicRadar describes these as two presets for gain and volume that operate in the boost mode². A third jack on the pedal allows remote switching of both the bypass and boost functions².

Inside the pedal: an analog class A circuit

The Ecstasy Red is fully analog, and its drive does not come from a clipping diode stage. Premier Guitar reports that the Ecstasy pedals use class A circuits that forgo diodes or op-amps for overdrive clipping, so the overdrive is generated in the circuit itself rather than by silicon diodes trimming the waveform¹.

MusicRadar's look inside found the electronics on two high-quality printed circuit boards with gold-plated tracks, a mix of quality surface-mount and miniature components, and large portions of the circuit potted in epoxy to prevent reverse-engineering². The enclosure is a tough two-piece aluminum clamshell box fastened by four machine screws, and the PP3 battery sits behind a small aluminum flap held by a large-slotted machine screw².

The Mini version

In 2018 Bogner released a compact sibling, the Mini Ecstasy Red, shown at Winter NAMM 2018 and on sale from 19 November 2018 at $199 each alongside the Mini Blue⁶⁷⁸. The minis reportedly keep the same circuits as the originals, with the same Gain, Treble, Middle, Bass and Volume controls, but they drop the Boost switch found on the full-size pedals⁵⁸. Two minis fit in the footprint of one full-size Ecstasy pedal, and unlike the originals they take no battery⁵⁷.

What reviewers said

Premier Guitar's review found the Red "infuses clean tones with the signature Ecstasy high-gain sound exceptionally well," praising its responsiveness to pick attack and playing dynamics, its wide-ranging and sensitive EQ, and the clearly distinct character of its three modes¹. The one criticism noted was some background hiss from the boost at higher gain settings¹.

MusicRadar credited Reinhold Bogner with being "just as adept at getting phenomenal tone from solid-state circuits" as from valves², and gearnews' owner of the Red called it "a very good distortion pedal" that he uses in place of amp gain⁵. At Winter NAMM 2018, Sweetwater's Mitch Gallagher found the minis sound great with a small board footprint as the main advantage⁷.

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