Caroline Guitar Company Icarus V2

The Icarus V2 is an analog pedal from Caroline Guitar Company that covers three jobs at once: it works as a buffer, a booster, and a rich overdrive, with what RockBoard's PedalPedia describes as a mix of Russian germanium sweetness¹. If you want a single pedal at the front of a board that can fatten up your signal, push an amp, or add grit on its own, this sits in the boost and overdrive territory.

What it does

Caroline describes the Icarus V2 as "sonic awesomeness" based on its PARABOLA and MÉTÉORE preamps, the circuits at the heart of two of its other pedals¹. The Parabola, sold as the Pawnshop Tremolo, is one of the pedals whose preamp the Icarus V2 draws on². In practice that means the pedal can sit always-on as a buffer and clean boost, or be pushed into a richer overdrive character.

A distinctive part of the design is the diodes. Caroline sources discontinued Russian "unobtanium" diodes and, in the maker's words, "recreate its special flavor"¹. Germanium-based clipping like this is a large part of why the pedal is described as having Russian germanium sweetness rather than a harder-edged distortion character¹.

Versions

The Icarus V2 comes in two models, listed by Caroline as Standard and Alpha Gain³.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load