Craftros Trident Overdrive

The Craftros Trident Overdrive is an overdrive pedal made in Japan, announced in July 2022. It is built around transistors rather than diodes in the central distortion-producing parts, which its maker aims at a tube-like overdrive, and it covers a wide range from low to high gain with what Delicious Audio describes as amp-like tones¹. If you are weighing it against other drives, it sits in the same family as the pedals covered on the Overdrive Pedals page, though its transistor-based circuit sets it apart from the diode-clipping designs common in that field.

The controls

The Trident carries five controls: Gain, Volume, Fat, Treble and Presence¹. The Treble control lets loose the high frequencies and creates a crisp tone, according to the product page¹.

The Fat knob is the one that needs the most thought. Delicious Audio recommends starting with the FAT knob at maximum when playing in deep distortion and adjusting downwards to the required amount, and setting it around twelve o'clock for lighter distorted tones¹.

Delicious Audio's product page describes the FAT knob as the place to set the pedal's low-end content, noting that in deep distortion it can be set at maximum and adjusted downwards to the required amount¹. The Trident's five controls are Gain, Volume, Fat, Treble and Presence, with the treble control described as letting loose the high frequencies to create a crisp tone¹.

The toggle in the center of the pedal is a three-way Presence switch. It works as a presence cut switch to fine-tune the high-frequency overtones produced in deep distortion, so at high gain settings you can dial back the top-end fizz without touching the Treble knob¹.

Power, build and practical details

The Trident runs on a 9 volt battery [006P] or an AC adapter and draws approximately 13mA¹. It uses 1/4" phone jacks for its terminals and true bypass switching, so the pedal is out of the circuit entirely when off¹. The enclosure is an original designed machined aluminum housing, roughly W78mm x D124mm x H66mm including protrusions like knobs, switches and jacks, and the pedal weighs approximately 1lb¹.

A note on the name

An earlier pedal carried the same name: the Trident Overdrive from Seafoam Pedals, announced in July 2018, hand-made in the USA with a soft-touch true bypass switch, and sold directly from the Seafoam Pedals online store². That pedal grouped its controls into three columns marked by the artwork, each with volume, drive and a frequency voicing switch, with a switch below each band that controls how wide the reach of that EQ band is². The two pedals are separate products from different makers, and the Craftros Trident covered on this page is the newer of the two¹².

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