Vein-Tap.com Vein-Tap Little Horn

The Vein-Tap Little Horn is a clean boost pedal made by Vein-Tap.com, a British builder that describes itself as "Purveyors of the Most Stylish Guitar Pedals This Side of Valhalla"¹. A boost pedal does one job: it raises the level of your guitar signal without adding distortion of its own, whether to push an amp or an overdrive pedal harder, or simply to make a solo cut through. The Little Horn offers up to +24dB of that lift, which Vein-Tap describes as a "pure, clean, transparent, powerful boost"¹.

It was one of the first proper effects pedals Vein-Tap.com ever released, launching on 11 November 2014, the company's third anniversary². The pedal has been revised twice since, and the current version 3.0 is sold as the Vein-Tap Little Horn Guitar Boost Pedal v3.0¹.

What it does to your sound

The Little Horn sits in the same category as any clean boost: it makes what you already have louder, without reshaping it. Vein-Tap's launch announcement for the original pedal promised "up to 24dB of high quality, transparent boost" in what it called "tiny boxes of sinfully loud boost"². The maker's own description of the v2.0 went further, calling it "probably the quietest, but easily the most powerful, clean boost pedal you can get your hands on"⁴.

Part of that quietness comes from the circuit design. From v2.0 onward the pedal includes advanced power filtering, which Vein-Tap says makes it "a pure, noiseless, hiss-free boost"¹. For a player, that matters most when the boost is stacked in front of a driven amp, where added hiss would be amplified along with the signal.

A clean boost differs from the overdrive and distortion pedals it often feeds. Vein-Tap's own buying guide on overdrive pedals versus amp distortion contrasts those gain-based effects with "the small but mighty Little Horn Clean Boost Pedal," which adds level rather than clipping the signal⁵. Used into a clean amp it raises volume; used into an amp already near breakup it pushes the front end harder.

Controls

Version 3.0 keeps the single Boost knob of earlier versions and adds a Tone circuit³.

The Tone control came from the v3.0 redesign. As Ben from Vein-Tap.com put it when announcing the upgrade: "we thought Little Horn could benefit from a tone control, that you can switch in an out of play as and when it's needed"³. With the bypass switch off, the pedal behaves as a straight transparent boost; with it on, you can darken or brighten only the boosted signal.

One practical note from the maker: turn the Boost control all the way down to 0 when you first try the pedal out, since the available volume is high¹.

Versions 1.0 and 2.0

The Little Horn's history is a story of PCB runs. Vein-Tap.com's practice, as Ben explains it, is that every time the company runs out of a certain PCB it challenges itself to improve the pedal for the next batch³.

• v1.0 (2014): The original launch version, released 11 November 2014 with up to 24dB of transparent boost²⁴.
• v2.0 (2017): Introduced after the v1.0 PCBs sold out. The circuit was changed so that turning the Boost control no longer causes a crackling sound, and the advanced power filtering was added⁴.
• v3.0 (2019): Added the Tone control and Tone Bypass switch while keeping the v2.0 features¹³.

The v2.0 upgrade was priced at £50, which Vein-Tap itself called "a bit of steal"⁴. The current v3.0 page lists the pedal at £69.95¹.

Where it sits in the Vein-Tap range

Vein-Tap.com builds a small range of pedals alongside the Little Horn, including the Holy Roar, the Holy Driver, and the Holy Ghost Fuzz and Boost Pedal, which combines fuzz with a boost section. The company also makes the Murder One Dual Latching & Stutter Killswitch, a switching pedal rather than an effect⁶. Within that range the Little Horn is the pure boost option, with no clipping stage of its own.

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