CeruleanAmp Overdrive

From the vendor

A classic overdrive effect that was designed to mimic the Marshall Bluesbreaker amplifier from the 1960s, the Bluesbreaker is also the source circuit for a number of high-dollar "boutique" guitar pedals.

The Cerulean Amp Overdrive is an updated version of the Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal, in production from 1991 to 1999. A legend in its own right, it was also the source circuit for a number of expensive boutique pedals, most notably the Analogman King of Tone, which is two Bluesbreakers in the same box with a few modifications.

In 1995, Marshall moved production from England to Korea, and around this time they made some tweaks to the circuit, increasing the gain and reducing the bass. The Cerulean project has a switch to go between both modes so you can hear the differences. It also borrows the expanded clipping options from the King of Tone, allowing you to select either soft clipping (stock), hard clipping, or no clipping (boost mode).

We have also added an internal DIP switch to select between three different gain range settings. Normally to increase the gain range of an overdrive, you’d just raise the value of the drive pot. However, the Bluesbreaker has a unique dual-stage gain control setup such that increasing the potentiometer value will also lower the minimum gain along with raising the maximum gain, so this method is not very useful. But by adding resistance to just the first stage, we can shift the overall gain range higher and get a lot more tones than the original pedal was capable of.

The Cerulean V2 is a complete overhaul of the original Cerulean, which combined features from the JHS Morning Glory as well as the Presence trimmer from the King of Tone. The first version is no longer available, but the legacy 1590B version of the project is largely the same and will remain stocked. The King of Tone is available as the Theseus and the Prince of Tone is available as the Achilles.