Crazy Tube Circuits has just dropped one of the hottest overdrive pedals of the year. It’s called Venus. It made its public debut at NAMM 2025. It was inspired by the iconic BK Butler Tube Driver, and as such, it really is a crazy tube circuit featuring an actual vacuum tube under the hood.
The BK Butler came as a rack-mounted unit and as a pedal, and was famously played by the likes of Eric Johnson, David Gilmour and Joe Satriani. Venus should get you those tones but in more compact and pedalboard-friendly format, with top-mounted jacks on the Metallic Amber Sand die-cast enclosure.
You don’t need any special power supply either; feed it 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and you are good to go – just make sure it is a high-current output that’s supplying a minimum of 500mA.
The controls setup is, well, much like a guitar amp. There is a three-band EQ. A Fat/Tight push switch adjusts the pedals low-end and lower-mids response, which can come in hand when switching between electric guitars with different types of pickups on them.
Volume adjusts the overall output. Drive dials in how much overdrive and saturation you want, while Bias might be the most interesting control of all, adjusting how much current is passing through the cathode tube. Run it fully clockwise for the smoothest sound. Below noon you can get some gnarly gated sounds. This will be a hard-working drive pedal.
“With ultimate versatility and tone shaping in mind, we set out to recreate a classic tube tone sculpture with modern refinements,” says CTC, “generating anything from a smooth, light tube overdrive, to a high-gain, nasty distortion within the realm of fuzz.”
Finally, there’s a Line Driver push button that makes sure you don’t lose any tone as your guitar’s signal passes through the pedal to the next pedal or your amp.
Note, no matter whether the line driver is active or not, Venus is always in true bypass.
Now, as to the tube itself. Crazy Tube Circuits has chosen an ECC832 for the job, a preamp tube it describes as an “oddball” mix of an ECC83 and an ECC82.
This should get you started, but players are encouraged to to experiment with alternatives. Venus will welcome a wide range of dual triode tubes, such as the ECC83/12AX7, 5751, ECC81/12AT7, 12AY7, and ECC82/12AU7. Judging by the demos, it sounds sweet indeed.
Venus is available now, priced £265/€299. See Crazy Tube Circuits for more details.
