What is it?
Walrus Audio started up back in 2011 with its first pedal, the Voyager Overdrive, a three-knob Klon-style stompbox that found favour with the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Ed O’Brien and Nels Cline. Now, for 2025, the company has brought out an updated version that greatly expands on the original.
The Voyager MKII sports the obligatory Volume, Tone and Gain knobs, but it supplements those with a rotary switch that offers a choice of five variations of the diode clipping circuitry, plus a footswitchable parametric mid-frequency EQ.
While the Tone knob operates a low-pass filter to place the top-end where you need it, the midrange EQ section targets frequencies at the heart of electric guitar sound – the centre frequency can be set between 250Hz and 2kHz, and cut or boosted by 12dB.
Usability and sounds
The pedal is excellent in use as a clean or low-gain boost, offering a natural clarity that can be further enhanced with any tonal shifts you care to dial in and some grit from the Gain knob’s lower reaches. Once you start turning that Gain up, the various clipping modes come into play for player-exploitable variations in both feel and sound.
The sound of the original Voyager pedal – and perhaps the most accurately Klon-like as it utilises 1N34A germanium diodes – is found at position 1 on the rotary switch.
This is the most compressed of the five options, and there’s an alternate variation of this with a little bass boost at position 2. Position 3 switches to the sound of symmetric silicon diodes, which opens up the sound somewhat and has more of a response to dynamics.
The least amount of compression is found at positions 4 and 5 where asymmetric silicon diodes deliver the most driven sounds, with position 5 adding bass boost.
Whether it’s just-breaking-up tones or full-on drive, the five modes offer plenty of variations on the theme, while the Mid EQ can not only sculpt that further but can also be used as a switchable variation on it, maybe a presence boost for solos, that will give you two sounds underfoot.
Verdict
Any number of Klon-style pedals go beyond the original three-knob paradigm for extra flexibility, but these alternatives often offer no more than really subtle changes in tone and response.
Walrus has gone well beyond that proposition here with the inclusion of its switchable midrange, which makes the Voyager MKII a very flexible drive/boost pedal.
Specs
PRICE: $249/£245
ORIGIN: USA
TYPE: Drive pedal
FEATURES: True bypass, choice of 5 clipping modes, footswitchable mid EQ
CONTROLS: Volume, Tone, Gain, Mid, Freq, Mode, Mid footswitch, Bypass footswitch
CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output
POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 100mA
DIMENSIONS: 67 (w) x 125 (d) x 57mm (h)
CONTACT: Walrus Audio
