GEAR REVIEW
RJM OVERTURE | Bradford Mitchell
KEY FEATURES
• Six Expertly-Crafted Modes
• MIDI controllable ( 5 pin or USB C )
• Eight On-Board Presets
• Only Requires 150mA
WHAT IT IS
Ron Menelli of RJM Music Technology is a master at creating MIDI controllers . I personally use 2 different models he has created ( the PBC10 and the PBC6X ) and I love them . I almost can ’ t imagine playing live without using one of them . They can be overwhelming to some due to how customizable they are , but that ’ s only because Ron has given the user the ability to control anything they could possibly want . But just a couple of months ago RJM introduced the first of their effect pedals - a programmable analog overdrive called the Overture . “ I ’ ve had the idea for the pedal for at least 10 years ,” Ron told WM . “ But everything finally fell into place in late 2019 . And I ended up with a whole lot of free time in the early COVID days , which really allowed me to focus on the project .”
The Overture is obviously a departure from their controllers in a lot of ways . But one big way is its simplicity . At its core the Overture is a well-designed overdrive . What you see is what you get . There is no deep diving into settings or menus and it ’ s easy to get killer tones straight away . But that is not to detract from its usefulness in a rig or to suggest the sounds are subpar . Ron took overdrive sounds that so many seek and crammed them into one box and added MIDI functionality to control everything while still keeping the signal path 100 % analog and never digitizing your tone . The MIDI functionality takes this simple pedal into an indispensable tool . Not only does it give you the ability to save presets in a drive pedal , you can also change the type of drive giving you more room on your pedalboard for more fun toys ! You can access 8 different presets onboard and access 100 when using MIDI .
THE MODES AND FEATURES
The Overture has six different overdrive modes - clean boost , classic , boutique , versatile , smooth and crunch . These modes are inspired by some iconic drives that are actually semidifficult to acquire nowadays making it all the more incredible . I asked Ron if he could share his inspiration for these tones - “ The Classic mode is based on the TS 808 circuit . The Boutique started as being based on the Lovepedal Eternity , but it evolved a bit during testing to make it clearer and leaner . Versatile is in the neighborhood of the Timmy . Smooth is based on the Zendrive . Clean boost and Crunch are my own .” Those are some top notch and iconic drive pedals to be pulling inspiration from