Wampler Tumnus
A KLON with no compromises.
There is no way to review the Tumnus without addressing the centaur in the room. The KLON is an amazing and very versatile pedal, and, tonally, the Tumnus is almost an identical copy. While I have not had the pleasure of playing a real KLON, I am lucky enough to own the Klon KTR. Bill Finnegan, himself, says they are the same. So with that out of the way…
For such a simple pedal the Tumnus has many use cases! It is not true bypass. Some may see this as a negative, but it positions the Tumnus perfectly as the first pedal in your chain, making sure there is no signal degradation. It works very well as a clean boost, especially with the treble and gain turned down. That way you will get a very smooth blues tone. At this setting, it will be very responsive to your playing dynamics and can go from clean to light overdrive by simply adjusting your picking or guitar volume. The tone knob has a very nice range, and sounds great at any position. That’s one more reason to place it early in your signal chain to shape your guitar tone.
Turning the gain past 12 o’clock is where the Tumnus really shines! You get a very thick amp-like overdrive, perfect for both lead and rhythm tones. It adds a bit of compression, more so than the Klon KTR. This works especially well to tame the bridge pickup on a single-coil guitar, like a Stratocaster. If you need to save space on a pedalboard, the Tumnus can definitely replace both an overdrive and a compressor. It will add a lot of sustain to your tone, particularly if you turn up the gain.
The Tumnus works very well with other pedals too. You can place it in front of another drive to push the gain further or place it behind something, like a Fulltone OCD, to add volume and sustain to your solos.
The build quality of the pedal is excellent. And, if the smaller form factor is not your thing, there is the Tumnus Deluxe with the same sound and extra EQ options.
If you find one second-hand, it may have the older design with the white knobs, but rest assured, the circuit is identical. So pick whichever looks best to you!
Bottom Line
Compression? Check! Boost? Check! Smooth overdrive? Check! Screaming leads? …ok, you might need to get another drive pedal for that. It truly is a “make it better” type of pedal for almost any occasion. At £135, you really can’t go wrong with the Wampler Tumnus, especially when the original Klons go for over £5,000.