Mojo Hand FX Rook Overdrive

The Rook is literally the best low-to-medium gain overdrive I've ever played. The tone is musical throughout the gain range, and can go from clean boost to hot blues with a twist of your guitar volume knob. Incredibly usable in all the settings I've tried so far. I play an American Fender Strat and a PRS Custom 22 thru a 1965 Fender Super Reverb. I use a number of other pedals to get various types of overdrive and distortion. With humbuckers, you can get fairly ballsy rock tones with the Rook if you max out the gain, but it's ideally suited to mid-gain overdrive tones. Think Stevie Ray Vaughn, or John Mayer Power Trio stuff. The best thing about the Rook is its dimensionality: notes jump out from the amp like they're standing up from your fingers. It's a permanent addition to my pedalboard.

One of the great ironies of the guitar gear industry is that much of what's popular is based on recycled technology (50's era pickups, tube amps, hundreds of overdrives based on Tubescreamer circuits, etc.), yet there's a constant hunger for the newest and best pedal on the market. Sometimes, that phenomenon leads to pedals released a few years ago being overlooked. In this way, I feel that 2011's Mojo Hand FX Rook Overdrive is vastly underappreciated.BUILD QUALITY - Mojo Hand FX pedals are very well-built. The knobs and enclosure look very similar to JHS Pedals (another favorite of mine), and everything feels solid. There is a 9V battery compartment, but it is only accessible by removing 4 screws. I also added 4 rubber feet to the bottom of my Rook, but you could fasten it using zip ties or velcro also. The 9V jack is center negative (BOSS standard), and is top mounted, which I prefer, as it keeps it away from the I/O jacks. Top notch durability.TONES - The Rook actually has 3 settings with the center mod switch, and they are quite a bit different - we'll refer to them as "TOP", "MIDDLE", and "BOTTOM" positions. Before I bought the Rook, I heard people say that the Top and Bottom positions were kind of like a modded Tubescreamer. I see some similarities, but know that the Rook has CONSIDERABLY more low end and tonal flexibility than any Tubescreamer I've used. If you're paying for a boutique overdrive pedal, it's a nice touch when virtually all of the settings on every knob offer something musically useful. On the Rook, you get almost a true bypass sound with the Gain all the way at zero. With my Vox AC10C1, I was even using the Rook as an "underdrive" - you could set it up clean up some of the tube distortion of the amp and play at lower volumes, while retaining a great deal of EQ control. Very few overdrive pedals offer this flexibility - usually there are entire ranges of the gain knob that are either unusable, or don't sound particularly good. The Rook's gain knob sounds great all over the place.TOP Setting - With the switch all the way up, you get a low to moderate overdrive that breaks up with the smoothness of a Tubescreamer, but can get much bassier. I really liked some of the lower gain settings, which remind you of a tube amp just starting to break up. The tone controls are very powerful, however, so there's plenty of high end sparkle also available.BOTTOM Setting - The switch's bottom position is similar to the TOP setting, except meaner and higher gain. The Rook isn't really meant to be a heavy rock or metal pedal, but this setting will get you pretty close.MIDDLE Setting - The middle setting is pretty interesting - I've heard some people compare it to a Klon, even though Mojo Hand did not promote it that way, and only just released a separate Klon pedal (Sacred Cow) in November 2015. The middle setting removes some of the clipping diodes, so the result is louder, cleaner, and more punchy/responsive. Since there is less overall compression on this setting, the tone controls become even more powerful here. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked it as much as the other settings, but when I got it home, I was really impressed with some of the subtle things it could do with the breakup of my tube amp. It's a nice clean boost capable of some additional grit, and you can use Rook as an always on, simplified "EQ" pedal to fatten up or brighten up your tone.SUMMARY - Overdrive pedals tend to be very redundant, but I was actually surprised just how varied and different the Rook was given that I hadn't heard a ton of people raving about it. The only pedal I've previously owned that it reminded me of was the Fultone Full Drive 2, which seems to behave similarly on its CompCut setting as the middle position does on the Rook. But the Rook is about half the size, and I like it better than that pedal. It's a definite keeper, and built to last.

The Rook is simply one of the most underrated overdrives out there as far as dynamics go, and the Baxandall tone stack KILLS any other EQ offerings on other pedals.. This pedal helped me nail the AC/DC "Powerage" tone running it through my 68' Plexi... With hotter pickups, it can even do awesome medium high(-ish) gain.. Honestly makes my Carl Martin Plexitone pedal sound amazing,adds body without taking any of the desirable character away.. Best OD out there for my needs.. Way past the honeymoon phase,never found another one to beat it!!!