ZVEX
VEXTER
DOUBLE ROCK
REVIEW BY PHILLIP DODGE
STREET PRICE $239.00
They say you can’t judge a
book by its cover and it’s
generally true. Except for
Jaws, you can look at the
cover and instantly know
that the book is going to
kick ass (aside from the
damage it did to sharks’
collective reputation). The
same is true of pedals. I’ve
seen many a boring looking
pedal that blew my mind
and plenty of sweet looking
pedals that were simply
all dressed up with nowhere
to go.
But the Z. Vex Vexter
Double Rock? You CAN
judge it by its cover. It’s
a bare aluminum chassis
with a cartoon depiction
of J. Mascis and the words
58
GEAR REVIEW
//
“DOUBLE ROCK” in purple
letters. There is no way this
pedal isn’t going to kick
some serious ass. Luckily,
when you plug it in and give
it a stomp, it sounds as cool
as it looks.
With the Double Rock, Z.
Vex crammed two of its
classic pedals into one
enclosure. As the story
goes, J. Mascis requested
two Box of Rock pedals in
a single enclosure with two
stomp switches. He loved
it so much, that Z. Vex put
it into production. Now,
we get a few features that
weren’t on the original.
First, there are two switches
for adjusting the low bass
“sub” frequencies of either
ZVex Vexter Double Rock
Box of Rock. Secondly,
either side of the pedal can
be converted to a Super
Hard-On booster circuit with
the flip of a switch. In other
words, you get two Box
of Rocks, two Super HardOns, a Box of Rock that
can be boosted by a Super
Hard-on, or a Box of Rock
followed by a Super HardOn. That’s a lot to keep
track of. In short, you get
double distortion, double
boost, boost into distortion,
or distortion into boost. The
simpler way to say it, is that
you get a crazy amount of
versatility in a single pedal.
Of course none of these
features would matter if the
pedal didn’t sound great,