VFE PEDALS
FOCUS
REVIEW BY PHILLIP DODGE
STREET PRICE $219.00
“Focus, young grasshopper,
you must focus.” What must
you focus on? You must focus
on dialing in the perfect
mid-boosted lead tone. One
that isn’t nasal. One that is
somehow thick yet cutting at
the same time. Luckily, VFE
Pedals created a pedal called
the Focus that does just
that. It’s designed to hit the
front end of your amp with a
boosted midrange—a signal
that won’t just turn the front
end to mush, but will get
your power tubes cooking. It
does that, but it does more
Let’s dig into the design and
features of the pedal and
then we can get into the
sounds and versatility. One
way to think of the focus is
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GEAR REVIEW
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sort of like a Tube Screamer
without the distortion. It rolls
off the lows and highs of
your guitar signal, leaving the
juicy midrange frequencies
behind. The Focus features
six controls to help you dial
in the precise sound you
want with any combination
of guitars, amps, and effects
(more on that later). In the
middle of the pedal, you
will find a miniature black
potentiometer titled Blend.
Like the name implies, this
allows you to blend your
imputed guitar signal with
the effected signal. This is
the first place the Focus sets
itself apart from other boost
and EQ pedals. I found that
the Mix control allowed me
VFE Pedals Focus
to easily adjust the pedal for
multiple guitar and pickup
types (Humbuckers, singlecoils, solid-body, hollow,
you name it).
I mentioned earlier that the
Focus plays nice with other
effects in your chain. I found
compelling uses for it both
boosting other pedals and
with other pedals stacked
into it. Running it after a
Mad Professor Fire Red Fuzz
(basically a Muff circuit), the
Focus behaves the way David
Gilmour used his Muffs and
Tube Drivers. You get the
classic timbre of a Muff, but
without the fizzy highs and
flubby lows. The Focus works
equally (but differently) well
going into the Fire Red Fuzz.