Trip to Portugal Day 2: Obidos and Caldas da Reinha

 

A rather hectic day, with a lot of things happening.

Our place in the morning.

Woke up around 9am local time, took about an hour to collect our wits and get ready to head out of the house. Overnight I received an email about our tomorrow's (Aug 24) planned trip to Berlingas Island. Apparently, in addition to tickets for the ferry, we also need permit to come to the islands (these seem to work as the main means of limiting access to the island, which is quite small). The permits are issued by some institute for conservation, they cost 3 Euro per permit, and the only way to pay is some sort of a bank transfer the likes of which I am unable to perform from my US accounts - at least not with on-line tools.  So, our day started with a walk to Obidos, not to visit the old town and the castle, but to head to the bank hoping that I can give them those 6 Euro and they can transfer. After waiting for 30 minutes in the bank teller line, we were told that no, this indeed is not possible, we have to do it ourselves. ATM machines were no help either. We then sat down under the walls of the castle and went through all possible ways of doing so - ending up - after about 20 minutes of attempted downloads, over crappy free wi-fi, with using Xoom which apparently is the bank transfer service owned by PayPal. We had to improvise there, but the bank credentials were valid, and eventually Xoom told me that it succeeded in transferring the money.  

Obidos, under the walls: spent over an hour here figuring out bank transfer details.

Around noon we finally made it inside the city walls, and decided that we first will climb the walls and circumnavigate them.  We chose to walk counterclockwise - by chance, but the right decision - as the walls have any sort of barrier on the inside only in a few places, and the entire walkway is otherwise not protected at all. It is also quite narrow, and there are a lot of people navigating this path in both directions. Moving counter-clockwise lets one squeeze to the wall when people are passing you (everyone's instincts are to follow the direction of vehicular traffic).

Obidios city wall, and some of the town itself.

The historic part of Obidos is not very large. The town hugs a relatively steep hill, and extends for about a kilometer (maybe a bit more if we count the two points on the wall farthest away from each other) in roughly South-North direction, while probably being only 250-300 meters wide for most of this length. Inside are white washed buildings painted blue at the ground level. As the South-North streets are all one above the next, this creates for really picturesque textures, and by far most of my almost 500 photos from the day are of those townscapes.

Looking south from the eastern wall of Obidos. 

Some closeups of Obidos houses climbing up the hill.

On the northern end of the city, at the highest point the the actual castle, which at the moment consists of an enclosed courtyard and walls that house a restaurant and a hotel.

Obidos Castle, view from the northern tip of the town, where the fairgrounds are located.

We walked the wall all the way to the castle, dropped back to the street level, visited the insides of the castle, which - again, is just a courtyard with a lot of "Staff only" doors, and then visited a bookstore located in the building of one the many Obidos's churches, where Olga spent some time with a local lace-working master who showed her some of her work (she works on the second floor of the bookshop and has her own small setup here.) Some really nice work.

Checking the laces.

Some of the more intricate lace work.

We then went to the northernmost part of the town, just past the castle, where there is a field full of empty booths - essentially a small fairgrounds. There we found the way to go up the western wall of Obidos, and we took this wall back to the southern end of town. The western wall is higher up the hill, offers some really nice views out, but also allows for an almost bird's eye view of the town itself. We pathway on along the wall though is quite narrow. I kept on thinking that if this was the US, there'd be wooden rails everywhere or else no walking the walls. I sort of wonder how many people may slip up (the stones paving the pathway should get really slippery when wet). In most places along the wall, you slip and you are done. Only in a few places, where a private garden backs up to the wall, or where for some other reason the street level is soil rather than cobblestone, would one escape with a fracture instead. But I digress. Caution is definitely advised. But the views are fantastic.

Church of St. Mary in the middle of the town

View from the western wall towards the north end of Obidos.

Eventually we got to the southern tip of the wall, a place where the western wall and the eastern wall connect via a tall tower.  At street level there is this one house that spreads from the eastern wall to the western wall, blocking the final pieces of both walls, end essentially enjoying a couple of acres of land on the southern tip of the town all to itself. 

The southernmost house in Obidos - extending from one city wall to the other.

From the southernmost tip of the walls, one can get a nice view of the next hill over, where our house is situated.

View from the Obidos city wall towards the house we are staying at. The house itself is not too visible, but the two houses on both sides of it (the round tower-like structures further away in the photo) are visible.

We climbed the south tower, and took some pictures from there - it is fairly high up, nice views. At the bottom of the tower (city wall path level), there is a hole in the wall, which makes for nice pictures - we took a couple with me as proof that I indeed was there.

Alex was here. Unfortunately, it was either get your face lit up, or have visible background.

Obidos from above (taken from the southernmost tip of the city wall).

After that, it was a short walk back to where we started the climb. We got to the street level, and went along the main drag to see the souvenir shops and check out the cafes.  Our souvenir shopping for the day was minimal, we bought a few postcards and a couple of Obidos prints. We did get some pasteis de nata at a nice little coffeeshop closer to the end of the street, which Olga chased with an espresso, and I - with ginja-infused sangria, which was excellent.

Our midday snack.

We then went around the somewhat less travelled lower streets of the town, until we wound up back at the church of St. Mary.

Obidos. Main drag (Rua Direita - very appropriately named), view from above.

We went inside for a look, then walked through some side streets a bit more until we came to a small museum which displayed the work of Obidos native, Abilio Leal de Mattos e Silva, who spent most of his time drawing sketches of paintings of Obidos.  His work reminds me of the work of an Armenian artist we knew a long time ago whose specialized on panting miniatures of different townscapes in a style quite similar to Sliva's.

A b/w sketch of Obidos by Abilio Silva.

And here is an example of a colored painting of his.

Afther that after some more side-street walking we went through the restaurant row back to Rua Deireto, where I decide to succumb to the main local ritual - consumption of ginjinha (ginja) - the locally made sour cherry liqueur from a chocolate cup. Took us a bit to find a place (in the afternoon all the stalls along the street get sorta deserted), but I am glad we persisted. Ginja wound up being somewhat different from what I expected. I expected sugar, and it was, indeed, sweet. But I also expected a lot of almond flavor, due to, well cherry pits adding their part. This was very much not the case. The drink was smooth, sweet, but with absolutely no hint of any almond flavors.  It reminded me of a homemade alcoholic drink my grandfather would make that he called "drunken cherry", which pretty much was a sour cherry liqueur. Grandfather did it for the cherries themselves - they were used in his dessert-making. Here though, it's the liquid that counts, although most large-ish bottles of ginja I saw have fruit in them.

This is how ginja is made, I guess - the photo is really dark and one cannot see, but about half the volume in each vessel is cherries.

.

And this is how ginja is sold on in Obidos (together with some other liquers).

Following that, we bought some pasteis de nata-flavored gelato, which we both liked, and went outside the city walls to get some water from a drinking fountain. At that time we decided that we would head home (it was around 3pm, we were starting to get tired), change, and then would go see Caldas da Rainha - a larger town just up the road from Obidos, which presumably is famous for its hot springs, where a queen of Portugal built a hospital.

At home we decided that before heading out to Caldos we would visit local grocery store first, in case we are late coming back. The Continente grocery store is a 2 minute drive from our house - the only challenge was that I needed to turn our SUV around on a tiny parking lot behind the house and drive it down the world's narrowest driveway. Took me a bit (better safe then sorry), but we got down, went to the grocery store, bought some food, and went to Caldos da Rainha.  

We spent a total of 2 hours there, just walking the streets at the center of the city, mostly window-shopping (around 6pm the number of open stores started dropping). Unlike Obidos, which is very touristy, Caldos da Rainha is pretty much a solid provincial town in Portugal with close to zero observed tourists (although we heard non-Portuguese languages around, and even some Russian, almost everyone appeared to actually have been a local).  While we enjoyed our walk around non-touristy parts of Portugal, one thing we totally failed was to find a restaurant where we could have a dinner. There were some cafes open and a couple of Asian food takeouts, as well as a few burger joints, but we were looking for something with more local food selection, and quite literally, there were no restaurants on most of the streets we walked (and, looking at the map, we covered a decent chunk of the city center, from the train station to the park and to (almost) the hospital, with what remains there from the original hot springs - unfortunately, we did not make quite all the way there to see them.

Caldos da Rainha train station. Somewhat subdued.

Caldos da Rainha. What looks like main city square.

At around 7:30pm we decided to cut our losses, went back to the parking lot, got into the car and drove the the local Lidl to get some easy-to-prep food. Came home around 8:40pm, made our dinner, and ate it on the ground floor porch - a smaller table, but no need to go up the staircase with a tray of food.

Our dinner, featuring a microwavable Portuguese bean stew, some seafood croquettes, sausage, cheese, olives, bread and canned octopus.

After dinner, we called it  day.

Alcohol.  

1. Portuguese Bock Beer. Per Olga, when people ask about Portuguese beer, this is the one the internets recommend.  It is  pretty straightforward light beer - for American beer drinkers, reminiscent of the infamous Pabst Blue Ribbon (a slightly more upscale version of it), and for ex-USSR ones - the infamous Zhiguli.  Easy to drink, but not the kinds of beers I like.

2.  Lagosta Vinho Verde DOC. 

Lagosta Vinho Verde DOC

A rather budget buy, this is again surprisingly a wine on the sweeter side with some fizz added to the mix. These wines are typically called "easy drinking summer wines". Olga liked it too.

Steps. Eneded the day with around 21090 steps. Most were in Obidos, but Caldos da Rainha added about 7K steps as well I think.

Tomorrow. Well, the plan is to spend the day at the Berlingas Island - they have some interesting places to go see there.  We'll see if we have done enough to actually be able to make it there. If not, I guess we'll walk around Peniche, drive around the Peniche peninsular, and possibly, will hit the beach.  We'll try not to get too upset.

Trip to Portugal Day 1: Backroads to Obidos

 

Day 2 comes in two parts.

Frankfurt has an airport.

Part 1.  Still in transit. We land in Frankfurt around 10:10am local time, disembark, and spend an hour walking our way through passport controls, terminals, and security checks. The most exciting part of this stage is the total search I was subjected to by a security agent who pretty much shoved his hand down the front of my pants and then down the back.  Looks like Germany has a very different understanding of personal space.  

The plane was about 30 minutes late to leave, which gave us a chance to grab a coffee and a pretzel, because when in Germany - even if "Germany" = "Frankfurt Airport", you get a pretzel.

The Pretzel. It was decent.

Boarding the flight involved being bused to a very different part of the airport, which gave me a chance to take a picture of the terminal from the outside.

Frankfurt Airport Terminal A from outside.

Eventually we got to a place where our plane stood, and boarded it.

Our ride to Portugal

This took place in the middle of California night, so we tried with some moderate success to doze off on the ride. Still I was able to catch some nice scenery - the Alps, the Mediterranean Coastline, and a really nice approach to Lisbon.

 

The Aqueduct, as seen from the plane descending on the Humberto Delgado airport.

With this, we arrived to Lisbon, where Part 2 starts.

Part 2: Day 1 proper.   Getting off the plane was easy, no more passport control, since we are inside the EU. Spent some time waiting for luggage. Discovered that the Tile app and Tile devices we put on our bags don't work quite one would want them to work - you can find out where the Tile tag is only if another Tile user is within bluetooth reach of the tag.  At a starting point, my colleagues teaching computer security are right around now crying. Second, the one time you really need this feature is upon arrival to a new airport  in order to determine that the luggage arrived with you. Except that there are not going to be any Tile users on the landing field (except for the airplane passengers, but it looks like the luggage is stored in a way that does not allow for bluetooth signals from the main cabin to be transmitted to it. Eh, well. The bags still arrived.  

After taking a bathroom break we went outside to wait for the shuttle bus to the car rental place.

The shuttle came right around the time I started wondering. Took us to the rental place. At that point, things started to get - if not sour, then at least - dark comedy.

So, our car rental company is OKMobile. The rental itself is made through a broker.  Here are some things.

• One week before our trip, I get an email saying "in order to speed up your reservation, please complete these forms". The forms ask for driver's license and passport information. I enter the info, receive confirmation that I am good to go
• I also receive an email that we ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE International Driver's Permits.  I call their office and ask "I am a resident of the US, I have a US driver's license, do I need an IDP", and I get an unequivocal "YES, YOU DO". So we go and pay $60 for two IDPs with photos. Better safe then sorry.
• Upon arrival to the rental place, of the three people there, we get the Incompetent Newbie.  
• This appears to be the first time he saw a US driver's license.  
• He asked us for licenses and "IDs", and I had to ask him three times "what other type of Id would you like" before we got to "Passport, please". 
• We NEVER had to show our IDPs. 
• He spent 30 minutes re-entering our passport and license data THAT I ALREADY PROVIDED to their system.
• To cap all of it, he took us to our car - a rather unexpectedly large Renault Kadjar (we asked for an automatic transmission, apparently these are the only automatics they have). We spend 10 minutes going over the scratches on the car. The car is parked in a way that makes it hard to pull it out, so we ask him to pull out the car. He gets in the car, and hits another car standing nearby.

The car he drove got some surface scratches, but the other car got a dent.  Took him another 25 minutes to change paperwork and give us another car.  All of this mildly annoying because the entire time spent at the rental place that was empty when we arrived was about an hour and forty five minutes, when it should have been no more than 30.  But also, dark comedy gold.  Most of it is just the real lack of experience, and personality traits that are not conductive of working customer service jobs, but I sincerely hope that the guy does not get fired or docked a lot of pay for denting a car on the lot.

So, we get our car (this is it below, pictured in its resting place for tonight), and start the drive to our first stopover, Obidos.  Except, after verifying that the car indeed has the Via Verde (toll road) tag that allows us to travel the toll roads and not worry about tolls, I find out that my google maps is set up California-style to "avoid tolls" setting. This becomes apparent only about 20 minutes into the drive when we leave the major highway behind and start taking backroadiest of the backroads.  

 

The good news: it's a nice scenic drive - much more fun that driving on a divided highways with tree cover on both sides. We get to drive through countless small villages, take cobble road detours, go up and down several hills in a somewhat see-saw fashion, and see a lot of the back country that definitely is not tourist territory.  We also pass by a Lidl and take immediate advantage of it.  Wasn't even sure where we were, but found it on the map post factum, it is the store in Arruda dos Vinhos - one of the small towns/large villages we passed through.

Eventually, as the sun drops below the horizon, we make it to A8, which apparently is free on its approach to Obidos, and take it for the last leg of  today's trip. We drive up a narrow driveway leading to our Airbnb to meet our landlady, who's been texting us since about 3pm (it is not 8:30). I roll the car up and through a vary narrow turn to reach the upper parking spot, where we rest the car as you see it above. The parking spot is adjacent to the back door to our place which leads to a nice patio, and our bedroom. There is a spiral staircase leading downstairs to the living room and kitchen.  

We thank our landlady, who left us some cheese crackers and a bottle of wine in the fridge, and unpack. After a quick shower that each of us desperately needs, we throw together a late night meal of bread, sausage, cheese, seafood and olives, and wash it with some wine.  We are officially done for the day, which has proven to be somewhat uneventful, but very long.

Today's wine. 

1.  Papa Figos Douro Branco 2021

Grabbed this one for Olga out of the fridge at Lidl. For 3 Euros, this is a great refreshing white. I expected something bone dry and instead got some sweetness to complement the bright acidity. Olga, who typically does not care for sweetness in her wines, interestingly enough quite liked it as well.

We'll give it a score of A-

2.  Paco Do Bispo Moscatel De Setubal DOC 2019

Also bought at Lidl for something like 3.99, primarily because (a) last time I brought a bottle of Moscatel and waited for a while to try it, now I want to have a bottle available for the entire trip, and (b) for the name, which includes allusions to both major AVAs in San Luis Obispo county (Paco = Paso, Bispo = Obispo).

Exactly what I expected - smooth, sweet, with little acidity, but easy to drink. Totally worth it for those who like dessert wines.  B.

Steps. 6589 according to Google Fit (watch reset before I was able to see, but had a consistent number last I remember). Mostly traversing through airports.

Tomorrow.  Walking tour of Obidos, and Obidos castle.  

 

Trip to Portugal Day 0: Getting off the ground...

 

A very short day. Got a ride to SFO, went through ticketing, passport control, security check, and boarded the plane to Frankfurt.  The only interesting bit about this part of the process was that at boarding time our Lufthansa took our pictures, but did not ask for boarding passes at all. 

Short flight overview.  We flew in a 2-story Boeing 747. Don't know what is located upstairs - did not get to see it, but this plane has by the looks of it about as many first class and business class rows as it does economy rows. We sat in economy rows in the middle isle close to the back of the plane - the cheapest seats on the plane.  

Good things:  Checked-in luggage and carry-on (our fare included them), two meals, drinks including wine and beer, nice movie catalog.

Bad things: probably the narrowest seats I've sat in on international flights over the past 10-15 years.  It's not even the leg room per se - although also nothing to write home about - it is the width of the seats.  10 seats per row will do it.

Waiting at the ticketing.

For the most part I took advantage of the movie catalog and got caught up on several Marvel movies. The full list:

* Bill and Ted Face the Music: B: nice, but could be better.

* Spiderman: Far From Home: B:  some nice moments, otherwise, just checking the box

* Eternals: B:  I have a feeling all my MCU movie reviews are going to be in the B range - professionally made movies that use the tropes that I don't necessarily care very much for.

* Spiderman: No Way Home: B+: I know that there was a lot of hype before the release of the movie, I wound up reading a lot of analysis of released trailers, and predictions. Seems like every single prediction came to be, which makes me wonder if those were not predictions at all, but rather leaks carefully pretending to be predictions. Anyways, I like Toby McGuire, and he is good in this movie.

This is pretty much it, arrival to Frankfurt marks pretty much the beginning of Day 1.

Steps: around 3000 according to my watch. Hard to know exactly, as the watch reset in the middle of the flight, but 3000 is a good estimate.

International Terminal at SFO has an outside viewing area.

Next Day:  fly from Frankfurt to Lisbon, get a car, drive to Obidos, stopping on the way at a Lidl store.

Trip to Portugal: Day -1

Packed the bags, loaded up the car and went to San Jose. Our flight is tomorrow. Today I managed to visit the revival meeting of Ignite: no longer Cal Poly, now Bay Area. 

Not much else to report.

Steps: 4243 according to my watch, most of them probably running around the house packing.

Tomorrow: flight to Frankfurt, then onto Lisbon, renting a car, driving to our first place in Obidos. 

50!

 Just a short note.

A. I turned 50 today. Yay.

B. Our first overseas trip since COVID is coming. August 22 - September 8 we are in Portugal (the photo below is from our 2017 trip).

I plan to post daily updates here - we'll see if I am successful.  First five days we stay in Obidos with the goal of seeing the central part of Portugal. Then - five days in Porto, with possible day trips to Douro and Braga. Finishing it off with four days in Lisbon to recapture our 2017 experiences.

One year of playing with cheap pedals: a beginner's review. Part II.

 

Today is Part II of the overview of the pedals. It concentrates on the overdrives, that occupy the lion's share of the pedalboard.

Part II. Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz Pedals.

10. Dolamo Overdrive

Provenance.  Amazon. Was part of the first batch of pedals I bought during the Thanksgiving sale in 2020.

Cost.  Somewhere around $20-22.

Category: bargain basement budget

Review.  This is a very mellow overdrive pedal. Originally it sat at the beginning of a chain of my overdrives,  although with time some new pedals were placed in the middle row of the pedalboard and in front of it (note the picture above is of the new pedalboard configuration and place it at the beginning of the chain of drives again).  

For several months I had gain at 9 o'clock, bass at around 9 o'clock to noon, treble at close to max, and level to bump up the over all volume a bit. In this configuration it is a nice clean boost with just a tad color and saturation added to the signal - it works really well with most clean channels of my amps, and is a great sound for laying down rhythm guitar on a loop. With time I learned to warm up the sound by dialing the treble off a bit.  I still prefer using this pedal on low gain settings. On higher gains it goes into a plausible crunch, which is not unpleasing to the ear. On my pedalboard though I have plenty of crunches and not enough clean boosts, so the Dolamo overdrive has the default role of being the one pedal on when I need a clean sound that enhances the signal coming from the guitar.  It does this job really well.

Difficulty of use:  Easy. Low gain - essentially clean boost, higher gain - crunch. Bass and treble are responsive and can be easily kept around 12 o'clock if one wants to just forget about them. Level is not too powerful - I can get it close to max (on my standard amp volume setting) and not crash anyone's eardrums -  "gradual" is probably a good word to refer to it.

Rating:  A. I don't know what overdrive this is based off of, but it is a very useful pedal on my board - and it is keeping its relevance and holding its own in the presence of everything else that I piled on the board since.

Verdict:  Keeper.

11. Kmise Ultimate Drive Overdrive

Provenance.  Amazon. Same batch as the Dolamo pedal.

Cost. $25 or thereabouts.

Category: Bargain basement budget.

Review.  For several months this was the most high-gain pedal the board. It is ... capricious.  I've had situations where I was able to coax some of the purest, most "very rock! wow!" tones from it - both by itself and in combination with Dolamo placed in front. I also had produce very unpleasant and unbalanced tones.   

To start with, I would recommend anyone trying to use this pedal to start at close of minimal gain, and put the switch (I am assuming it is a clipping diod) on low, and just try to manipulate it to the edge of breakup zone.  This is not that difficult to do and the sound is full and rich, and nothing like any other drive/distortion pedal I have, although  the sounds it makes are sorta "classic rock"-ish and are quite recognizable. I play a Yamaha Pacifica with a homebrew pickguard that contains a Blacktop Filtertron in the bridge position, a TexMex Fender middle pickup, and Wilkinson neck pickup), and I think it reacts better to the single coils than to the Filtertron.  It also goes much better with some form of reverb, the dry sound is a bit... well, dry, although it is less of an issue with edge-of-breakup settings.

Unfortunately for this pedal, edge of breakup is not what I needed it for - as I mentioned, this was the highest gain pedal I had on the board for somewhere close to 8 months.  As a result I had to figure out the combination of volume and gain that would work well with my guitar. Such combinations exist, but they are affected quite a bit by other things in the chain: EQ, Compressor, delay, reverb.  This pedal can be very loud if one does not control Level when moving Gain up. I typically max out the tone, as it get s too dark very quickly when the Tone knob is moved counter-clockwise.

One last thing to note is that this pedal is where I learned to control the tone with the guitar's volume knob - lowering the pickup volume definitely cleans up the tone and most of nice tones I produced from this pedal were with my guitar volume at around 50% or lower.

Difficulty of use:  Moderate.  As discussed above, some care is required, but it definitely has several sweet spots that would work.

Rating:  B-. Perhaps a full B, but I wind up using this pedal less and less, especially now that I have some other high gain options, so, my playing habits are perhaps the best way to assess it.

Verdict: I am keeping it on the board for now, but this is probably the #1 candidate to be removed from the board, or moved to my office board, as it is largely redundant on the board at the moment. 

12. Iset Dumbler Overdrive

Provenance.  Amazon. Bought at the end of 2020.

Cost. About $25.

Category: bargain basement budget.

Review.  It says "dumble"! Wow!  What a bargain!

I don't know how a Dumble amp sounds (youtube videos compared to a pedal on own board do nothing to answer this question), but I am pretty sure, it ain't it.  Having said this, though, this is a great and very versatile pedal with a range of tones, and a unique voice.

Unlike the Kmise Ultimate Drive,  the Dumbler, which spent most of its time on the pedalboard right in front of the Kmise pedal, has been used in a wide range of tonal settings.  The beginnings, however are the same - max out the Tone and the Voice knobs (the latter is an interesting mid-frequencies EQ), put the Gain at 9 o'clock and adjust level. This creates a nice clean-to-edge of breakup sound (depending on the pickups and the gain setting of the amp), and this tone alone is probably worth the $25 this pedal cost me.   

It however does have quite a bite as well. Adjust the Gain up, and past 1 o'clock we are in a pretty serious overdrive zone.  I never liked maxing out the gain on this pedal, but if I want a pastiche on classic rock tones, taking the Gain to 3 o'clock does the trick quite nicely, as long as the volume is adjusted. Just as the Ultimate Drive, the Dumbler is responsive to guitar volume changes, although I often forget that I have this option of controlling the tone.

With time, like with many other pedals, I learned to roll the Tone and the Voice off. The setting pictured on the photo is pretty much what I am using now - sometimes rolling the Tone down to 12 o'clock.

Difficulty of use:  Easy. It might take some use to dial the exact tone one wants, and the Voice control is different from the EQ controls on other overdrive pedals, but finding a nice tone is pretty easy.

Rating:  A-. It gets a minus because I don't use it as often as I do some other pedals. But every time I turn it on I keep thinking "I should use it more".

Verdict:  Keeper.

13. Mosky/Musiclady Golden Horse Overdrive

Provenance.  Ebay. Bought at the end of 2020, I think

Cost. $23-25. The one time Ebay was cheaper than Amazon by a few bucks.

Category: bargain basement budget

Review.  Well, it's a Klon clone, perhaps one of the cheapest on the market. I have used it in a variety of ways - in front of other overdrives/distortions, at the end of an overdrive chain, with gain up, with gain down.  Not all combinations were successful, but most recent uses - turn the gain down, volume up, hit another pedal with it, gave me a really great boost.  In general, I think I rarely use it all by itself (even with the gain up) - usually teaming it up with several other pedals: like the Dolamo (my other clean-ish overdrive), or the Lumberjack (see below). It also works really well as a boost for the King of Kings.

Difficulty of use: Moderate. Not because controls are sophisticated, but because the range of tone options requires careful choices. Boost use is more or less obvious, but upping the gain requires more care.

Rating:   B+: really nice to have, growing on me.

Verdict: keeper. 

14. Caline Tantrum Metal Distortion

Provenance.  Amazon,  late 2020

Cost. $29

Category:  bargain basement budget

Review.  Wow - 29 bucks for a pedal with TWO switches (my only such pedal until the King of Kings)!  I do not begrudge myself buying it at that price. But at the end of the day, this is not really a good pedal for me.  For starters, with anything resembling a reasonable gain, this pedal is really noisy, and the noise gate has a hard time keeping up. The boost only works when the main distortion is engaged - which is unfortunate - I would have kept it on the board if the boost was independent. The tone, as far as metal tones go is ok, but nothing particularly exciting. Muza FD55 (see below) makes this pedal completely redundant on the main board.

Difficulty of use: Moderate. I mean, it sounds pretty metal even with gain most of the way down, but calibrating metal pedals is not my strong suit.

Rating:  C: works as advertised, but needs a different audience.

Verdict: Off the board.

15.  Playwell British Distortion

Provenance.  Amazon, some time in early 2021

Cost. $15

Category: bargain basement budget

Review.  Ugh.  At 15 bucks for "british" and "distortion", I figured that I'd take a plunge. The result though is rather disappointing. It sat on my board for a while because (as I stated in my Amazon review), I found one set of positions for Level, Gain, and Tone that created a decent tone distinct from any of my other tones on the board.  One set. Move the knobs just a bit, and the tone stops being decent to my ears.  To boot, the Tone knob is all but useless - move it just a bit off the Max position, and lose ALL the treble immediately. No range at all. Higher gain settings yield unpleasantness to my ears. Perhaps it is a proper rendering of the "British" distortion sound, but I just don't like it that much.

Difficulty of use: Hard. It is hard to find a good tone.

Rating:  D-: do not buy.  I don't know if this is just Playwell, or ALL "british distortion" budget models from all manufacturers, but this particular pedal is not a good deal even at the measly $15. There are better bargain basement pedals.

Verdict:  Off the board

16. ENO Blues Overdrive

Provenance.  Amazon, 2021

Cost. $29, but received a $10 discount.

Category:  Bargain Basement Budget

Review.   I wrote a bad review of the ENO's envelope filter pedal, and received a "sorry you did not like it, here is a $10 coupon" note from them. I decided to give ENO another try and bought their blues overdrive pedal.  Interestingly enough, the one I received looked different than the Amazon picture - it looks like two batches were made and they colored them differently. 

This is the only ENO pedal (I have three) that sounded reasonable.  There is a nice range to tone and gain. On low gain, I can get anything from icepick (with tone set to max) to pretty warm sweet blues (tone below noon, neck pickup). Higher gain is not as useful, I think, but overall, using this pedal was fun.

Difficulty of use: Easy. Lower gain, control Tone, win.

Rating:  B

Verdict: Off the board: at the time I had too many low-gain overdrives on the board and needed one overdrive pedal to move to a separate pedalboard. This seemed both somewhat duplicated (Dolamo does similar things, for example), and somewhat versatile to fit the bill. So, it went off the main board.  

17. Caline Pure Sky Overdrive

Provenance.  Ali Express, June 2021

Cost. $25.

Category: Bargain Basement Budget 

Review.   My first Ali Express pedal purchase. It was basically an "I can take it or leave" purchase, but Ali Express delivered it rather speedily. A really nice transparent overdrive, which, on low gain settings can be easily used as a boost.  I tried it both at the beginning of the overdrive chain, where I mostly used it to boost other overdrives, and at the end - where it is sitting now. I am using this pedal a bit less now, but it this pedal doesn't really have too many "bad" spots. Occasionally I turn it on all by itself to play "loud clean".

Difficulty of use:  Easy. You get nice tone from pretty much any meaningful position.

Rating:  B: probably closer to B+, but I am not using it much.

Verdict: keeper.

18.  Behringer Vintage Tube Overdrive TO800

Provenance.  Sweetwater, late 2020

Cost. $19.

Category:  Bargain Basement Budget

Review.   When the entire line of Behringer pedals goes on $19 sale, and you don't have a tube screamer, you buy a $19 tube screamer.  You get a very nice tube screamer. I can definitely make it work all sorts of things - from a pretty overdriven sound, to barely audible overdrive. It definitely sounds unique compared to all other overdrives on the board, and thus,  it earns its keep by providing nice alternate tone options. Even though it is kind of  made redundant by the Muza distortion pedal (see below), I like using it for tube screamer sounds over the Muza. I also like on occasion to double up on the tube screaming and run this pedal into the Muza in tube screamer mode.  Gets a bit noisy, but not too bad, and the tone becomes quite rich and saturated/distorted.

Difficulty of use: Easy. What you see is what you get - dial anything you want - it'll sound like a tube screamer.

Rating:   B. Solid.

Verdict: keeper until I decide to get a different screamer clone - which might not happen for a long time.

19. Electro-Harmonix Lumberjack Log Overdriver

Provenance.  Reverb, 2020.

Cost. $45

Category: vintage 

Review.  I was looking for a boost pedal, and wound up spotting this one and decided, heck, I can buy a real Electro-Harmonix pedal for a measly 45 bucks? How cool is that!  On a more serious note, I was attracted by the unusual nature of the gain (log growth), and the presence of a separate volume and boost knobs (with the noticeable absence of tone).  Youtube videos made is sound like a rather obscure pedal, so I went ahead an bought it. 

To my surprise, it is actually a nice pedal with a lot of range. Lack of tone is a bit unfortunate (I tend to correct its tone with an EQ pedal), but boy does it go from clean to dirty with ease and with a lot of different options. Low gain (log) with boost up and we have a mid-boost, which stays clean. Raise the gain, and you can have as much dirt as you want.  I typically hold it on clean-ish settings, and use it as one of the three go-to clean tones on the board.

Difficulty of use: Moderate. Log control needs some getting used to. 

Rating:  A: yeah, I know it's an obscure pedal from a manufacturer that does not even notice it. I still love it.

Verdict: keeper. The only way it moves off the main board is if I ever make a vintage pedalboard.  

20.  VSN Plexion Rocker Overdrive

Provenance.  Amazon, November 2021

Cost. $29.

Category:  Bargain Basement Budget 

Review.   Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal. Wanted a plexi overdrive. Chose this one over several others based primarily on the warpaint.  This purchase came before King to Kings.  In isolation, this is a great saturated overdrive pedal. Short of the Muza distortion models, this is probably the heaviest overdrive I have on the main board (Kmise US Dream is another candidate here).  While the pic above shows it in "Bright" mode, I prefer "Normal" mode, and then roll down the tone a bit for warmer sound.

King of Kings made this pedal a bit redundant - at some point I was switching between one side of King of Kings and the plexion, and they sounded almost indistinguishable to me.  

Difficulty of use: Easy.  Pick the gain. Go.

Rating:  B: nice pedal, it is not its fault that it is close to redundant

Verdict: keeper. For now. If I need space on the board for a more exciting overdrive, this may be the first one to go.

21. Muza FD55 Distortion M+

Provenance.   Ebay.

Cost. $18 pedal + $10 shipping.

Category: Modeling. What little I know about the maker (a Dutch company that released a series of modeling pedals including distortion, reverb and delay) is from a couple of web pages, and one or two youtube videos I was able to find.

Review.   Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I bought a distortion pedal with 10 different distortion/fuzz models, including Distortion+, Rat, MuffFuzz and MetalZone, and with six presets, for less than the what the Plexion cost me.  And yes, this is a modeling pedal, but this matters less than the fact that this pedal just rocks.  I bought it at the time when I was coming to a realization that I could use some Distortion+ or Guv'nor style saturated/compressed/clipped distortion pedals on my board, and was looking for one representative of the genre that would not be embarrassing. Instead I got the entire genre in one box.

Purists will probably scoff, but screw that. This pedal sounds amazing even on the settings on which it should not.  It can get loud and rough around the edges, so some care with the settings is required, and this is especially true if one wants to switch from one model to another on the fly - the change in tone is nothing compared to the change in volume (different models have different controls engaged). But I was able after a bit of tinkering to tame every single model (even the DOD FX86 DEATH METAL (tm) model which should only exist in nightmares).  Three models stand out: the Tube Screamer model is more fun to play than my dedicated Behringer clone (although I sometimes wax nostalgic and play the Behringer pedal just for kicks). The Distortion + model is rich and creamy, and easy to control, thanks to just two knobs. And Rat is my go to for this pedal.

The interface is complex, but the UI/UX design my the folks at MUZA is top-notch. For each model, there are up to six possible controls, and the LEDs show which controls are used with the currently selected model.  The dynamics are great and so is the range of tones - both within single models and between different ones. Somehow the three metal pedals all manage to sound very differently, justifying their inclusion (although I would have preferred a Guv'nor model).  

The pedal also has six presets, which the previous owner set to some fairly nice sounds, including a couple of low-gain, edge-of-breakup options that are among my favorite tones out of this box. 

Difficulty of use: Should be Moderate (lots of controls), but the awesome UI/UX makes it Easy.

Rating:  A+.  Best bang for the buck save for my first looper, perhaps.

Verdict:  Keeper. One of two anchors of the entire drive section of the pedalboard.

22.  Joyo King of Kings

Provenance.  Amazon

Cost. $69

Category:  Budget, clone.

Review.  I was both Bluesbreaker-curious, and, upon learning about Analogman - curious about that specific pedal as well. Was looking at some outright rip-offs from DemonFX and LYR, when I spotted this new Joyo pedal.  When it appeared on Amazon for the same price I saw on AliExpress, I pounced.

This is the most recent acquisition, and the ostensible reason why the pedalboard was rebuilt - the gap in the first row between the MUZA and the Blue Sky is the space left of the King of Kings. This is an awesome pedal, and a great and versatile choice.

At the outset (diode clipping switches down, tone midway, Gain at 11 o'clock) each individual half of the pedal sounded very much like my VSN Plexion. Which makes sense given the provenance of the ideas behind both pedals.  However, with both sides engaged, and with clipping diods on, the tonal range of this pedal far exceeds everything else I have, except for the MUZA, which isn't a fair comparison anyway, as it is a modelling pedal.

Figuring out this pedal takes a bit of time, but the good news is that there isn't a single bad tone in it - pretty much any setting, with pretty much any pickup combo on my guitar, with pretty much anything else on the board (I usually use some warming EQ, reverb and delay, I also added the compressor for this pedal to some nice effect) it produces really sweet and playable tones.  

Both Gain and Volume controls are gradual,  "on the side of caution", which means that 12 o'clock Volume and 12 o'clock Gain are not too loud or too distorted respectively.  Tone plays really nice with them, and in the vein of my recent attempts to play warmer sounds, it rolls off nicely, taking the edge off the most biting treble in the tone with ease.

Where things require some understanding and experimentation is with (a) diode clipping settings, and (b) playing the two halves together. 

Diode clipping settings. One thing to recognize (thank you, Josh Scott!) is that the clipping diode settings are not going to change anything until the pedal is actively distorting the signal. So, on low gain settings, there is not difference whatsoever between the four possible positions of the clipping diodes. It is when the gain is ramped up to close to max, when flipping the feedback switch (#2) produces a compressed distortion, and flipping the clipping switch (#1) saturates the signal, although without falling into the "scooped mids" territory.  Moving both switches into the "up" position turns King of Kings into a full-blown distortion pedal, albeit with some dearth of lows.

Pairing the two halves of the pedal. I've had several setting combinations where each half of the pedal by itself is quite loud, but turning both on results both in enhanced distortion, but also in a drop in the volume of the sound - so there is a definite compression effect at play here.  To properly operate both halves at the same time, I first set both halves to the same settings, and then adjust the behavior of each half to my liking, but gradually. I like keeping one half with diodes in the "down" position, and one half - with diodes in the "up" position, and high gain to turn them on.

Difficulty of use:  Moderate. The most sophisticated overdrive pedal I have, requires definite experimentation to get the sounds one likes -  especially in the part where the diode clipping settings start making sense.

Rating:  A+. A huge boost (no pun intended) to my pedalboard.

Verdict: Keeper. The other anchor of the drive section of the pedalboard.

23. Sonicake Fuzz

Provenance.  Amazon, 2020

Cost.  $29, I think

Category: Bargain Basement Budget

Review.  Somewhat of the testament to this pedal is that this has been my only fuzz, and I don't necessarily feel compelled to buy another one.  Of the two Sonicake pedals, this is the winner.  Great range of fuzz sounds, fuzz that sounds really good in a mix (when I play with the looper pedal with like 2-3 guitar overdubs), fuzz that can be both gentle and powerful.

I have experimented with a variety of uses - boosting it with other pedals, combining it with the octaver, or boosting another overdrive with it.  Each time, the sound, while not necessarily something to use every day, was impressive.

Difficulty of use: Easy.  Fuzz knob does all the work. 

Rating:  A.  Not using it often, but it's a quality pedal.

Verdict: keeper. I should have one fuzz on the pedalboard.