Vertex Steel String MkII Clean Drive vs Way Huge Pork Loin
The Vertex Steel String MkII Clean Drive and the Way Huge Pork Loin are both pedals sharing full, gritty. The Vertex Steel String MkII Clean Drive leans bright. The Way Huge Pork Loin leans transparent. Current prices: $149.99 vs $267.23.
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Blended from circuit-archetype lineage, dynamic feel, tone-signal overlap and tone-vector distance — the tone vector itself is derived from editorial description text, not a measured acoustic signal, so this reflects how similarly the catalog copy describes the two, not a lab measurement. Shown only within a gear class, and only where there's enough evidence to be meaningful.37% — somewhat different
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Genres both listings are associated with.- Blues
- Rock
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Derived from overlapping tonal signals across both listings.- full
- gritty
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Citation/mention fame — how often this gear is cited across artist rigs and gear discussion.$149.99via Reverb
$267.23via Reverb
The Vertex Steel String Clean Drive MkII recreates the tonality and feel of the iconic Dumble Steel String Singer amplifier in a stompbox, designed alongside a real Steel String Singer unit for accuracy. Below noon on the gain knob it works as a highly versatile clean boost, with a Filter control dialing in D-style midrange shaping; past noon it sweetens the signal with warm, compressed, vine-ripened drive character. The MkII revision shrinks the footprint by a third versus the original and adds a Jazz/Rock toggle for extra bass-cut EQ shaping. It excels on grittier tones and thick D-style compression, though some reviewers find it grows growly or bass-heavy in front of an already-clean amp with bright pickups.
The Way Huge Pork Loin is an overdrive built around a soft-clipped BiFET gain stage blended with a separate clean path modeled on a classic British preamp, letting players mix in clean signal alongside the drive for extra thickness and definition. It adds grit without over-processing the tone or thinning out the low end, fattening single-coil pickups in particular without turning muddy, and pairs especially well with a bright Tele bridge pickup for a tone that's thick yet cutting, reminiscent of vintage rock tones like early Black Crowes recordings. Its clean-blend feature is the standout control. It is voiced on the darker side, so neck-pickup or middle-position combinations can sound overly dark on some guitar and amp pairings.
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Genres this gear is documented as being used in.- Jazz
- Country
- bright
- transparent