NUX Steel Singer Drive Pedal | Dumble tones for $50 with a Strat, Tele and Les Paul! Review & Demo

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This is my take on the NUX Steel Singer drive pedal, which is an extremely affordable ($50/€45 at time of publication!) Dumble In A Box overdrive that may or may not be a clone of another drive pedal. Or amp. Turns out not many people are sure what’s a clone of what these days, and to be honest, I’d rather focus on showing you how this pedal actually sounds!

Get the NUX Steel Singer here:

But anyway, the Steel Singer promises to be a pretty sweet way to get that elusive Dumble tone – beloved of John Mayer, Robben Ford, and other such six-string luminaries – at a fraction of the price. I think it does that mid-pushed rock sound extremely well indeed, while also breaking up in a very Tubescreamer-reminiscent way (with a little more chunk), and it’s more flexible than it imagined it would be too.

In this video, I put the Steel Singer through its paces with my Fender Stratocaster, my Fender Telecaster and my Epiphone Les Paul to see how it handles the different guitars and pickups and all the different styles of music I play. That means you’re going to hear riffs in the styles of indie, classic rock, pop punk, alternative rock and more. Afterwards, I do a loop on each guitar where I tweak the Steel Singer’s controls to show you all the extremes you can get with it.

Here’s the links to the various playing samples and info bits:


00:00 Hello!
00:54 Introduction to the NUX Steel Singer and what we’re doing today
02:18 Today’s rig

02:48 Clean reference tones and turning on the Steel Singer
03:48 Upbeat poppy barre chords
04:35 Open string ringing chords
05:19 Bluesey southern rock riff
06:37 Edgy pop rock barre chords
07:21 Country picking lead riff
07:45 Groovy classic rock riff
09:08 Greta Van Fleet inspired classic rock riff
09:49 AC/DC inspired classic rock riff
10:39 Hendrix inspired classic rock riff
11:29 Indie rock barre chords
12:50 Fat indie rock rhythm chords
14:19 Indie droning chords
15:11 Indie rock octave chords riff
16:25 Hard rock riff
17:16 Classic hard rock riff
18:09 Glam rock riff
18:51 Foo Fighters inspired modern rock riff
19:43 Alternative rock riff
20:26 Green Day inspired punk rock riff
21:09 Pop punk melodic lead sound
21:57 Progressive rock riff (Drop D tuning)
22:43 Hardcore chugging riff (Drop D tuning)
23:28 Hardcore punk riff (Drop D tuning)
24:16 Heavy lead sounds

24:56 Fender Telecaster indie rock loop with Steel Singer tonal tweaking
27:28 Fender Stratocaster indie loop with Steel Singer tonal tweaking
29:30 Epiphone Les Paul classic rock loop with Steel Singer tonal tweaking

31:33 My thoughts – sounds and versatility
33:14 My favorite guitar/pickups with the Steel Singer
34:05 Is the Steel Singer a clone?
35:57 Two things I don’t like about the Steel Singer
37:45 Final conclusion and goodbye


Here’s the Free The Tone String Slinger pedal I alluded to in the clone part:

(Other people have mentioned the Vertex Steel String as a possible inspiration for the Steel Singer, by the way – including Vertex themselves. However, the similarities are in name and looks only, and even then, both pedals are actually going for the aesthetic of the Dumble Overdrive Special amp. A quick tone test proves the two pedals sound quite different. I’ll be trying to get a Steel String on the channel soon to do an A/B test for you, and if I can lay my hands on the Free The Tone String Slinger, I’ll do that as well!)

My setup was as follows: I ran the Steel Singer straight into my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 head. That went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That's it. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Oh, and I used my TC Electronic Ditto Looper to play the loops.

Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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H&K Black Spirit 200 head:
TC Electronic Ditto Looper:
Focusrite 4i4 (this is the newer equivalent of my 2i4, which they don’t make any more!):
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Enjoy!



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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Controlled Distress – Biz Baz Studio.

#NUXPedals #SteelSinger #OverdrivePedal #DumbleAmp #DumbleInABox


*Note: certain links in the description are affiliate links. If you click said links and purchase anything as a result, I will receive a small commission. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it does help to support the channel. So, if you do that, thank you very much!*