The Airis Electric Dragon is a distortion pedal by a Canadian builder laser-focused on releasing hand-made stompboxes for metal players. It’s actually two effects in one, combining a tubescreamer-based overdrive (right side) and a circuit inspired by the TC Integrated Preamp (left side), each with their own footswitches and volume controls.
The two channels can be used independently or stacked, conjuring up three different tone combinations at your toe tips, with the preamp side providing clarity and headroom thanks to its internal 18v circuit, and the screamer adding the extra gain and mid bump to push things into a sonic realm ranging from mid boost to ultra-overdriven territory when both circuits are on.
While the right side’s Tone control can brighten or darken the TS side of the pedal, it’s the preamp’s Bite knob that adds treble, highlighting the pick’s attack and crunch, while the Tight control (also on the preamp’s side) will remove unnecessary low end.
Check out the demo of it, below.
Airis Electric Dragon Distortion, Builder’s Notes
What do you get when you combine a tubescreamer based circuit and a TC Integrated Preamp based circuit? You get the Electric Dragon! Typically one or the other is the perfect pairing for certain amps, but why not have both in one? Both halves can be used independently or stacked, so it’s essentially two full pedals in one. The tubescreamer side has also gotten a heavy dose of “Airis” as it has the Klon style power supply and buffers.
Part of what makes the TC Pre fantastic is in the power supply section. Providing a very Klon-like bi-polar +18volt/-9volt setup, it adds the most clarity and headroom possible. Far superior than just running 18volts into a pedal that doesn’t need it. To make the Electric Dragon scream a little louder and clearer, this same power supply is feeding the Screamer side of the pedal. So don’t run more than 9volts into it. The pedal will take care of everything else. Except playing the guitar for you unfortunately. (that one is still in development)
Volume: Each half of the pedal features it’s own independent volume control.
Right Side
Tone: This is an active high shelf control. At noon it gives you no effect to the tone with lower settings being darker, higher settings being brighter.
Gain: At minimum, this will make the pedal essentially a clean mid boost. Turning it up will add some dirt, saturation and crunchiness.
Left Side
Bite: This is where the bulk of the treble control comes in. Crank this up to get an insane amount of pick attack, crunch and bite. Too high will get noisy though as it’s heavily amplifying all the nasty stuff your pickups are picking up. This is the nature of high frequencies.
Tight: We reversed the direction of the original Low control because it seemed ALL the best settings were with very little low end dialed in and the control itself was really a Tight control as it was. So now you turn it up to get a tighter tone. Can cut the mud out of any low tuning.
Power: The Electric Dragon features an onboard bi-polar power supply, so it requires 9volts ONLY!!! Higher voltage will only damage it.
Graphics by Richard of Airis Effects/Airis Audio Technologies.
- Volume/Gain/Tone (Right Side) Volume/Bite/Tight (Left Side) Controls
- High quality, low tolerance components
- Neutrik Jacks
- Alpha Pots
- Heavy duty, yet lightweight diecast aluminum enclosure
- 2 Year Warranty
- True Bypass with heavy duty mechanical footswitch
- Powered by 2.1mm negative tip 9Volt DC adapter (Sold Separately)
- Current Draw 25-40mA
- Hand Built in Canada
