Taurus Servo
29 Pedals Euna alternative?
€135 at taurus-amp.pl - free worldwide shipping
Taurus Amplification are a guitar amp and effects company based in Poland. They describe the Servo as an Analog Tone Enhancer pedal that makes your guitar sound more vivid and saturated while maintaining its character. This description is very vague. Essentially, the Servo is a buffer that restores missing frequencies in your guitar tone with the added option of boosting your input signal.
Features
The features are quite similar to the Euna by 29 Pedals. Both are designed to replace your input buffer and restore fullness to your guitar tone. With the gain control, you can set the extent to which missing frequencies will be added. This does not increase the overall volume. Having it at the maximum setting has a similar effect to having Harmonics, Bright, and Low switches on the Euna buffer. The Boost switch on the Servo has 3 positions: off, slight volume boost, and boost with a touch of overdrive. Even at the highest setting, it adds a very small amount of gain. The pedal is in true bypass when switched off.
Another similarity to the Euna is the power source. The Servo will accept anything between 9-15V with automatic polarity detection. It doesn’t go as far as the Euna to accept both AC and DC currents though.
Sound
The Servo will improve almost any guitar tone. If you have a long signal chain of true bypass pedals, you are guaranteed to lose some low end. Not only will the Servo ensure your signal stays intact, but it will also make your guitar sound fuller. If you are recording your guitar directly into a recording interface, adding a Servo will yield a more complete tone that you can then EQ to taste later on. I find this works better than recording a guitar directly and then trying to bring back missing frequencies. Again, not dissimilar from the much more expensive Euna by 29 Pedals.
Pairing the Servo with a humbucker-equipped guitar will add clarity without affecting the focused sound of the pickups. You might want to turn the “servo gain” down a bit to avoid pushing the mids too far. Note that this is not gain in the usual sense of the word. It does not increase your signal output at all.
The Servo sounds best with single-coil pickups. It thickens up the tone while retaining the clarity of single coils. In this scenario, maxing out the gain sounds incredible. It functions like a combination of a preamp and a compressor.
The boost switch is very mild. It can be used to either push weaker pickups or add a tiny bit of breakup to an otherwise clean sound.
Build Quality
The top-mounted jacks are very convenient and the sturdy metal enclosure will likely last a lifetime. However, boutique builders like Analogman and JHS have raised the bar on the quality we have come to expect from guitar pedals. The Servo does not live up to that expectation. The top plate that marks all the controls is made of flimsy plastic. The text will likely start fading very quickly with regular use.
The vague description of what the pedal actually does prompted me to take a look inside and inspect the circuit. The Servo uses mostly surface-mount components, so don't expect to repair it if something goes wrong.
The relevant components were covered in epoxy, similar to how Bill Finnegan gooped the early KLON pedals. Epoxy can scraped off relatively easily, so if someone actually wanted to clone the Servo, they would have no problems doing that.
There are a few other red flags in the circuit. Tenting vias are a very cheap and commonplace process in PCB fabrication. It helps prevent exposure to the elements and reduce accidental shorting or contact with the circuit. Servo’s vias are non-tented. There are also multiple 90-degree traces, which are considered bad practice in PCB design. It is unlikely to cause problems for this pedal, but a good circuit board designer would have avoided that. There are many other small issues that could have been easily and cheaply addressed by the pedal designers (or possibly better manufacturing) instead of focusing on covering it with epoxy.
Bottom Line
The Servo is an excellent tonal enhancer for your guitar. It is a worthy rival to the extremely popular Euna by 29 Pedals while being almost three times cheaper. I have no reservations recommending this pedal to anybody wanting to improve their core guitar tone, but it is worth keeping in mind that the build quality is not on par with other boutique or even mass market builders out there.