Ernie Ball EB6180 VP-JR

Ernie ball has always been a company that makes reliable products, especially when it comes to volume pedals. The Vp Jr does what it says on the box, it has a strong metal chassis that is practically bullet proof and is big enough for it to feel very comfortable under your foot but not too big to make it heavy and cumbersome.

The volume control range is very smooth and you don't get any strange jumps in volume and sudden drops, it's all nice and even. The Vp Jr also has a separate tuner output so you can plug your tuner in and tune whenever you need to without switching on and off the tuner, which is extremely helpful in a live situation.

The pedal also works well as an expression pedal, just plug in a trs cable and you're good to go.

This is a great volume pedal. This is the physically smaller one in the series. It is completely passive and require no batteries or power supplies. The action of the sweep (both physically and the sweep of the volume due to the potentiometer) is great and super easy to control. Since it is completely passive a use of the tuner out may result in some tone loss due to the loading of you're signal when passively splitting your signal into two different paths. A buffer in front of the pedal may help this issue. Even though it has this little flaw it is my go to volume pedal because of the natural sweep in volume and the fact that it doesn't color your tone i the different positions. If you dont use the tuner out it's a no brainer.

This is basically everything a volume pedal should be... sturdy enough to take some abuse, straight forward, and passive!

The only thing I don't like about this pedal is how far it moves, it feels like my foot is at an un-natural angle when all the way down, but I'm sure I'll get used to that.

I can't comment on the "tone-sucking" of using the tuner output on this pedal as I have a Line 6 G30 wireless receiver going into it which has a built in buffer so my tone doesn't suffer with the tuner out, but others may have different results.

I've heard that the string in these is quite fragile, but from giving it a little flick it seems perfectly strong to me, especially as there isn't too much tension on it.

There's a nice little feature of a dip switch just inside the pedal which toggles two different modes, almost like it goes from linear to logarithmic increase. I guess this is useful if there's a specific usage you want from your volume swells, but it's more or less redundant for me as I leave it on linear!