I'm sadly in a position of having to return this and I'll explain. I really find it difficult to be in a position to criticize this pedal when everyone is raving about it, but hey I'll go on anyway.
First the positives. The pedal in terms of build quality is a tank. Like any other CTC pedal, and I have been through a few, there is no expense spared in the construction, finishing, and selection of components. The buffer on the Klon side is amazing, one of the top if not the best buffer I've ever used, and the Klon side sounds great on the stock setting.
Nevertheless I found some significant (for me) weaknesses when using it.
a) For me the Dumble side was a major let down. I read and watched raving reviews about this how glassy and dynamic it is etc. To be honest, my Laney L5 studio in the Low input, bright switch on, and EQ B-3 M-3 Tr-7, Tone-8 sounds leaps and bounds better with my Strat. In fact, if anything, I felt the pedal killed the harmonics and the glassiness of my amp considerably at any gain setting/EQ.
b) The amp side has 'enormous amounts of volume' as also stated by CTC. My opinion is that this amount of volume has no practical application as this is a pedal more likely to be set and forget rather than fiddle with it all the time. You can switch between the amp models with a FS, but only with the same settings, therefore you can't use the Dumble side as both an OD and a clean boost in one session which makes the feature pointless IMO. Unity, with the gain set at 2 o'clock is around 8 o'clock and the enormous amount of boost the pedal can provide makes it very difficult and fiddly to not only find unity, but also pinpoint a desired boost setting. Note I have the same issue in the Hi-Power Colorsound side, but I had no difficulty getting great tones there. Why there is so much volume boost on these pedals is beyond me.
c) The germanium transistors compared to the stock diodes do change the sound, particularly taking away the Klon muddiness thus making it more clear with a more crisp and aggressive attack. Both settings sound great, but IMO you wouldn't buy this pedal for the Klon side to NOT sound like a Klon. So the inclusion of this option makes no sense to me after hearing it. These transistors would probably make a better application than this.
So overall, I find that the Unobtanium Raw is an expensive pedal for what it does, given that I found it very difficult to get value and new sounds out of. I have not tried the original version, but I'm sad to say this pedal felt like a gimmick to me, more like bunching together a few hyped things than trying to make something meaningful, and I did not expect this from CTC.
I'll say I have a few of their pedals currently on my board, the TI:ME delay, the Super Conductor, and the Hi-Power and they will never leave my pedalboard especially the latter 2. The Hi-Power, which is a similar concept, makes much more sense as a pedal to me and is much easier to configure and get great sounds out of despite having a more complex EQ interface.
