We recently reviewed an excellent overdrive pedal from our friends to the north, Canadian-based Ground Control Audio. They’re back at it again, this time with their newly released “discrete distortion”, the Locust. Pushing silicon amplification into loud and sluggish distortion territory, this pea green monster has a lot of power, and will put a smile on your amp’s face as soon as you plug it in.
Volume, Gain and Tone make up the control section for the Locust, with each control contributing to the firepower harnessed within this pedal. There’s toggle switch present as well, allowing you to select from two mid-notch depth modes, enabling both eardrum-shattering highs and deep, dark and swarmy sound for low-end riffs. Though labeled as a distortion, the Locust is extremely capable of getting warm, crunchy overdriven tones, too, if you roll off the Gain and use your guitar’s volume knob a little bit.
The high impedance JFET frontend helps enable excellent preservation of any tone that comes before it, and the high-quality parts and attention to the build make it a solid and reliable choice for any pedalboard. Building on the Blood Oath Overdrive we already checked out, the Locust is a step-up in gain, and sounds absolutely scorching through a tube amp. Check the demo below to hear what it can do, then go grab on for yourself! Thanks again to the crew at Ground Control Audio for letting us be guinea pigs once again – stay tuned for more pedal reviews from them in the near future!
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