Mihali Savoulidis Vermont Twiddle twiddlemusic.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve been playing guitar since I was 14, but I really had just been playing in my bedroom and writing songs and working on my lead playing. I went to college to form a band and play all these songs I had written during high school, and the end result is Twiddle. I started really gigging out when I was 18,...
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Most of us have played some version of the famous Tube Screamer pedal before, no matter what model number or differing shade of green it might be, with varying levels of likability. Some players swear by them, others want to toss them in the trash, but one thing remains constant: they’re well-known and not going anywhere soon. Today’s pedal, the TS-777 Ultra from DC Pedals, focuses on the TS-808, possibly the most...
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Matt Johnson Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Tortuga Effects www.tortugaeffects.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve been playing guitar and bass for 26 years, but started as a musician on cello, three years before that. I remember wanting to play cello because being in the school band meant you had to blow into things. I didn’t want to do that. I also didn’t want to sit in my classroom during...
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Jeremy DePoyster Chicago, IL The Devil Wears Prada www.tdwpband.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I got my first acoustic at 10, and have played ever since. I took a quick interest in keyboards, synths, and sequencers and have been making music with them since around the same time. I started with a KORG Polysix running a curly cable into a Fender Champ Amp. Who have been some of your...
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Tube Screamers are one of the most popular effects pedal models of all time, whether you dig ’em or not. There have been many, many recreations of these fine machines as well, some with excellent tones that nearly match the originals, some that don’t get as close or fall a bit short in overall sound. Today’s pedal absolutely falls into the former category, in the fine tradition of well-defined craftsmanship and tone...
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Luke Miller Denver, CO Lotus www.lotusvibes.com Luke The Knife (DJ/Produce/Remix) soundcloud.com/luketheknife How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve been a professional musician for 12 years. I’ve been a musician for about 20 years. I took piano lessons as a kid, but I consider my true origin as a musician when I started teaching myself guitar freshman year of high school. That’s when my...
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Jesse Aycock (Tulsa, OK) www.jesseaycock.com / www.facebook.com/jesseaycockband Hard Working Americans (everywhere USA) www.thehardworkingamericans.com Paul Benjaman Band (Tulsa, OK) www.paulbenjamanband.com / www.facebook.com/paulbenjamanband Lauren Barth (Tulsa, OK) www.laurenbarth.com / www.facebook.com/laurenbarthmusic How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I guess I’ve been a...
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Jesse Miller Philadelphia, PA Lotus – www.lotusvibes.com Octave Cat – www.facebook.com/OctaveCat Beard-o-Bees – www.facebook.com/Beard.o.Bees How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? My folks had me in piano lessons when I was young. I think I did that for 5 or 6 years. It did give me a head start on reading music, music theory and basic keyboard skills. In high school, I started...
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Andrew Scherzer aka Goody aka Dewey aka StheNFA aka Daylicker aka Bruce Loy Portland, Maine JAWGEMS – facebook.com/JAWGEMS/ Sara Hallie Richardson – sarahallierichardson.com/ How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve been playing for about 13 years. I literally started playing bass because my best friend Lee Crossen got me a ticket to see George Clinton and the Parliament...
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Drew Shirley Switchfoot.com How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? My mom made me take piano lessons. I quit when I got into high school and she said “you’ll thank me some day.” She was right. I picked up my older brothers guitar and taught myself a few chords to play in church youth group. After that I discovered Led Zeppelin and went on to write some songs, start a band and...
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Chuck Garvey Cincinnati, OH moe. www.moe.org Ha Ha The Moose @chukg on Twitter moechukg on Instagram How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I started playing instruments when I was young, just hammering stuff out by ear on acoustic guitar and piano, but started lessons for Tenor saxophone when i was in 5th grade. Played sax for 8-9 years and also started to play more acoustic and electric guitar...
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Andy Fuchs Fuchs Audio Technology/Plush FX Pedals Div. 407 Getty Ave Second Floor West Clifton NJ 07011 973-772- 4420 www.fuchsaudiotechnology.com/ How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I started messing with a broken old Eminee plastic guitar I found in the basement of my families music store when I was about ten. I guess around 14 or 15 years old I’d been playing flute in the school band...
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Jared Scharff SNL Band guitarist Pearl Lion instrumental project Creator of “Unnecessary Shredding” YouTube series www.soundcloud.com/IamPearlLion www.youtube.com/JaredScharff Instagram: @ScharffIsHere Twitter: @ScharffIsHere SnapChat: JaredScharff Facebook: JaredScharffOfficial Facebook: Pearl Lion How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve been in love with music since I was a kid and...
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Mike Gantzer Guitarist for Aqueous Buffalo, NY https://aqueousband.com/ https://www.facebook.com/aqueousband/ How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? Incidentally, when I first started playing music was in the 3rd grade with the standard issue recorder they give out to everyone, and i HATED it. haha I picked up trumpet for awhile, but I recall being sort of turned off with the rigidity of the...
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Celestial Effects 22 Kane Industrial Drive Hudson, MA 01749 800-343-4492 sales@celestialeffects.com www.celestialeffects.com How long have you guys been musicians? How did you each get into it in the first place? Dom: Thanks to my dad, who loved music but never played an instrument, my formal musical education came from playing trumpet and coronet from 3rd grade through high school. In high school I played in the concert band, wind...
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Known for creating some interesting and unique pedals geared more towards the heavy side of music, Pro Tone Pedals keeps on putting out some great gear, and today’s featured pedal is one of their signature effects. The Dead Horse Overdrive is Pro Tone’s take on a classic circuit from a certain famous green box, only with more improvements and better sound. In their words, “It’s based on a Tube...
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The Airis Effects Savage Drive is one of the most underrated overdrive pedals out there, the design that is put on it automatically makes you think, ok this is another “metal pedal” when sure it is used a lot for metal, but it is a very versatile pedal! Do not let the graphic fool you. I use this pedal for metal as that is just the genre I play, I can play other genres on it but since I play metal mostly I will base my...
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Today, we’ve got another awesome addition to our guest reviewer series, this time it’s Rob Compa from the excellent band Dopapod! I’d like to say thanks to him for taking some time out and writing this review on a very rare and unique pedal, looking forward to more reviews in the future, Rob! Enough of my spiel, here’s what Rob has to say: Hey guys! About a year ago, I finally got to that point where my...
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When I received today’s pedal in the mail from our friends at Sublime Guitar Company, one person immediately popped into my head: Joel Cummins, keyboardist for Umphrey’s McGee. Being the elder member of the group, Joel has repeatedly taken flack and guff from the other guys in the band over the years, and the graphic on the aptly-named Hippy Joel Overdrive was just about a perfect fit. I decided to shoot Joel a message...
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When it first came out, I thought the Palisades Overdrive from EarthQuaker Devices was one of the coolest drives I had come across in a while, although it was just a bit bigger than I needed at the time. Fast forward some months, and the team at EQD decide that there might be a need for a smaller version of this pedal, that sticks to the basics but still offers up some tonal options, too. They’ve done it again, folks: help me...
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The highly-successful 9 Series of effects pedal from Ibanez demonstrated how innovative and adventurous the company was in the early 80’s, and this series produced some of the most recognizable and most used pedals in history, such as the TS9 Tube Screamer, the AF9 Auto Filter and the incredible AD9 Analog Delay. Another of my favorites from this series is the FL9 Flanger, the pedal we’ll be checking out in this review....
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Well, there’s always a first in this crazy business, and we’ve got another one today! The pedal in questions has traveled to us all the way from Belarus, a country I admittedly know very little about. However, after playing the Warmer Drive from Kartakou Amplification, it’s safe to say that they’ve got at least one cat who knows what they’re doing when it comes to building overdrive pedals. This one not...
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Usually you buy a certain overdrive pedal to do what you are going to use it for, you buy a TS9 for more metal and hard rock and you will get a boss blues driver for a smoother more lead/blues lead tone, but this Airis Effects Protodrive can do almost any of it. Trust me, I was skeptical also when I heard it could do it all, so I bought it to see if it could and I was blown away! I have owned this pedal for 6 months and have gotten...
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The Lumpy’s Tone Shop 7 Series Lemon Drop Overdrive is a fantastic but unusual overdrive. It’s great for what it does but it’s not for everyone. There are so many overdrives out there; it’s very difficult to figure out the difference between each, let alone which to choose. Broadly speaking, the most popular categories of overdrives are (there are definitely other categories but I’ll keep it simple):...
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The Sally Drive Classic DC from 6 Degrees FX looks like a race car on your pedalboard. Immediately jumping out at you visually, this thing is stunning to stare at, and then once you turn it on, you’re in for a real treat. The Sally Drive is a take on a classic, the 808 Tube Screamer, but with some beefy tonal properties and modern upgrades to make it a really special pedal. 6 Degrees took the general layout of the 808 and...
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This pedal is a one off custom job from Trevor at TSW Pedals, and is one (well, 2) of my favorite drives combined into one pedal. This is definitely my coolest pedal as it has my signature image laser engraved right onto the front panel. He takes his Dragon Slayer, which is a take on “plexi in a box” and combines it with his Infinite Drive (similar to a tube screamer but with a smoother tone control and more gain on tap)...
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I’m sure many of you have used a Tube Screamer or a TS-style circuit before. Have you ever said, “Man, I wish this TS-style pedal had an adjustable knob that controlled low mid frequencies and also had a toggle switch that added more gain when engaged! And can I get it in blue?” Well, you have specific wishes. And they have been answered with the Blue Note OD from J. Rockett Audio Designs. Let us start with the...
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One-offs. Custom graphics. Scratch-N-Dent. One-of-a-kind pedals have a special quality about them that regular pedals just don’t, whether it’s a rehousing of an old pedal, a personal message or graphic, a banged-up enclosure…or a 2-in-1. This particular custom pedal comes to us from our friends Pepper Pedals in Atlanta, GA, and is a combo of their awesome Chipotle Distortion and Jalapeño Overdrive. Look out for this...
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The Prince Of Tone (POT) is a tube screamer style overdrive “half” of Analogman’s King Of Tone pedal (The King has 2 of these pedals in one housing). The Prince has 3 knobs (Volume, Tone, Drive), an external 3-way toggle switch to switch gain modes (Boost, Overdrive, Distortion), and it has internal DIP switches (D1 = Lo-Mid lift to enhance the tone of the lower strings, and D2 = Turbo switch for more compression and...
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We’ve got another VIDEO review for you today, this time it’s the Doc Music Station Val Drive! Modern gain structured Tube Screamer tone! What’s not to like…and it’s from France! Check it out and subscribe to Kyle’s channel! Click ‘PLAY’ and enjoy the show! Submitted by Kyle
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“There’s no way this $29.00 pedal is gonna sound like a Tube Screamer”, I said to myself while pressing the ‘Place Order’ button for the Joyo JF-01 Vintage Overdrive. I was expecting it to probably end up in a pile of not-oft-used pedals, collecting cobwebs and watching it’s sparkling green finish turn an off-pea as the years rolled by. That is NOT to be the case with this marvel. For starters, the...
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Tube screamer style pedal on left side. Right side thickens it up and gets occasional use. I’ve had it since I think the late 90’s. Lately I just stack this on other drives when needed for a solo section. Both sides on gives nice feedback when cranked up. Users: Phil Keaggy Submitted by Steve, Instagram GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES, CONTEST INFO, SEE OUR LATEST DEMO VIDEOS AND MORE:
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We all search for warmth in our amps and pedals; I don’t know one guitarist who doesn’t. That was one of the main factors in selecting the Cream Overdrive from Plush/Fuchs, and it is the reason my tone sounds so good. No bells and whistles, nothing too fancy, just a great overdrive pedal, with ranges from a kind of bluesy mild drive to a thick, sonic distortion when really cranked. 3 simple knobs to control Gain, Tone and...
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We recently had the wonderful chance to check out two new pedals from our friends at Keeley Electronics, the Muse Driver & Noble Screamer, a couple of excellent drives and the first foray into Keeley’s new-look series. Today, we’ve got not one, not two, but THREE more new pedals from Robert and the crew, designed in the same layout and format as the previous two. Ladies and gents, help us welcome to the world the...
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Jake Snider Tacoma, Washington Minus the Bear (minusthebear.com) Sharks Keep Moving Onalaska State Route 522 How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’ve played guitar for something like 33 years. I was getting into metal and skate punk and wanted to play! Who have been some of your major musical influences, past or present? Too many to list! Descendents, Don Caballero, early Metallica, Jawbox,...
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The infamous Klon has produced more clones than perhaps any other circuit (well, maybe the Tubescreamer has it beat). We love a good Klone here at Pedal of the Day – hell, we even have a series dedicated to them on our YouTube channel. Today’s pedal brings another mythical creation to the table, this time in the form of the Handy FX Minotaur Overdrive… With the familiar layout and classic oxblood knobs, you’ll feel...
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Over the last couple of years, we’ve joyously learned that Mozztronics doesn’t make clone pedals, opting instead for emulation circuits of amps and specific but original takes on classic effects. Today we’ve got a good old overdrive, the GD-1 Bone Breaker Green Drive, which gives you FIVE different Screamer-esque options to choose from, and use as you see fit. You get 5 incredible drives in one pedal – what...
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With each new creation we see from Andrew and Mozztronics, we get a different lesson in circuitry, wiring, engineering and how to put squish amplifier tone into a pedal enclosure. Today is more of the same, as we’re investigating the MD-1 Mew Drive, which contains a circuit that uses cascaded JFET Mu amps to give a totally different sound to the screamer pedals, and all the variants (there are many). Lots of controls, lots of...
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The new DCP Series of pedals from our friends at Caline are all Dual Effects, featuring two of your favorite Caline pedals in one enclosure. With the effects ranging from overdrive to EQ to distortion to compression to fuzz and more, there’s something in this lineup for everyone. Today, we’re going to take a look at the DCP-02 Brutus Distortion Overdrive, a powerful dual-dirt combo that packs a punch and adds to your tone....
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Ah, the infamous Klon Centaur. That mythical sound that can be yours for the low, low price range of $2,000-4,000, if you can find one. For those of us who think that staggering amount of cash just might be able to be spent elsewhere, we’ve got the Klone. Surfacing in many forms, colors, configurations and sizes, these homages to the original give the masses that Klon tone, without the hefty price tag. We’ve got another...
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“Wait a minute, Doc. Ah…are you telling me you built a time machine…out of a DeLorean?” Thus begins one of the greatest time-travel adventures ever to be created for the big screen, Back to the Future. Not only is this a personal favorite here at Pedal of the Day, but to millions of movie-goers across the globe. You may be asking yourself, “Why is a pedal review talking about a 30+ year-old movie starring...
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WE LOVE PHISH. Said it, not sorry, deal. Now that you know that, know this: we were SUPER excited to have a Helping Friendly Box Overdrive Compressor from Hochstrasser Electronics appear on our doorstep, and here’s why. This particular pedal harkens after the setup that Trey Anastasio from Phish used for many years (and still does occasionally), where two differently-gained Tubescreamers were followed by the famous Ross...
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Anthony Thogmartin Papadosio EarthCry www.papadosio.com earthcry.net How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? Music has always been a huge part of my life. My father apparently sung to me while I was still in the womb. My mother used to play me to sleep with her violin. Who have been some of your major musical influences, past or present? In my early days I discovered Hendrix, Jethro Tull,...
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Joey Lewis Buffalo, NY Funktional Flow www.funktionalflow.com facebook.com/FunktionalFlowMusic youtube.com/user/funktionalflowmusic/videos How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? From what I can remember, a man in our neighborhood growing up gave an acoustic guitar to my older brother Justin and he quickly lost interest in it. That’s when I swooped in and nabbed it lol. But it was ok...
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Let’s face it: there are a LOT of overdrive pedals on the market right now. A LOT. For us, as pedal reviewers, we love it when something new and exciting in the world of overdrives comes along, and today’s featured pedal gave us that very feeling as soon as we plugged it in. It’s not so much the outer controls that make the Aerostat Overdrive from Killer Otter Electric stand out amongst a sea of screamers and klones,...
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Robert Keeley and the folks he employs just keep releasing more and more dynamite pedals, and we’re going to take a look at another one of them today. Considered rather normal by the standards of most of the Keeley effects we’ve reviewed recently, the Oxblood Overdrive takes on the world of mystical creatures, powerful tone enhancers and ridiculous pedal price tags all at once. Sort of their answer to the gold and silver...
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A while back, we reviewed a couple of pedals from the Big Joe Stomp Box Company, the B-304 Analog Delay and the B-309 Texas Screamer, and were impressed by both. This time around, Big Joe has sent us a unique 2-In-1 pedal, with more options and features than most dual pedals we have come across, and with a tone of tones and sounds. The B-502 Empire is a dual-preamp overdrive, complete with an adjustable buffer, independent but...
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A few weeks ago, we got to review one of the coolest and most effective rehouse pedal projects we’ve ever come across: the DD-20 Rehouse by Chesapeake Effects. As it turns out, they not only do rad rehousings, but they make a pretty mean overdrive pedal as well. Let’s check out the Flagship Overdrive, shall we? Based around the popular Marshall Blues Breaker circuit, the Flagship adds in a couple key elements to make it...
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Jason Boland Oklahoma Jason Boland and the Stragglers http://www.thestragglers.com/ How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? I’m 41 now. I started banging around on a guitar around 7th grade, writing songs senior year, and playing out at 21. The band and I started in September of 1998 and released our first album in January of 2000. I figured if Ralph Macchio could cut heads with...
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Steve Sterlacci Westchester, New York Jessica Lynn jessicalynnmusic.org How long have you been a musician? How did you get into it in the first place? So I was trying to play professional baseball until I was about 23. I had played in college on a scholarship and traveled the country going to try outs, but never got an opportunity that made sense. I had already played guitar by that time in a dance/Top 40 wedding band and my now...
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