AJ Peat Pedals’ Screaming Flamingo and Dirty Buzzard

Updated Jul. 7, 2016 | by Paolo De Gregorio

Orange County boutique manufacturer AJ Peat, owned and founded by Luthier and self-described tinkerer Andrew James Peat, builds guitars, effect pedals and other signature audio devices.

At the 2016 Summer NAMM show in Nashville his pedals were on display in the Cusack/Mojo Hand booth. This was due to the fact that Jon Cusack offered to help AJ design non-hand-built versions of Peat’s effects. We actually had a chance to talk to AJ directly about this and he was so happy about the results he was almost questioning why he stuck to hand building for so long: “the new, mass built designs sound identical to their hand built counterparts”- he said. Surely Jon Cusack’s engineering brain came in handy to pull off this accomplishment.

Among the most intriguing stompboxes offered by AJ Peat is a two-stage overdrive pedal called the Screaming Flamingo. While it straddles the line between overdrive and distortion, the pedal can produce some very Marshall-like tones rich in low mid frequencies.

One of the best features of the pedal is the ability to blend overdrive and distortion to produce distortion sounds all your own. The Screaming Flamingo gets its signature sound from a series of 3 op-amps, while tone and output volume controls round out the set.

While the Screaming Flamingo certainly isn’t for everybody, it excels at lower gain blues and rock tones. Versatility of control allows for it to sound equally at home on the neck pickup of a Les Paul, or dialed in for serious twang on a Tele.

Check out also the video below for the most recent release, the Dirty Buzzard, described by the manufacturer as a “hybrid transistor tone monster, with NOS Germanium and Silicon transistors.” – Brandon Stoner