Designed to nail the sound of a dimed Marshall JTM45, the Zvex Box of Rock was one of the early Plexi-style pedals (it was released in the mid aughts), and is still one of the best-selling ones.
The controls couldn’t be simpler – Drive, Tone, Volume, and a single volume knob for boost (which has a separate footswitch and can boost up to 50x from unity gain, that’s A LOT of boost!). But the mojo in this pedal is really in the interaction between the Drive knob and your guitar’s volume control – just like old Marshalls. Even when maxed, it never seems to get smeary or harsh.
Like the other most popular Zvex pedals, the builder released three versions of this device:
- a very expensive hand-painted version
- a much cheaper Vexter version, which is not hand painted
- a vertical version that’s as expensive as the horizontal one
We added the Zvex Box of Rock to our article about the Best Plexi-style pedals.
