gear giveaway

Distortion Pedals

Audio Kitchen Fake Plastic Trees

Audio Kitchen is a boutique amp and pedal builder based in the UK that focuses on their own, scrupulously engineered designs, deliberately avoiding to "pay homage" to existing classics. The Fake Plastic Trees overdrive/distortion/fuzz is a solid state version of the line out of their own popular The Big Trees…Click on the title for more

Audio Kitchen Fake Plastic Trees

Black Arts Toneworks Priestess Fuzz

Black Arts Toneworks specializes in pedals for metal - and you can get that much even just by the name of their new fuzz: Priestess. Yeah, because metalheads LOVE priestesses, don't they? This Priestess is a dual gain stage fuzz pedal with two EQ knobs: the Tone delivers low and…Click on the title for more

Black Arts Toneworks Priestess Fuzz

°red sun fx Grantler High Gain Distortion

The °red sun fx Grantler is a two-knob, high-gain distortion pedal hailing from Germany based on a 1-watt power amp. The two controls are for volume ("pegel") and preamp gain ("grant"). An internal switch allows lowering the gain by a factor of 10 which will transform it into more of…Click on the title for more

°red sun fx Grantler High Gain Distortion

Dirty Haggard 386 Distortion

Based in Portland, Oregon, Dirty Haggard offers is a boutique builder offering an array of guitar pedals from the affordable to the mid-priced. The 386 is the company's most affordable product, a 3-knob distortion selling at $75. Based on a circuit using two LM386 power amp chips, the 386 is…Click on the title for more

Dirty Haggard 386 Distortion

Fowl Sounds Backstabber 2.0 Distortion

The Fowl Sounds Backstabber 2.0 is a RAT-style distortion pedal designed for bass but that also works well with drop-tuned and baritone guitars. It employs a more modern circuit to deliver tighter and more responsive tones and a series of filters to improve the low-end. This is basically a two-channel…Click on the title for more

Fowl Sounds Backstabber 2.0 Distortion

Dirty Haggard Beast Mountain Hi Gain Overdrive / Distortion

Beast Mountain by Portland-based Dirty Haggard is at once a band (in which the company's one-man-dude Nick plays bass) and a colorful, three-knob high-gain pedal. Built with hard rock and metal guitarists in mind, the Beast Mountain offers symmetrical and asymmetrical soft clipping with a tight low end that works…Click on the title for more

Dirty Haggard Beast Mountain Hi Gain Overdrive / Distortion

Blue Colander Tremond Distortion

Blue Colander is a one-dude Polish pedal maker that builds hand-made dirt boxes. The Tremond is the guy's take on the RAT-style distortion, expanded. The control that makes this pedal stand apart from your classic RAT clone is the Blend knob, which, doesn't do what you expect. In fact, instead of mixing…Click on the title for more

Blue Colander Tremond Distortion

Wilson Effects This Is The Art

Hailing from Guilford, IN, Wilson Effects unveiled a new pedal dedicated to those guitarists who find solace in the scooped tones of the Trash Metal heroes of the '80s, like Overkill, Testament and Pantera: the This Is The Art overdrive/distortion. Notwithstanding its rebellious DNA, the device in question cleans up…Click on the title for more

Wilson Effects This Is The Art

Stone Deaf FX Q Boost/Distortion

Father and son British pedal builders Stone Deaf FX released some ingenious and imaginative stompboxes in the past, but today they unveiled something rather simple yet extremely intriguing. At a first look, the (Mickey Mouse-themed) Q Boost appears to be a simple boost pedal/preamp with an extra, sweepable mid-frequency boost,…Click on the title for more

Stone Deaf FX Q Boost/Distortion

BOSS HM-2w Waza Craft Heavy Metal Distortion

BOSS recently announced a Waza Craft version of their classic Heavy Metal HM-2, which has been discontinued in 1991. The pedal is now shipping The new version has a better noise floor and +3db volume, and also adds a new mode (Custom mode) which sounds slightly more polished and modern…Click on the title for more

BOSS HM-2w Waza Craft Heavy Metal Distortion

Stone Deaf FX Warp Drive

Since its inception in 2010, Manchester, UK based Stone Deaf FX has been able to stand out from the pack of new stompbox manufacturers by offering effects at once quirky looking, edgy sounding and overall inspiring. That this company belongs to the "forward-thinking" segment of the pedal manufacturing field is clearly stated…Click on the title for more

Stone Deaf FX Warp Drive

Expandora Squared Overdrive/Distortion/Fuzz

The original Expandora pedal was a round, sonically multifaceted dirt box released in the mid-'90s by Japanese builder Bixonic. It's now being reissued and relaunched by a New Jersey-based company that's also offering a "squared" version of it, hosted in a compact orange enclosure. Although the original wasn't particularly successful,…Click on the title for more

Expandora Squared Overdrive/Distortion/Fuzz