Out of Martinez, Georgia, (via Binghamton, NY), Greenchild Amplification was founded by engineer and ex US Navy Surface Warfare Officer Melvin Greenchild, after the sudden death of his cousin and childhood friend. That unexpected loss made him realize of the shortness of our days, which in turn inspired him to dedicate the rest of his life to something he truly enjoyed: building guitar pedals.
From the time I started Greenchild, I told myself I wanted to build something worthy of Jonathan’s memory, of my new family, and of the amazing community of musicians and gearheads who appreciate high-quality analog gear. (Melvin Greenchild)
Focused squarely on gain stompboxes, the company is the product of Melvin’s huge passion for circuit design: he personally designs, builds, tests and double checksn every single piece of gear that leaves his shop, signing by hand each pedal on the inside as a proof of his quality control.
Check out some videos of the company’s pedals by clicking on the icon below.
Greenchild’s most successful designs are the two dual overdrives, in particular, the almost permanently sold out K818, a rather unique hybrid pedal that offers two channels featuring a “Klone” and a (Maxon) OD-820 inspired drive – highly regarded TubeScreamer inspired pedal. It’s like having the two most popular overdrives in one stompbox! They can be played separately or together, thanks to separate footswitches.
The G777 is another flexible two channel overdrive featuring an original circuit. It’s more transparent and has tons of headroom and wide dynamic range. The Gain/EQ section is unusual, with a “Tilt” knob that can boost high or lows and a “Focus” one that brings a specific frequency to the forefront. It’s designed to “push your amplifier (or other pedals) into saturation while providing flexible EQ options.” The two channels can be used in isolation, but stacking them on top of each other will deliver the “gnarlyness” enjoyed by many pedal-heads.
The company’s most recent design is the Klazo Drive, a return to the simpler things of life (only one footswitch!), but still featuring a unique design based on “current driven transconductance amplifier topology with floating diodes” that deliver musical clipping across the entire frequency spectrum.
Dynamic, transparent overdrive with an eminently useful tone stack, [the Klazo] will sit well at any point in your signal chain and it’s designed to be driven hard by other pedals, altough it also employs an active volume boost that will drive your amp into saturation.
The Mr. Boost clean boost and Valve Reaper Overdrive are even simpler designs that nicely round up the manufacturer’s product line.
There’s also this gigantic and now out of production three-in-one gain pedal (boost+OD+Distortion) called Tribus, check out the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbcV1dQWKu4
