The Funny Little Boxes Dirt brings the crushing intensity, squalling lead tones, and chugging riffs of 90’s hard rock and metal to your pedalboard. From Alice In Chains to Slipknot via Silverchair, Tool, and Tom Morello, The Dirt has all your headbanging bases covered and then some. Plug in; Switch on and let the Riffage commence!
Funny Little Boxes built their name on affordable, album-obsessed tone-chasing. First came 1991, nailing Pearl Jam’s Ten. Then Skeleton Key, chasing Queens of the Stone Age. Now Dirt arrives—and yeah, it’s named after that Alice in Chains album.
The brief was simple: capture Jerry Cantrell’s sound from 1992’s Dirt. Them Bones. Would? Rooster. That thick, sludgy, oddly-clear-yet-brutal thing he does. But here’s the thing – it does way more than that.
Inside is an op-amp-based distortion. TL072, if you’re keeping score. Controls are stupid simple: Gain (labeled Dirt), Volume, Bass, Mids, Treble. Five knobs. That’s it. The EQ is interactive in ways that reward knob-twisting – cut the mids for that scooped ’90s thing, boost ’em for punch that cuts through a mix.
The development was apparently a nightmare. Technical gremlins. Hospitalizations. Multiple builders dragged in to save it. Fitting, really, for a pedal named after one of the darkest mainstream albums ever made.
Here’s the catch: the volume pot is logarithmic. Unity happens around 2 o’clock. Past that, it gets steep. Some users report needing a boost after it to keep levels consistent. But the tones? They’re there. Alice in Chains, sure. Also, Tool, Silverchair, Soundgarden, even some Pantera if you dial it right.
Eleven milliamps. Nine volts. No battery compartment because it’s 2025, and you should own a power supply by now. Hand-built in the UK. Ninety-nine quid.
For a hundred bucks, you get the sound of Seattle 1992 in a box that fits on any board. Turn it on, let the riffage commence, and try not to nod your head like you’re in a flannel shirt with your eyes closed.
