Mesa/Boogie’s unveiling of its four new overdrive and distortion pedals marks a unique point in the company’s storied history. In terms of tone and construction, they are decidedly different from Mesa’s previous forays into stompbox territory—the V-1 Bottle Rocket and the Dual Rectifier-inspired V-Twin. Those pedals had cool qualities, but the compact design, solid-state circuitry, and versatile tonality of these new pedals suggest Mesa has learned a lot about pedal-based overdrive and distortion units since. Rather than trying to stuff too much in a single unit, the company has designed pedals that serve up specific flavors of overdrive. But for all that focus, they often excel at delivering tones beyond the expected.
An Army of Four
Mesa built these pedals to withstand abuse. Each one weighs in at nearly a pound and is built around a 2 mm-thick aluminum enclosure. I’ve never been challenged to test a pedal’s durability by dropping it off of a building, but if I were, I would happily put my money on any one of these stomps.
Each pedal sports bright status LEDs and true-bypass switching, and they can all be powered by either a 9V battery or a Boss-style adapter. And they’re all completely handbuilt in Mesa’s Petaluma, California, factory.
Tone-Burst
Ratings
Pros:
Highly transparent boosting. EQ lends itself well to country and rock single-note picking. Great for tightening up higher gain tones.
Cons:
Takes tweaking to reduce glassiness.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build:
Value:
Street:
$179
Mesa/Boogie
mesaboogie.com
The Tone-Burst has the distinction of being the most transparent-sounding pedal in the bunch. It’s remarkable just how evenly it boosts clean tones whether you’re using single-coils or humbuckers. The pedal puts an extra 20 dB of boost at your toe tips, which yields plenty of headroom for country fingerpicking, arpeggiated chording, and aggressive garage-rock rhythms. Most players will immediately notice the pedal’s fidelity and relatively neutral color, and it does little to mess with a guitar’s basic voice save for some hot, bordering-on-spiky overtones in the high end at more extreme gain settings. Even then, though, you can tune most of it out by working with the pedal’s treble knob.
While the purpose of most boost pedals is to add volume without adding much color, the Tone-Burst gives you the ability to tailor the tone with +12 dB of bass and treble—all without the hiss or noise you tend to hear from an EQ pedal you might use for the same purpose. These controls come in handy when you’re tackling a potentially unruly equation, like a Stratocaster and a Twin Reverb. And though metal players may think a boost/overdrive is beneath them, if they give the Tone-Burst a chance they’ll find that it’s a knockout for tightening up low end to make fast riffing through high-gain amps more taut and powerful. For instance, when I set the Tone-Burst up for neutral treble, a slight cut in the bass, and moderately high volume, and then ran it into a Mesa Dual Rectifier, the Rec kicked out low-end that rivaled Mesa’s Mark IV and V amps.
The Tone-Burst’s gain control can add a lot of warmth and fullness, too—it comes in handy when the boosted tone is a little too raw. Twist it to 1 o’clock and beyond, and it’ll add sustain without adding icepick-y overtones to the pick attack. There isn’t a ton of overdrive on tap—about what you’d find in an Ibanez Tubescreamer or Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive—but there’s more than enough for gritty blues leads and classic-rock riffing. Thankfully, it’s also very responsive to picking dynamics—coaxing a little more drive is as simple has hitting the strings with more force.
Throttle Box
Ratings
Pros:
Signature Mesa grind in a box. Lo-gain mode serves up great ’70s high-gain tones. Mid cut control is very useful and sensitive.
Cons:
Boost switch only accessible through battery compartment. Can sound strident through amps with strong high end.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build:
Value:
Street:
$199
Mesa/Boogie
mesaboogie.com
For heavier tones that run the gamut from razor-edged leads to brain-rattling rhythms, there’s no better choice in this lineup than the Throttle Box. The pedal features switchable low- and high-gain modes, along with controls for gain, tone, volume, and midrange cut—the latter serving up the sort of scooped tones that put Mesa on the metal head map. Additionally, there’s a tiny switch inside that functions as an EQ boost. It’s a great feature that we really wish was accessible externally so it could be engaged on the fly.
Tested with a Les Paul Standard and a Marshall JCM800, the Throttle Box dished out an impressive array of low- to mid-gain rock and blues tones in its lower gain mode. Single notes have a very even midrange presence, and raising the mid cut knob to the 2 o'clock range results in a thick, raucous punch that you can use for Santana-inspired, smooth-but-heavy lead work. Pulling mid cut to about 9 o'clock and digging into the neck position of a Strat conjures tasty blues tones with a fierce edge. Bringing up the gain control doesn't really change the tone's overall EQ shape, either—which is wonderful for players who simply want to add more saturation without mucking up their signal. The pedal cleans up really nicely when rolling down the guitar's volume pot, too.
As you'd expect, the pedal's hi-gain mode serves up plenty of the liquid grind that players have come to expect from the house of Mesa. The amount of gain on tap borders on menacing, but output stays very focused, even when using hotter, fatter-sounding humbuckers. Hi-gain mode also makes the Throttle Box’s controls very sensitive, with even small changes to the mid cut and tone knobs effecting drastic tonal shifts—from classic, scooped Metallica tones to modern, mid-heavy Southern metal or the super-tight industrial grind of Meshuggah.
While the Throttle Box delivers Mesa's signature high gain tones like few other stompboxes can, it’s obviously not going to make your Strat-and-Twin setup sound like a Les Paul and a Triple Rectifier. It's transparent enough that your tones will retain the natural color of your amp, no matter how hot you run the pedal—and that’s a really cool thing: It’s sweet to hear Mesa-style richness combined with a Twin’s glassiness, a JCM800’s midrange bump, or the trademark tones of any other great-sounding amp you might throw into the equation.
Grid Slammer
Ratings
Pros:
Smooth, open-sounding vintage overdrive. Strong upper midrange. Killer dynamic response.
Cons:
Upper-mid focus might be too strong for some players.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build:
Value:
Street:
$179
Mesa/Boogie
mesaboogie.com
With its volume, tone, and gain knobs, the Grid Slammer overdrive is easily the most intuitive of the series—it’s a layout anyone with a Tube Screamer will feel right at home with. Just like Ibanez's classic, the Grid Slammer has a strong midrange bump that makes it ideal for low-gain blues, classic rock, and any situation where you can use a little more presence. Unlike the little green classic, you get a lot more focus in the upper midrange—which can help you really cut through a crowded live mix.
The dynamic responsiveness of the Grid Slammer is pronounced when playing simple blues progressions through single-coils and a clean Fender amp. The pedal has a very natural response to picking dynamics, and you can ease up on picking intensity without losing any crispness or sustain. Volume-knob jockeys will rejoice at its ability to go from snarling to a quiet purr by simply backing off the volume and letting up on string attack and vice versa.
Though it doesn’t serve up heaps of gain for, say, the heaviest late-’70s and ’80s rock, the Grid Slammer does move from the brash tones of classic AC/DC to bigger-than-Texas blues-lead tones with ease. And though it doesn’t have a ton of gain on tap, fans of heavier music shouldn’t dismiss Grid Slammer too hastily, because it’s a very powerful tool for giving your tone a much more focused punch and tightening up high-gain amps that are a little flabby in the low end.
Strong upper-mid focus is another one of the Grid Slammer’s defining traits. If you want it to, it can even be a very British-sounding voice that could initially throw Mesa fanatics for a loop. The Brit emphasis becomes stronger as you turn up the gain control, and with a little high-end roll off, it starts to take on the muscular characteristics of a JTM45. But with its trademark Mesa crispness and clarity, the Grid Slammer delivers an articulate-but-edgy, Brit-meets-American tone that will intrigue any rock-oriented tone hound.
Flux-Drive
Ratings
Pros:
Highly dynamic controls add more gain and EQ flexibility to the basic Grid Slammer sound. Powerful upper midrange boost works well for hot-rodded, British-voiced hard rock.
Cons:
Higher gain settings can compromise rhythm-playing clarity.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build:
Value:
Street:
$179
Mesa/Boogie
mesaboogie.com
The Flux-Drive picks up where the Grid Slammer leaves off—emphasizing focused mids, but with considerably more gain on tap. It also trades the Grid Slammer’s single tone control for a pair of cut/boost bass and treble controls. In many ways, the Flux-Drive’s controls react more like an amplifier’s: Lower reaches of the gain control have a much clearer treble response, and turning up the control rolls off the highs while warming up the midrange and slightly softening the lows. Setting the gain between 8:30 and 10 o’clock highlights the snappier qualities of a Stratocaster’s bridge pickup, while taking the control up to 2 o’clock adds a warm, thick layer of gain on top of plump midrange and darker tonalities reminiscent of Ritchie Blackmore’s leads.
The Flux-Drive excels with low- and high-output humbuckers. Both a Les Paul Standard with ’57 Classics and a Les Paul Custom with hot Tom Anderson humbuckers pushed the upper midrange to the forefront, with Flux-Drive’s gain control lending lots of aggression without sacrificing detail. Taking the gain past 3 o’clock won’t add much more to hard-rock rhythms—you can lose a lot of definition in the highs and mids—but it will avail you of syrupy gain for smooth, sustaining licks. That said, there’s plenty of gain on tap before you hit that mark, and using the pedal’s extremely sensitive bass and treble controls more aggressively gives you access to the harder rock tones of early Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, and Skid Row. The key is to tailor the pedal’s gain and EQ controls to your guitar’s output level and give the tone room to breathe.
The Verdict
Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, Mesa/Boogie’s new overdrive and distortion pedals target very specific needs and missions. Each pedal has its own strengths and tonal limitations, but the design focus behind them also makes each pedal easier to control—no small consideration for professionals and anyone with very specific sound-palette needs. Smartly, each pedal inhabits a very distinct piece of the overdrive and distortion tonescape—the upper midrange grind of the Grid Slammer and Flux-Drive, in particular, are powerful voices that can expand a player’s options in big ways. At their core, however, each pedal has some measure of that quintessentially Mesa voice and at least a hint of the fast, glassy attack and dark, complex drive that are the company’s long-heralded sonic fingerprint. For tone mixologists who like to experiment and expand their horizons from a classic foundation, the Mesa pedals can serve as foundations for very intriguing new soundscapes.
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
LR Baggs HiFi Duet High-fidelity Pickup and Microphone Mixing System
"When a guitar is “the one,” you know it. It feels right in your hands and delivers the sounds you hear in your head. It becomes your faithful companion, musical soulmate, and muse. It helps you express your artistic vision. We designed the Les Paul Studio to be precisely the type of guitar: the perfect musical companion, the guitar you won’t be able to put down. The one guitar you’ll be able to rely on every time and will find yourself reaching for again and again. For years, the Les Paul Studio has been the choice of countless guitarists who appreciate the combination of the essential Les Paul features–humbucking pickups, a glued-in, set neck, and a mahogany body with a maple cap–at an accessible price and without some of the flashier and more costly cosmetic features of higher-end Les Paul models."
Now, the Les Paul Studio has been reimagined. It features an Ultra-Modern weight-relieved mahogany body, making it lighter and more comfortable to play, no matter how long the gig or jam session runs. The carved, plain maple cap adds brightness and definition to the overall tone and combines perfectly with the warmth and midrange punch from the mahogany body for that legendary Les Paul sound that has been featured on countless hit recordings and on concert stages worldwide. The glued-in mahogany neck provides rock-solid coupling between the neck and body for increased resonance and sustain. The neck features a traditional heel and a fast-playing SlimTaper profile, and it is capped with an abound rosewood fretboard that is equipped with acrylic trapezoid inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets. The 12” fretboard radius makes both rhythm chording and lead string bending equally effortless, andyou’re going to love how this instrument feels in your hands. The Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons add to the guitar’s classic visual appeal, and together with the fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece, andGraph Tech® nut, help to keep the tuning stability nice and solid so you can spend more time playing and less time tuning. The Gibson Les Paul Studio is offered in an Ebony, BlueberryBurst, Wine Red, and CherrySunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes and arrives with an included soft-shell guitar case.
It packs a pair of Gibson’s Burstbucker Pro pickups and a three-way pickup selector switch that allows you to use either pickup individually or run them together. Each of the two pickups is wired to its own volume control, so you can blend the sound from the pickups together in any amount you choose. Each volume control is equipped with a push/pull switch for coil tapping, giving you two different sounds from each pickup, and each pickup also has its own individual tone control for even more sonic options. The endless tonal possibilities, exceptional sustain, resonance, and comfortable playability make the Les Paul Studio the one guitar you can rely on for any musical genre or scenario.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Introducing the Reimagined Gibson Les Paul Studio - YouTube
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.