Greer Amps unleashes the Crispiest and Crunchiest of Marshall-Inspired Overdrives - The Black Mountain Crunch Drive

It’s both slightly serendipitous and amusing that I’ve just released my latest 12 Degrees of Saturation feature (Mini Edition) - which of course has ’Crunch’ as the sixth category in that selection.

I really love crunchy overdrives - so this is a nigh perfect pedal for me. Nick has really hit a home run with this one - which produces the crispiest and snarliest of tones courtesy of two cleverly selected imbalanced / mismatched clipping diodes.

Controls - Volume, Gain, Tone.

Deployment could not be simpler - with the classic trio of controls everyone is familiar with, and you can power the pedal at up to 18V for more headroom.

This style of clipping in pedals is almost always down to the clever selection of diodes - which distort the most pertinent part of the frequency profile for that Marshall-esque sound. Clipping Diodes and Transistors are used in place of the EL34 Tubes which are usually responsible for the core Marshall Amp tones and textures.

This pedal has so much ’Bite’ that it crisps up even at relatively low gain. I believe ’Black Mountain’ alludes to the massive stacks of cabinets or speaker stacks that used to fill the stage during the heyday of 70’s and 80’s Rock - i.e. Mountains of Black Speaker Stacks!

Nick reports that he was listening to The Darkness’ Permission to Land album during the development of this pedal - where that album is of course prime Marshall Plexi territory - as Justin Hawkins’ favourite amp.

This is such a shoe-in for me that I will definitely be getting one. While Greer pedals seem to be fairly slim on the ground in the UK nowadays - the main dealers all seem to be very short of stock apart from my friend Joe over at Joe’s Pedals - hopefully he will have some Black Mountains in stock soon and I can get one from there.

The Black Mountain Crunch Drive is available for the usual price of $199 from the Greer Amps Webstore - and at leading dealers including my friends Axe and You Shall Receive in Canada, and These Go To 11 in Sweden. $199 seems to be typically translating to £219 in the UK - and it will be interesting to see who is first here to have these in stock.

I must have a few dozen or more ’Crunch’ style drives already - while I feel this could well become my favourite of that type!

Anyone else considering getting one in - we should compare notes!