So I last did one of these back in 2020 - meaning that these ’Best of Overdrive’ run-downs seem to be a circa biennial affair. We’ve upped the numbers to 32 this year, while they represent barely a quarter of the overdrives I have in my reference collection - so there are obviously a lot of honourable mentions listed below - before the Final Thoughts section.

These types of exercises are incredibly tricky to strike the right balance of generally considered classic overdrive pedals and ...

Readers will know that I’ve been trying to chase down this pedal for around 2-3 years - in my opinion the best / most practical and most adjustable 2-Channel Dumble-Style Preamp made to date. There are actually 3 different models of this Ethos Preamp that Custom Tones makes - the original large-scale full-format Ethos 2-Channel Overdrive + Boost, the BB-sized Ethos Clean II Single Channel Preamp, and the BB-sized Ethos Clean-Fusion II 2-Channel Preamp. All are made to order by Mr Custom ...

So this is one of most significant works in a while, and carries on the legacy of two of my most popular all-time articles on the 12 Degrees of Saturation - the Original that evolved in the early months of 2017, and the follow-up which materialised in September of 2018.

I obviously deal with a lot of reader inquiries pretty much on a daily basis, and one of the more popular lines of inquiry has been about overdrives. And while Josh Scott attests to the fact that there are only 5 core ...

I am somewhat exasperated to still be seeing several ill-informed nonsense critiques of these more fully featured pedals - where certain factions are denouncing them as sort of jacks-of-all-trade with insufficient core tonal qualities that mean they cannot hack it with just the basic 3 - Volume, Gain and Tone knobs!

I refer below to one of the classic Two Rock Amps - specifically the Silver Sterling Signature - which has 17 exceptionally useful controls - including those 6 mode toggle-...

This feature was inspired by two gentlemen - one Alexander ’Howard’ Dumble, and my friend Justin O who asked me what my take on the Cornerstone Gladio was. I was of course determined to do my typical comparative overview and name the usual suspects - while the first time I started down this route I ended up doing the Blues Breaker / King of Tone style feature instead. The previous article was based on a number of very similar pedals - circuit and control-topology-wise.

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I periodically do these category round-ups, typically triggered by a pedal launch or two, as is the case in this instance. This is my own preferred Overdrive selection - intentionally as broad as possible - with actually 12 categories of overdrives, but could still be an even longer listing, and I’ve had to make some very difficult choices for the final selection even though it is relatively numerous at 28 strong. I would have liked to have included one from my so called ’Harmonic Overdrive’ ...

For this particular selection I tried to get in as diverse number of types, along with all the usual favourites - every year I have readers asking me why I left this one or that one out - so this year is the time for including Menatone in the selection. Obviously between years some pedals rise in prominence while others fall - my intentions are always to provide as broad a selection as possible while still covering all my own personal favourites.

There are a few new entrants since 2018...

Marshall takes up a lot of bandwidth on the pedal overdrive and distortion spectrum, and I have a lot of articles dedicated to said genres including several recent ones. So this one covers those pedals which are of a somewhat rarer and different kind. I have chosen not to do specific PreAmp-style pedals or dedicated Amp and Channel pedals by the amp-makers themselves, but rather to feature more generic pedals which distinctly give you the flavour of the amp/s they intend to simulate.

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I used to have my ’12 Degrees of Saturation’ formation faithfully laid-out within my pedal-chain - with all the key drive types arranged in order, but recent experimentation has seen me go beyond those rather rigid lines a touch which means the Tube Screamer and Dumble type pedals are currently on the shelf! Despite that, the slightly fuzz-edged Dumble Overdrive Special sound is still one of my favourite Drive tones and will no doubt return to the chain before too long.

My ...