Mesa Boogie Overdrive and Distortion Pedals

Mesa Engineering has come up with four new drive and distortion pedals, namely the Grid Slammer, Tone-Burst, Throttle Box and Flux-Drive.

Mesa Boogie Drive and Distortion Pedals

The same people behind popular overdriven amps like the Dual Rectifier built these pedals, and they offer a change of scenery from the usual amp offerings by Mesa.

Since they are made by Mesa, the pedals feature the same quality components and craftsmanship as their range of amplifiers and each pedal is hand-built in their Petaluma California shop.

By offering four drive pedals right at the start, it appears that the boys from Mesa Boogie wanted to cover a lot of overdrive ground. The pedals are said to offer a variety of clip, drive, overdrive, gain and full-on distortion with the same quality as the ones found on Mesa Boogie Amplifiers.

Here are the detailed descriptions of each pedal from Mesa Engineering:

Tone-Burst Boost/Overdrive

This pedal is the cleanest of the bunch and can be described as a booster pedal with some overdrive capability. It can start with a virtually transparent gain sound that is usually associated with “clean” boost pedals. It doesn’t end there though because it has enough gain to boost your guitar to slightly above the clip threshold, giving it the characteristic of a tube driver as well. Mesa designed the Tone-Burst for boosting the output, adding slight drive and some EQ to your tone. Notable features include True Bypass, Gain, Level, Bass and Treble controls. See the Tone-Burst in action:

Grid Slammer

The Grid Slammer is an overdrive pedal that features a classic sounding tone with midrange emphasis in an easy to operate package. Its gain knob lets you dial in vintage breakup overdrive that cover an array of tones from sweet, subtle break up to harmonically rich overdriven tones that sing. The Grid Slammer pedal also features true bypass and comes with basic tone shaping controls that include master level and tone control. Here is the Grid Slammer used in blues:

Flux-Drive

The Flux-Drive is for those that prefer a more modern sounding overdrive pedal. Mesa designed this one to have more liquid gain and provide enhanced sustain rich with harmonic overtones – ideal for enhancing the crunch or gain of your favorite amplifier. The Flux-Drive is designed to behave more like a complete preamp with a bit of versatility added. Tone shaping controls include gain, bass and treble EQ, and Master Level. Like the other pedals, it comes with true bypass switching. Check out the Flux-Drive demo below.

Throttle Box

This distortion pedal is designed for a variety of rock music applications, featuring aggressive and cutting tones. The gain knob lets you dial in classic rock sounds as well as modern high-gain. It comes with a mid cut control that lets you scoop the midrange to reproduce authentic sounding Boogie “V” EQ curve tones. Although the Throttle Box is meant for high-gain, Mesa says that its ability to handle low-gain is not to be overlooked. Other features include Low/High gain switching, Tone Control, Master Level, Internal EQ-Boost Switch and True Bypass switching.

The four pedals are all housed in a sturdy regular sized casing and are powered by either a battery or an optional AC power adapter. You can get more information about the pedals by visiting Mesa Boogie

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