Stomp Under Foot

Every pedal in the range is described by the maker as handmade in the USA, from the fuzzes to the overdrives^{23456789101112}. Several models are also built with NOS through-hole components, new-old-stock parts with leads that pass through the board rather than surface-mount parts⁷⁸⁹¹⁰.

A one-man shop in Windermere, Florida

Pasquerella builds and hand-wires every pedal himself. Premier Guitar's reviewer praised "the fine craftsmanship that Matt pours into his hand-wired pedals"¹. That scale of operation shapes the product line: small runs, including limited editions such as the Ultra 47 Ram's Head, which the maker describes as "building a small run in the Vintage Mini format"¹⁴.

Known for Big Muff-inspired fuzz

The core of the range is a set of pedals tracing their lineage to the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, which the GuitarPCB build document for that circuit calls "one of the most famous fuzz/distortion pedals in history"¹⁵. Pasquerella studies original units closely; writing about a 1974 to 1975 Ram's Head on the company's blog, he described "another one from my personal collection and another great example of a transition circuit"¹³. That examination of vintage examples feeds directly into the reproductions.

The Muff-derived line covers several well-known eras of the circuit:

Pasquerella's own verdict on the Ultra 47 circuit: "It remains one of the most impressive Big Muff circuits I have ever played."¹⁴

Beyond straight reproductions, the range includes Muff-adjacent designs. The Dirt Preacher is described as a fuzz pedal with overdrive tones¹⁷, and the Electric Warlord came out of a specific tonal goal, in the maker's words: "I wanted to make a pedal that could get every guitar tone off that album."¹⁸

Beyond the Muff: overdrive and treble boost

Stomp Under Foot also builds drive pedals that step away from the Big Muff circuit. The Overdrive 8-Fifty is an overdrive pedal⁷, and the Mean Green Machine overdrive grew out of Pasquerella's own design work, as Premier Guitar put it: "He decided to make an overdrive."¹

• The Divided Drive "combines two modified Screamer-style overdrives with a Ross-style compressor in a single pedal"; its overdrive sections are based on the discontinued Serenity Overdrive, a stripped-down Tube Screamer variant⁸.
• The Motor Honey Superdrive is a preamp overdrive/distortion pedal developed over years of tweaking and modifying, built with NOS through-hole components⁹.
• The Guv'nor is a "Marshall in a box pedal"¹².
• The Brit Box rounds out the amplifier-in-a-box side of the range, handmade with NOS through-hole components¹¹.
• The Silverfish adds an octave-up circuit that "truly comes alive when using the neck pickup," an octave effect that responds to pickup selection¹⁹.

Matt Pasquerella, proprietor

Everything the company makes passes through one pair of hands. Pasquerella is the designer, builder and documenter: his blog posts examine vintage Big Muff circuits from his personal collection¹³, his product pages describe the designs in the first person²⁰¹³¹, and Premier Guitar credits him as the hand-wiring builder behind the finished pedals¹. For a player, that means each pedal reflects one builder's judgment about a circuit, from the vintage units he collects to the small-run Vintage Mini formats he chooses to release²¹.

The range (39)

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