Becos Effects, Jordan Ziff Collab for the Ziffer Overdrive

July 30, 2021 · 4 sources

Becos Effects announced the Ziffer Overdrive, a signature analog mini overdrive pedal developed for Jordan Ziff, lead guitarist of Hot Crazy and RATT and guitarist in Marty Friedman's band¹. The pedal is a Tube Screamer variant in a mini enclosure, listed by the maker as the "Ziffer Jordan Ziff Signature Analog Mini Overdrive Tubescreamer"².

The maker describes the Ziffer as a versatile and powerful tone-shaping tool, built around Jordan Ziff's minimalist approach of using an overdrive to push his 1959 Plexi amp¹. Guitar.com reported that the circuit is based on the core of a Tube Screamer-style overdrive, with a number of tone-tweaking options added on top³.

The pedal's controls and features, as given in the announcement¹:

• Gain, Tone and Level controls
• Dry boost/cut variability, letting the player raise or lower the dry signal against the overdriven one
• Center negative power polarity¹

The Ziffer joins the family of Tube Screamer-derived overdrives, which includes pedals like the Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini. Where the classic circuit keeps its signal path simple, the Ziffer's dry boost/cut option gives the player a way to blend clean signal back in, a feature aimed at Ziff's amp-pushing use rather than the pedal acting as the main source of distortion¹³.

Delicious Audio covered the announcement under the model name TS8-JZ, noting the same Jordan Ziff signature development⁴.