Funny Little Boxes announces Dirt distortion pedal with Let's Play All

October 28, 2024 · 2 sources

Funny Little Boxes and Matt Webster of the Let's Play All YouTube channel have announced their third collaborative pedal, the Dirt distortion pedal¹. It is available to pre-order for $109.29, and no specific shipping date had been listed at the time of writing¹.

The pedal's brief was to reproduce Jerry Cantrell's guitar tones from Alice In Chains' 1991 album, with particular emphasis on Them Bones¹. Guitar Pedal X describes it as a three-way collaboration between Andy Ilgunas of Funny Little Boxes, Webster, and Marc Dunn of SoundLad Liverpool, built around a TL072 op-amp and intended to reproduce recorded gain tonality across the band's releases and other tracks². Guitar World reports that the makers also cite Slipknot, Silverchair and Tom Morello among other tones the pedal can produce¹, while Guitar Pedal X lists Audioslave, Metallica, Pantera, RATM and Slipknot².

The controls are Dirt (gain), Volume, Bass, Mids and Treble². Guitar World gives settings for the Them Bones rhythm tone, with the Dirt dial around noon, volume at two o'clock, and Bass, Treble and Mids pulled a little past the halfway mark; the song's solo tone is reached by maxing the Dirt control, dialing the Mids further back and giving a slight boost to the Treble¹. The pedal requires standard 9V power and does not come with a battery compartment¹.

Guitar Pedal X reports that the circuit needs its volume cranked, with most of the key action in the final quarter turn, and that its main flaw is pronounced low output even at maximum². The site calls this a notable flaw that prevents it from top tier status, while concluding that the pedal is "still very much a killer versatile distortion pedal which totally has Alice In Chains covered"². The US list price given by Guitar World is $109.29¹.

Webster says the Dirt's development saw everything from "technical gremlins to hospitalizations", and required help from Marc Dunberry of Soundlad Liverpool and Simon Andrews of JSA Effects to get over the line¹.

Webster and Funny Little Boxes' previous collaborations reproduced the sounds of Pearl Jam's Ten and Josh Homme's Queens of the Stone Age tones¹. Guitar Pedal X reports that the Dirt was originally intended as the immediate follow-up to the 1991 Pearl Jam pedal, and that the Skeleton Key overtook it while it was stuck in development². More distortion pedals are listed on the site.