The Carl Martin Crush Zone is a high-gain overdrive pedal from the Danish maker Carl Martin. Vintage Guitar magazine, reviewing it in July 2006, described it as "a high-gain overdrive" and heard "a full-out high-gain distortion with definite midrange boost and aggressive overdrive"1. The pedal is no longer produced2.
What it does
The Crush Zone sits at the aggressive end of the overdrive spectrum. Its three controls cover the basics: Level sets output volume, Tone shapes the treble, and Distortion sets how hard the circuit drives1. There is no mid cut or low-gain clean-blend here; the design leans into a midrange-forward, high-gain voice.
Vintage Guitar's reviewer found the pedal at its best pushed hard: "But it excels in the high-gain category with a pleasant, crunchy distortion that isn't thin or brittle, even with the Te"1. That matters for players with brighter, single-coil guitars, where high-gain pedals often turn spiky. The same review grouped the Crush Zone with Carl Martin's Vintage Series pedals1.
Status and circuit notes
The Crush Zone is discontinued. It is not part of Carl Martin's current lineup, which includes pedals like the PlexiTone, DC Drive and the newer PlexiRanger.
For players interested in the circuit itself, the DIY community has documented it. Guitar FX Layouts, a pedal-building blog, published a verified-by-community layout for the Crush Zone in December 2016, pointing to an original schematic thread on freestompboxes.org2. The blog noted that the pedal's power supply section differs from the schematic it worked from: a 1N5817 diode in line to the 9V rail replaces a 1N4001 across ground, a 100uF cap is added across the ground from the 9V, and a 47uF cap from the voltage regulator replaces a 2.2uF one2. The blog also flagged its own layout as unverified by a build2.
Where it fits in the Carl Martin range
Carl Martin has built a wide range of drive pedals over the years, and the Crush Zone's high-gain voice sits alongside several designs still documented on this site:
- Carl Martin PlexiTone, a two-channel high-gain design
- Carl Martin PlexiTone Single, the single-channel version
- Carl Martin Rock Drive
- Carl Martin Crunch Drive
- Carl Martin AC-Tone and AC-Tone Single
- Carl Martin Hot Drive'n Boost
- Carl Martin Panama and Panama Plexi Drive
The Crush Zone is no longer produced2. For players interested in the circuit itself, a schematic for the pedal is available in a thread on the freestompboxes.org forum2.
Videos
Music Force Official
PRZEMYSŁAW ŚLEDŹ
reboludos
Questions
Is the Carl Martin Crush Zone still made?
No. The Crush Zone is no longer produced, so players looking for one today are shopping the used market. Carl Martin, the Danish maker, has since moved on to other overdrive designs, and the company itself changed hands in 2024. Anyone chasing a similar high-gain character from the current range would look at pedals like the PlexiTone or the newer PlexiRanger instead.
What does the Carl Martin Crush Zone sound like?
Vintage Guitar magazine's reviewer described it as producing full-out high-gain distortion with a definite midrange boost and aggressive overdrive. In the same review, the pedal was said to excel in the high-gain category, with a pleasant, crunchy distortion that was not thin or brittle, even with a Telecaster's bridge pickup.
Sources (2)
- Carl Martin Vintage Series Pedals, Vintage Guitar magazine, 2010-03-23
- Guitar FX Layouts: Carl Martin Crush Zone, Guitar FX Layouts (tagboardeffects.blogspot.com), 2020-06-15
