Cusack Screamer

The Cusack Screamer is an overdrive pedal from Cusack Music, built around the classic Ibanez Tube Screamer circuit but voiced to stand apart from it. Cusack Music describes it as a "clean" overdrive with about twice the gain of a typical Tube Screamer, and the design story is straightforward: Jon Cusack, who founded the company to take what Delicious Audio calls "a true engineer's approach to guitar pedal design," started with a Tube Screamer circuit to see if he could improve it¹².

Guitar World's review put the result in player terms: compared with a stock Tube Screamer it sounds "rounder, fuller, and darker," feels more responsive and less compressed, and carries roughly double the gain³. The current version is the Screamer V3, released 20 years after the V1, at a list price of $185¹.

A Tube Screamer with about twice the gain

The Screamer is openly a Tube Screamer derivative. Guitar World called the original "admittedly a Tube Screamer copy," and Cusack Music's own pages frame it the same way, as their take on a classic overdrive with about twice the gain of a typical TS-style pedal³⁴. What separates it from the crowd of TS copies is the set of changes Cusack made to the circuit: lower noise, increased clarity, more gain, and a clipping selector, as the maker's own description of the enhancements puts it⁵.

Josh Scott of JHS Pedals, who says he has known designer John Cusack for a while, went further in a piece on underrated overdrives⁶:

For a player, that combination means the Screamer covers the same midrange-forward pushing duties as a Tube Screamer but with more available drive and, in the view of both the maker and the press, more note separation when the gain is up. Delicious Audio's writeup of the V3 said this is where the Screamer "offers much more clarity than a typical overdrive," and noted that it stands out in a crowded field of TS-inspired pedals².

The controls and clipping toggle

The control layout is the familiar three-knob arrangement plus one extra switch. The V3's knobs, as described by Delicious Audio from the maker's documentation²:

The toggle is the pedal's signature feature. On the V3, the left position is classic silicon diodes, the middle is an LED for a louder, punchier, brighter overdrive (the LED also lights up while you play), and the right is Schottky diodes for what the maker describes as a crushed, compressed tone¹. The V2 used the same three positions: silicon on the left, asymmetrical LED in the center, Schottky on the right⁴.

Premier Guitar's review of the V2 found the three clipping voices genuinely useful, writing that the toggle "selects between standard, 'crushed,' and asymmetrical LED clipping" and "adds a welcome wrinkle" to the pedal's tonal range, with standard mode yielding a bristling, harmonically rich and very versatile distortion and asymmetrical mode a smoother character⁷. The same review was less fond of the V2's extras, calling the "clip-o-meter" distracting and the dual-color status LED confusing⁷.

Power: 9V DC, safe at 18V

The Screamer V3 runs on a standard center negative 9V DC power supply or a 9V battery, neither of which is included¹. The maker's documentation adds that the pedal is safe to run at 18V DC⁵. Current draw is light: about 6mA on the V3 and about 9mA on the discontinued V2¹⁴, so it shares comfortably on a multi-pedal supply.

The true-bypass switching is worth a note of its own. Rather than a mechanical footswitch in the audio path, the Screamer uses a telecommunications relay to do the bypassing, which Guitar World described as small, sturdy and mechanically silent³.

History and versions

The timeline is short and unusual by pedal standards:

1. Screamer V1 (early 2000s): Jon Cusack built the original with ceramic capacitors, grounding the design, as Delicious Audio put it, "in the reality of physics and electrical principles"².
2. Screamer V2: The second version carried the same core circuit with the three-way clip toggle; it is now discontinued⁴. Premier Guitar reviewed it at a street price of $185⁷.
3. Screamer V3 (2023): Released 20 years after the V1, the V3 swaps the ceramic capacitors for metal film capacitors, gets new knobs and an orange candy sparkle metallic finish, and lists at $185¹².

The V3's reason for existing is a demonstration. Cusack Music released it with metal film capacitors "only to prove a point," that it sounds exactly the same as the ceramic-built original¹. Delicious Audio's take on the change: metal film capacitors are less microphonic and their performance is impacted less by temperature changes, but the sound is unchanged².

The Screamer also spun off a family of related pedals. The Cusack Screamer Bass is a Tube Screamer-inspired overdrive for bass, drawing about 8mA, with the same three-way clipping toggle⁸. The Cusack Tap-A-Scream adds tap tempo to the Screamer concept, and the maker has called the Screamer one of the most renowned TS-inspired pedals on the planet⁹. A separate line, the Screamer Fuzz, pairs the Screamer's overdrive with a fuzz circuit, including the limited Screamer Fuzz Selenium, built around vintage selenium rectifiers that Jon Cusack sourced while working on a repair for a vintage amplifier¹⁰.

What reviewers said

Published reviews across the pedal's life have been consistent about its character:

• Guitar World (2008) found it rounder, fuller and darker than a Tube Screamer, more responsive and less compressed, with about twice the gain. The review noted the overdrives "don't clean up all the way when you back off your guitar volume, but they sure sound great when you turn it up"³.
• Premier Guitar praised the V2's "intriguingly flexible tone possibilities" while flagging the distracting clip-o-meter and confusing dual-color status LED⁷.
• Delicious Audio (2023) highlighted the V3's clarity compared with a typical overdrive².
• JHS Pedals' Josh Scott credited it with better note clarity and lower non-harmonic distortion than any other Tube Screamer copy⁶.

Who uses it

Cusack Music's V3 page carries an endorsement from Samurai Guitarist, who says he has been playing a Cusack Screamer for 9 years¹.

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