Fulltone GT-500

The Fulltone GT-500 is a distortion pedal that combines two effects in one sturdy steel enclosure: an overdrive/boost and a distortion. Rather than stacking two separate pedals, a player gets both circuits side by side, and a toggle switch decides which one hits the other first¹.

What it does

The two circuits can be used separately or together. The overdrive side is described by Delicious Audio's reviewer Matt Kane as fairly transparent, able to give "everything from a gentle push for your preamp tubes to an alarming amount of volume without drastically changing tone"¹. In practice that makes it usable as a clean boost into a tube amp as well as a mild overdrive, sitting alongside the kind of circuits covered on the Overdrive Pedals and Boost Pedals pages.

The distortion side provides the higher-gain half of the pedal, and the two together cover the ground a player might otherwise fill with a boost into a separate distortion box, similar in spirit to other two-in-one designs².

The order toggle

The feature reviewers singled out is a small toggle switch that sets the signal path: whether the signal runs from overdrive into distortion, or the other way round. Running the overdrive first pushes the distortion into a different character than distortion-into-overdrive, so the toggle effectively doubles the pedal's voicing options¹. JHS Pedals' buying guide calls the GT-500 "a great two-in-one" and notes that, like their own Double Barrel, it gives you an order toggle so you can choose the stacking order inside one box².

What reviewers said

Delicious Audio's review carried a clear caveat alongside its praise. Matt Kane wrote: "It will not make a bad amp sound good. This unit works with your amp, not in spite of it"¹. In other words, the GT-500 is built to interact with a tube amp's preamp rather than to replace its distortion, so the amp it is paired with matters.

As of late 2026, JHS Pedals lists the used price at $50 to $75².

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load