PedalPalFx The Breaker Overdrive

The Breaker is a handmade overdrive pedal from PedalPalFx, offered in the maker's Tribute Series. PedalPalFx describes it as a tribute to the Marshall Bluesbreaker MK1 overdrive, but says plainly that "this handmade pedal is not an exact clone"¹. It sits in a crowded family of Bluesbreaker-style pedals, a circuit type that traces back to the Marshall Blues Breaker released in 1992².

What it does

PedalPalFx gives three controls and voicings for the pedal:

• Gain: "delivers a very clean boost sound all the way to a mid-gain respond", so the pedal covers everything from a clean boost to mid-gain overdrive¹
• Tone: "has been improved to get a very classic warm and rich sound", a change from the original design¹
• Volume: "you will get enough output level to saturate the pre-section of your favourite tube-amp", meaning the pedal can push the front end of a tube amp into its own overdrive¹

The maker sums up the pedal's character as a "tube like respond at any setting", which it attributes to the pedal's dedicated asymmetric clipping¹. Asymmetric clipping clips the two halves of the guitar signal unequally, a design choice associated with tube-like overdrive voicings.

How it differs from the original Bluesbreaker

PedalPalFx names two departures from the Marshall design. The first is the circuit topology: "the particular configuration of two Dual Op-Amps in the circuit instead of just one as the original design"¹. The second is the Tone knob, which the maker says has been improved for that warm and rich voicing¹.

For context on the original: the Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal arrived in 1992, and its enclosure was shaped differently from the Drive Master and Shred Master because, as JHS Pedals tells it, "The different design was meant to make the knobs harder to break/stomp on when a player was turning the pedal on and off"³². As a circuit type, Tone Island's AdamConnell describes the Blues Breaker as "a fairly transparent overdrive pedal but with more low-end than a tubescreamer and less mids than a klon"⁴, which is the general character The Breaker's design draws on.

Bluesbreaker-style pedals remain a busy corner of the overdrive world: Pedal of the Day notes that the Daddy Daughter Pedal Works Clue's Breaker is "based on the famous Blues Breaker originally from Marshall"⁵, and Mr. Black Pedals has offered its own BB-74x Blues Breaker Overdrive⁶. For more on the type, see the site's Overdrive Pedals page.

Availability and production

The Breaker has not been a mass-produced pedal. PedalPalFx stated that "A small quantity of this pedal will be handmade in 2018, the official production will be released in 2019"¹. The maker's product page directs players who want one to Reverb, under the heading "Found it only at:"¹.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Questions