Redbeard Effects Red Mist MKIV

The Redbeard Effects Red Mist MKIV is a medium-to-high-gain analog distortion pedal and the first offering from Redbeard Effects, the brand launched by Skindred guitarist Mikey Demus in 2019¹². It grew out of a collaboration between Demus and Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX, and it is built on an entirely original circuit rather than a clone of an existing design¹².

Premier Guitar calls it "an impressive medium-to-high-gain circuit with a wickedly powerful EQ section," and the gain range is wide: Redbeard says it can go from a spicy boost, into a huge tight crunch, all the way up to a crushing high gain tone². Guitar Pedal X frames the same range as running from near enough a clean boost up to grinding, crunchy metal distortion tones³.

The controls: Gain, Volume and a ±6 dB EQ

The pedal keeps its control set simple: Gain, Volume, Bass, Mids and Treble⁵⁷. What sets it apart is the EQ. The bass, mids and treble controls form a three-way active tonestack, and each control can add or subtract up to 6 dB, which gives the section far more reach than the passive tone controls on most distortion pedals⁵².

The Mids control is the one that behaves least conventionally. Redbeard's launch announcement calls it an adaptive control, and Guitar.com's review found its extremes do more than cut or boost. Turn it fully anti-clockwise and the pedal drops into an ultra-scooped mode; at the other end of its travel, full mids pushes the circuit into self-oscillating feedback⁵.

Premier Guitar's reviewer also noted the gain knob is very touchy, so small movements at the top of its travel change the character noticeably². Guitar.com found the bass and treble controls highly responsive, allowing precise tonal tailoring, and credited the active tonestack with helping dial in a balance of tightness and bassy thump⁵.

What reviewers said

The Red Mist MKIV has drawn consistently strong verdicts across published reviews. One reviewer rated it 9 overall, calling it "a mean little rock machine with a very talented mids control" and "a solidly built box of pure metal with a couple of bonus tricks"⁵. On build quality, close inspection both inside and out revealed something of the military-grade solidity of Adrian Thorpe's own product⁵.

Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson reviewed it twice. In 2021 he called it "very much one of my all-time favourite High Gain pedals," with a naturally crunchy breakup character he found well suited to riff-rock³. Returning to it in a 2025 roundup of compact high-gain and metal pedals, he placed it among his favorite all-rounders in the category, noting it is not quite as high gain as some of the others on that list but is supremely easy to dial in⁷.

Guitar.com's later review of the Honey Badger octave fuzz looked back on the Red Mist Mk IV as the brand's debut stomper and described it as "all kinds of savage"⁸.

Mikey Demus and the Red Mist

The Red Mist MKIV is a signature pedal in the fullest sense: it was designed to put Demus's own amp tone in a box. The circuit is based on his signature Orange Rockerverb 100 MKIII amp, and Guitar Pedal X reports that Demus himself runs the pedal with all the EQ dials at 2 o'clock for his signature sound³. It was part of his 2021 pedalboard alongside two of his other signature pedals³.

Although the MKIV is the fourth iteration of the Red Mist, it was made available publicly for the first time with this version². The pedal was Redbeard Effects' first release, arriving in 2019 as a collaboration between Demus and Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX¹². Demus himself uses the pedal, setting all of its EQ dials at 2 o'clock for his signature sound³.

Price and availability

Published prices for the Red Mist MKIV vary by date and region. At launch in September 2019, MusicRadar listed it at £184.99⁶. Guitar.com's October 2019 review gave £189.99⁵, and Guitar Pedal X had it at £199 as of June 2021³. For US buyers, Premier Guitar listed a street price of $240 in August 2021², while Guitar Pedal X's November 2025 roundup gave £199 / $220⁷.

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