Stomp Under Foot Dirty Rooster

The Stomp Under Foot Dirty Rooster is a fuzz pedal built by Stomp Under Foot, unveiled in May 2012 and inspired by the Jumbo Tonebender, the early 1970s Colorsound fuzz circuit. It was designed for both bass and guitar, which is unusual for a Tonebender-style fuzz, and it carries three straightforward controls: Volume, Sustain and Tone¹².

What it does to your sound

The Dirty Rooster takes the Jumbo Tonebender circuit and keeps its character while making it work for a wider range of instruments. No Treble's release coverage, written by Kevin Johnson and Matt Pasquerella, described the pedal this way¹:

That full low end is the detail bass players care about. Many vintage fuzzes drop the bottom out from under a bass signal, but the Dirty Rooster was pitched from the start at both instruments. For reference on the circuit family, General Guitar Gadgets, which sells a Jumbo Tonebender clone project, describes the original design's sound as "more akin to a Big Muff Pi than an old Germanium transistor powered ToneBender," calling it "an excellent classic distortion box" and noting it is "a favorite Fuzz for some bass players"³. In other words, players coming to this circuit expecting a raspy, sputtering germanium Tonebender should instead expect something closer to a thick, sustained distortion with fuzz character.

The controls

The original Dirty Rooster keeps things simple, with three knobs¹:

No Treble summed the layout up as "the straight-ahead pedal has Volume, Sustain, and Tone controls for dialing in your sound"¹.

The Vintage Mini version

Stomp Under Foot has since revisited the design. The current Jumbo Dirty Rooster Vintage Mini adds a mids control along with what the maker calls "a few subtle circuit tweaks," and is described as retaining "the feel and character of the original early 1970s fuzz, with its gritty, gnarly tone"². On the Vintage Mini, the Tone and Mids controls work interactively, giving what the maker calls precise control over the midrange and overall voice². The maker also points players toward the fuzz tone heard on Edwin Collins' "A Girl Like You" as a reference for what the circuit does².

The Vintage Mini is listed at a regular price of $279.99, shown at a sale price of $229.99, which the maker marks as 18% off, as of the maker's product page dated 26 October 2026². It uses NOS through-hole components and true bypass switching².

Build and power

The Dirty Rooster is hand-wired, features true bypass switching, and runs on either a 9V battery or a 9V adapter¹. True bypass means the circuit is fully out of the signal path when the pedal is off, and the battery option means it can sit on a board or drop into a bag without a power supply.

Questions