TC Electronic Spark

The most transparent guitar effects pedal in Big Joe’s B-400 line, the Big Joe B-403 Vintage Tube perfectly captures the sound of an overdriven tube amp cranked right up to its distortion threshold. This stompbox has plenty of gain to spare, but it’s more about making full use of its broad dynamic responses; you get grittier, more biting tone the harder you pick and attack your guitar strings. The Big Joe B-403 Vintage Tube comes with a two-position toggle that lets you boost your tone’s low-end and features true bypass switching.

The deceptively innocuous Breakdown guitar effect pedal from Danelectro is basically a tiny six-stage gain booster that serves up everything from light, subtle dirt to smooth overdrive and further on to heavy, full-on distortion. Set the gain level with the Break-Up rotary switch and shape it further with the pedal’s Volume knob as well as your guitar’s own volume controls. This slim form stompbox doesn’t run on battery juice and needs to be connected to a compatible 9V power supply.