Way Huge Saucy Box HC

The Way Huge Saucy Box HC is a hard-clipping overdrive pedal: an alternative version of Way Huge's Saucy Box, built by the same maker but with a different gain structure. The "HC" in its name stands for hard clip, because the diodes are adjusted for hard clipping rather than the soft clipping of the original, which gives the pedal more crunch and compression¹.

Like the standard Saucy Box, the HC carries three knobs: Drive, Tone and Volume. Its most distinctive feature is that the Drive knob does not simply add gain. It blends between clean and overdriven tones, so at minimum the signal is all clean, and turning it up mixes in more of the driven signal¹.

A hard-clipping Saucy Box with a clean blend

The Saucy Box family descends from Way Huge's Pork Loin overdrive. When the original Saucy Box was introduced, Guitar Interactive Magazine reported that, like the acclaimed Pork Loin before it, the pedal derives its versatility from discrete clean and overdrive signal paths, providing everything from a unity-gain buffer to a clean boost and on to full overdrive³. Vintage Guitar described the design as offering a unity-gain buffer, with a single Drive control balancing the ratio of clean and driven signal⁴.

The HC keeps that clean-and-dirty blend concept but changes the character of the dirty side. Where the standard Saucy Box uses what its designers call the "optimum ratio" of its discrete clean and overdrive signals, a fixed ratio that changes as the drive knob is turned⁵, the HC's diodes are set for hard clipping, which MusicRadar's reviewer Trevor Curwen found delivers more crunch and compression¹.

For a player, the practical difference is this: soft clipping, as in the original, tends toward a smoother, more amp-like overdrive, while hard clipping rounds off the waveform more abruptly for a crunchier, more compressed drive. The HC is the more aggressive of the two by design¹.

The controls: Drive, Tone and Volume

The Drive knob is the heart of the pedal. Because it is a blend rather than a pure gain control, the HC works as a buffer or clean boost at low settings and brings in progressively more overdrive as it is turned up. Curwen found the pedal tonally pretty transparent, with the option to shape the top end with the Tone knob, and at full Drive it produces a crisply defined, raunchy medium-gain overdrive¹.

The clean-boost trick is worth knowing: with Drive at minimum and Volume pushed past about 10 o'clock, the HC functions as a clean boost rather than an overdrive¹. Pedal of the Day made a similar point about the standard Saucy Box, calling it excellent at low volumes and lower gain, with a gorgeous clean boost or pickup enhancer onboard².

What reviewers said

MusicRadar's review of the HC was positive. Curwen's verdict:

Reviews of the standard Saucy Box, which shares the HC's blend concept, give a fuller picture of the family's strengths and limits. Premier Guitar's reviewers found that at its highest drive settings the Saucy Box has a near fuzz-like aggressiveness, with less compression and sizzle than a fuzz and a much more dynamic touch, and concluded that it could cover most of a player's gain needs so long as they do not require over-the-top fuzz or distortion textures. Their caveat: the high end can be hard to tame with bright amps⁶. MusicRadar's review of the original praised its excellent build quality⁵, and Guitar.com noted that at lower settings it can function like a buffered clean boost, and at higher settings more like a thick amp drive channel⁷.

The Saucy Box was designed by Jeorge Tripps, Way Huge's longtime designer⁶.

Related Way Huge pedals

• Way Huge Saucy Box: the soft-clipping original
• Way Huge Pork Loin: the overdrive the Saucy Box family descends from
• Way Huge Green Rhino MKIV and Way Huge Red Llama: other overdrives in the range

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions