12 of the Best Marshall Style Pedals

Obviously Overdrive, Distortion and Fuzz are my favourite types of pedals - it’s incredible just how many different textures there are within each of those categories. I am a huge fan of distortion of course, and within that field my favourite type as such, though a fairly broad category in and of itself - is Marshall-esque. I already possess more than 10 Marshall-style pedals - including 5 of the 12 listed here - most of the others listed are already on my wishlist.

There are several key Marshall sounds, but for my purposes I break them down to my 3 favourites really - Plexi, JTM and EVH/Brown Sound. The core texture of the Marshall sound for me is that lovely crisp crunch with a sort of hint of jangle. I like it at medium gain - where it is slightly more open and rounded and sustaining, I also love it at higher gain - where it becomes tighter, more compressed and more percussive.

A best-kept secret for many Marshall pedals fans is the original MKI Guv’nor pedal which still sounds stellar today, albeit its enclosure is now somewhat over-sized and old-fashioned. It’s a pity that the latter Guv’nors don’t retain the lively dynamics and bright sparkly nature of the original. Please Marshall - do a proper re-issue of the original circuit and components in a proper compact enclosure - it would be a runaway success! Alas Marshall seems to have totally lost its way these days - both it and it’s usual pairing ’Gibson’ seem to be resting on the laurels of their past celebrated history. Truth is though that amp brands like Blackstar and Friedman have been slowly eroding away Marshall’s market-share - because Marshall does not understand or care about the needs of the now predominantly modern guitarist - the mainly domestic hobbyist like myself! On the pedal front - Catalinbread, JHS and MI Audio have long been strong in the Marshall pedal area, while Friedman too is playing a really strong hand now. Marshall’s recent pedals just aren’t quite good enough, and their new amps aren’t sufficiently honed for the modern domestic customer - just look at how Boss (Katana) is eating up the marketplace at the moment - Marshall seriously needs to up its game.

I’ve said many times before that I’m not too keen on larger size pedal enclosures - although I don’t mind the medium size ones like the Empress Multidrive or say the MI Audio Megalith Delta - or EVH 5150 OD size - but the MKI Marshall Guv’nor is just too large for what it delivers, and there are other really good modern alternatives currently.

I had the JHS Angry Charlie on my wishlist for the longest time, but then along came the Boss JB-2 Angry Drive, which combined that with another one of my favourite pedal circuits - the Blues Driver - so it was a win-win for me, and combining the Blues Driver and Angry Charlie circuits gives you spectacularly complex and rich Marshall-esque tones - funnily up until recently though, I’ve been leading more on the Blues Driver half of the circuit, as I already have so many other Marshall-style pedals within my chain. Of those listed, they include the Empress Multidrive, Friedman BE-OD, MI Audio Super Crunch Box V2 and Xotic SL Drive.

I have had Catalinbread in sight for a while, and since getting their Boosted Vox type - the Galileo, fully intend to acquire also the Dirty Little Secret, RAH and Sabbra Cadabra pedals at some stage. The Dawner Prince RedRox was brought to my attention by the Andertons head-to-head ’Rock Pedal’ Distortion pedal shoot-out.

Like I said earlier, I’ve long been aware of JHS’s Marshall-esque pedals - the aforementioned Angry Charlie, Andy Timmons ’@’ derivation of that, and the slightly lower gain Charlie Brown. I actually prefer Friedman’s Dirty Shirley in that slightly lower gain distortion category - it makes a great companion pedal to the tighter, more compressed and percussive BE-OD.

The newish V2 version of the celebrated Super Crunch Box is just exceptional - giving you full 3-band EQ plus presence, and 2 x 3-way toggles to adjust gain stage, headroom and compression - it’s just super flexible. I’m a huge fan of Eddie Van Halen and his ’Brown Sound’ which is obviously Variac modified Marshall - I actually have 2 different versions of the Brown Sound in my chain at the moment, one courtesy of the Strymon Riverside, and my main one from the Super Crunch Box. I’ve long considered the MXR EVH 5150 OD and the Wampler Pinnacle Deluxe - siding with the former eventually.

Finally in the listing are the very suitably Marshally styled Ramble FX Marvel V3 pedal, and then the Xotix SL Drive - which I use for a slightly darker Super Lead and Super Bass-style Marshall tones - works really well for that. I have 3 of these pedals pretty high up on my wishlist - the Catalinbread DLS, Dawner RedRox, and Friedman Dirty Shirley - difficult to say when those will be added, but eventually I will possess all in this listing and possibly a couple more. As with everything, none of these pedals sounds exactly identical, and each has their own tonal profile to a degree and obvious strengths and weaknesses that marry up with that. It really depends on which aspects of the key Marshall amps you are trying to capture - I pretty much like most of them when done well - as in this case, all these are highly creditable and worthy of consideration.

Original listed first, then alphabetical.