16 of the most notable 'Bread & Butter' Pedals!
I’m expecting this post to attract a lot of ’whataboutisms’ as many of my rundowns seem to do. While every single choice / selection here is well considered, pondered upon on and properly weighted up against pertinent criteria and then further rationalised, whittled and distilled down into a top 9 or 16 or 25 - as I always favour symmetrical grids.
If I find 18 or 19 suitable candidates - then only 16 can be featured on the grid etc. - you need to draw the line somewhere. And you can also include some further honourable mentions along the way if you feel the need! On this occasion the magic number was 16 - there were a couple of borderline ones that I left out - if there’s a public clamour for those I may do another follow-up - depending on exactly how many suggestions we get!
Also - the definition of ’Bread & Butter’ (B&B) pedals is more complex than originally conceived. I determined early on that B&B pedals tended to be at a certain price level - typically mostly standard average pedal price, occasionally boutique, but never really ’deluxe’. So I had to determine each of these very much on a case-by-case basis really.
B&B pedals are distinct from simply ’Bestsellers’ as there is more nuance to the perennial and minimal support nature of those. While of course there can be an overlap too - in Venn diagram fashion - so that a bestseller can indeed be a B&B pedal but that is not always the case.
A case in point is the Chase Bliss Mood / II - which is Chase Bliss’s all-time bestseller - but this retails at $399 meaning that it doesn’t quite qualify as an everyman / everyday pedal - which invariably B&B pedals are. They tend to be always in use and within essential and general pedal category types - while I would determine that the Mood is somewhat specialist and multi-functional really. You will note that each of the pedals in this selection is fairly singularly focused in its function!
Note that in the case of single pedal brands - like say how 1981 Inventions was until very recently - then the B&B dynamic doesn’t quite so readily apply - as you really need a range of offerings with just one or two from that range qualifying as B&B types. For the longest time the 1981 Inventions DRV was its only pedal. In fact there are a quite a few brands like that - say like Funny Little Boxes with its 1991 Dual Drive. While both those brands have added a second pedal recently - so their original pedals may well ascend to B&B status therefore. You can think of it as the one pedal in the range that sort of keeps the business going on its own!
There are probably a few more likely candidates for this kind of selection overall, while I feel that I’ve covered off most of the usual suspects here. Note also that Fulltone is not as dead as some people believe (including Warm Audio!), as Mike Fuller has announced his intentions to return to the fray any day soon - making this selection fairly current and actively of the now near enough!
Note also that it can be impossible to get the relevant sales data here as most companies are very secretive about the number and nature of their sales - and we only typically get fairly narrow listings - i.e. just for Reverb.com or Sweetwater sales for instance - which doesn’t cover everything or all brands even and while certainly it can be indicative those stats are far from absolute!
The main thrust here is that these pedals consistently pay the main running costs and overheads for these companies and brands - and keep those businesses rolling as such - and in fact deliver the ongoing seed money needed for the R&D to develop new pedals.
This article was in part prompted by Keeley Electronics reaching a 125,000 sales milestone for their 4-Knob Compressor Plus. Where Boss’s all-time bestseller - the DS-1 Distortion is over 1,500,000 by now as far as I understand.
A fairly recent major exercise was carried out by Sweetwater in the autumn of last year, and covered by Josh Scott on the Sweetwater YouTube Channel - which yielded some very interesting results - including several of those pedals listed here. While I don’t believe there were any hard numbers attached - and I never saw any sign of the full list of supposedly 1,000 or so pedals .The one major thing we are aware of from that exercise was just how many Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz pedals Sweetwater had sold to date - numbering in the high thousands, likely into 5 digits territory!
This is one of the few times I will cover Behringer - as I feel they’re an important contextual milestone in this overview, while I generally don’t support straight up copyists and plagiarists - and that bestselling SF300 is very obviously a Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz rip-off - albeit a pretty darn good sounding one for real budget money!
There is some contention for some of these pedals - I know that for a time the Soul Food Overdrive was EHX’s best selling pedal - while overall that brand is still most associated with its Big Muff Pi Fuzz formats - where I’ve nominated the Violet Ram’s Head and re-badged J Mascis version of the same as the ambassadors for EHX’s Muffs - it’s the only time that a whole genre is kind of represented by just one subtype in effect.
For Ibanez - traditionally the TS808 has been its bestseller, but latterly the TS9 is the one appearing more on bestseller lists because of its considerably lower price point.
For me Bread & Butter Pedals are best described as - "Perennial everyday / daily use best-seller pedals that require no promotion - they pretty much sell themselves!"
Here follows Josh Scott’s Sweetwater video, followed by the individual pedal details :
Analog.Man : King of Tone Dual Overdrive - $325
Estimated : More than 10,000 sold, perhaps as many as 15,000+ now.
Waiting list is at 5+ years! Currently still working through those who got on the list in 2018!
A legendary dual overdrive - where I was very lucky to get an official JHS modded version of this at just the right time (second-hand) and for a very reasonable sum - which is no longer remotely a possibility. I still really rate this pedal as an essential overdrive - and while you wait for yours - you can get in a more readily available Prince of Tone, or even the MXR Mini Duke of Tone as proxies - until your waiting list slot comes up. This is most definitely an everyday pedal which wholly sells itself! I still kind of things it's worth the wait...
Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz (Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz clone) - $29
Estimated : Tens of thousands sold - no figures available
Incredibly successful - largely because of its incredibly low price and similarity to the FZ-2 - but also the fact that this is a really decent sounding circuit - probably the best value pedal you can buy these days - albeit with a cheap and plasticky enclosure - so not particularly durable or robust - but at $30 a pop - no one really cares. Considering how many of these have been sold it's a touch surprising that Boss hasn't re-issued its own FZ-2 on which this circuit is based. I fear that there is some weird conspiracy and collusion here where Boss has promised not to reissue the FZ-2 so it can favourably acquire those essential Behringer-owned / made Coolaudio BBD chips for its analog modulations and delays! Or something along those lines! (spoken in jest!).
Boss DS-1 Distortion (1.5 million+ sold) - $63
Estimated : One of the uppermost bestselling pedals of all time - supposedly over 1.5 million sold now.
Boss actually has a number of perennial favourite pedals that frequent the upper echelons of pedal sales charts - funnily with two gain pedal right at the top - the DS-1, and the somewhat slightly further down - MT-2 Metal Zone. Other Boss pedals that tend to do well are the SD-1 Super Overdrive, BD-2 Blues Driver, GE-7 Graphic Equalizer, NS-2 Noise Suppressor, RC-1 Looper and TU-3 Tuner to name but a few!
EarthQuaker Devices : Plumes Small Signal Shredder Overdrive - $99
Estimated : Thousands sold.
For a long time I believe the Dispatch Master was EQD's bestseller - while nowadays it's their $99 budget modern evolved screamer or the 'Plumes' as it's called. Particularly popular in Japan where there have been more that 20 different colourway editions of said pedal as I understand - and some fans collect them all!
Electro-Harmonix : Nano Big Muff Pi (Ram's Head Variants here) - $96 > $130
Estimated : Tens of thousands sold.
EHX has potentially several B&B pedals including the Micro / Nano POG and Pitchfork - while the Soul Food Overdrive was its biggest single seller for a while. Yet we cannot really look beyond the Big Muff Pi category overall as being representative of EHX's main B&B pedals - where I've thought it likely that the two Ram's Head variants jointly are the best-selling of that group - alongside the Op-amp Big Muff variety!
Fulltone : OCD Obsessive Compulsive Overdrive - $120 when in production
Estimated : Tens of thousands sold.
Mike Fuller's most successful pedal I believe - perennially popular and much copied. And while Mike has been on an hiatus - he has thought announced that he will likely start making pedals again in the not too distant future. All Fulltone pedals shot up in price as soon as he announced his now somewhat premature retirement - and Warm Audio even stepped in with a total Trade Dress rip-off as such of that famous pedal. They will hope to sell a bucketload of those before Mike finally gets back into action again!
Greer Amps : Lightspeed Organic Overdrive - $229
Estimated : Tens of thousands sold.
Nick Greer's most perennially popular pedal and most everyone's favourite low gain overdrive - including Pete Honoré before he got his very own ThorpyFX The Dane Signature overdrive pedal. Funnily enough the Lightspeed appears once more on Pete's very recent all Purple pedals pedalboard - right next to his own Dane!
Ibanez : TS808 / TS9 Tube Screamer Overdrives - $180 (TS808) / $110 (TS9)
Estimated : Hundreds of thousands sold - surely the most popular and most ubiquitous overdrive pedal of all time - likely more than the Boss DS-1!
As I mentioned in the intro, and even though there are several Ibanez Tube Screamer variants - including the Mini edition coming on strong of late. While overall it has to be the TS808 that takes the Ibanez B&B crown - albeit that the significantly lower cost TS9 is selling more these days.
JHS Pedals : Morning Glory Blues Breaker style Overdrive - $199
Estimated : Tens of thousands sold.
Very much JHS's perennial bestseller - which has somewhat garnered almost as strong a reputation among Blues Breaker style overdrive fans as the King of Tone has. The one pedal Josh Scott never needs to worry about as it largely sells itself - and therefore helps fuel the development of other pedals in the JHS range.
Keeley Electronics : Compressor Plus 4-Knob Compressor (125K+ sold) - $149
Estimated : One of the few we actually have the figures for - with Keeley just recently reporting that they had reached the 125,000 sales milestone.
It's interesting in that traditionally the compressors that first come to mind are the Ross and MXR Dynacomp style ones in red, then the yellow colourway Diamond Pedals, and in latter years the now almost ubiquitous Keeley 4-knob Compressor Plus - which seems to be the first compressor on near enough everyone's list. With Origin Effects then capturing the pro market with its own somewhat dearer Cali76 Compact Deluxe Compressor!
MXR : Carbon Copy Analog Delay - $149
Estimated : Tens of thousands sold.
MXR has over the years had a number of pedals that qualify as B&B types - with the P90 Phaser and Carbon Copy Analog Delay very much in the lead. Traditionally the P90 was MXR's kind of signature pedal and bestseller - while as in more recent years it has been their Carbon Copy that has somewhat carried the brand!
Origin Effects : Cali76 Compact Deluxe Compressor - $359
Estimated : Thousands sold.
The Cali76 Compact Deluxe is an incredible success story for Origin Effects - where despite its relatively high price point - it continues to feature high on the pedals bestseller list and certainly qualifies for B&B status. The Keely Compressor Plus has kind of captured the more standard / entry-level ground, while Origin Effects pretty much owns the high quality pro segment. There's no shortage of fantastic compressors these days - with some significant innovations appearing quite regularly, While within all that commotion Keeley's and Origin's compressors continue to do really well!
TC Electronic : Ditto Mini Looper - $99 / $159
Estimated : Hundreds of thousand sold.
TC Electronic surely owns the Mini looper pedal sector - where pretty much every player I know owns one of those Ditto Mini Looper varieties. The simpler one is priced absolutely right at $99 - while the newer one with screen included is making significant headway too. Surely one of the most ubiquitous genre pedals of all time!
ThorpyFX : Fallout Cloud Triangle Muff style Fuzz - $269
Estimated : Thousands sold.
Interestingly Thorpy has 2 perennial bestsellers - this Fallout Cloud Fuzz, and Pete Honoré's signature The Dane Overdrive + Boost. Where overall the Fallout Cloud is the brand bestseller - but The Dane is catching up fast and will surely overtake the Fallout Cloud soon enough. Funnily enough there are 2 Muff style fuzzes, and one Fuzz Face derived fuzz - coming up next. In fact I should probably have included the Dunlop Fuzz Face in this listing - while that is almost a single pedal category so in some ways doesn't qualify as much as these others - for certain a bestseller though!
Xotic Effects : EP Booster Mini - $130
Estimated : Thousands sold.
I have an love each of the Xotix Effect original Mini Trifecta - in fact I have 2 sets - and original unadulterated set, along with an Alchemy Audio modded set - with all the formerly internal dip-switches externalised as toggle switches. Of those 3 perennial bestseller - CP Compressor Mini, EP Booster Mini, and SL Drive Mini - it's the Echoplex derived preamp boost that is the mainstay bestseller - one of the first pedal people by to warm up their tone!
Zvex : Fuzz Factory (Vexter) / Vertical - $199
Estimated : Thousands sold.
And finally we have Zvex's most celebrated and most modded Fuzz Face - adding in further granularity to the originally 2-knob 2-Transistor circuit format - here with 5 highly interactive knobs. There is a proper skill to dialling these in which not a lot of players seem to have - which also impacted on the sell-on of Chase Bliss's relatively recent Bliss Factory evolution and enhancement of that circuit. You can though dial out all those extra controls - which leaves you with a great sounding Fuzz Face at its core. To me really this is just a kitchen-sinked evolution of the Fuzz Face - which you can totally dial in for those classic and traditional values.
Final Thoughts
Of course I'm very interested to hear all your opinions here as I'm sure this will spark somewhat heated debate. Surely I could have included a few more but I didn't have enough for a 5 x 5 grid, while I still feel I covered all the essential and most obvious candidates.
Of course there is some arbitrariness and idiosyncrasy with such selections - while I totally stand by all these choices as fulfilling the B&B charter!
I would have thought that many of you have most or all of these - and of course I would love to hear which are your favourites - and which ones you feel I left out. I'm happy to debate the suitability and merits of each of those!
From the listing I own the King of Tone, DS-1, both EHX Ram's Head Muffs, the OCD, Lightspeed, actually only the Tube Screamer Mini - not either of the full size ones, then Ditto and Ditto+, Fallout Cloud, EP Booster, and Vertical Fuzz Factory.
I'm so conflicted about the Behringer I'm not sure I will ever overcome my aversion to that brand. I have so many different Tube Screamers, that I'm really not sure that I need the Plumes, while of those I don't have I feel I will add a Morning Glory and Cali76 Compact Deluxe to the reference collection at some stage.
I feel that all pedal brands should strive to create a Bread and Butter Pedal for their range - so that you have one pedal typically around the $99 - $150 mark which continuously ticks away and kind of sells itself with the minimum of impact. Every brand could really do with that one pedal that sells relatively regularly and without the need for further promotion! It's something I try to encourage most brands to consider and work their way towards!
I do hope you enjoyed this rundown!
