9 of the Best Jacques Stompboxes
Jacques Stompboxes was one of the very first of the French pedal builders to gain major international recognition and traction, while it’s a little under the radar for many these days - so I decided I needed to shine a light and bring some much needed focus back on this legendary French brand!
Jacques Charbit - from whom Jacques Stompboxes gets its name - first took up the soldering iron and started messing around with electronics as a teenager in the 70’s. As a result of his early influences - these pedals are massively inspired by the sounds and cultural movements of the 70’s.
In and around 1995 Jacques had gained sufficient experience and knowledge to make his very first original effect - the Fuse Blower Distortion - which was such a success with friends and acquaintances - that Jacques Stompboxes was founded as a result a few years later in 1999. The Fuse Blower is one of Andy Martin’s very favourite effects pedals and he’s had an original large format version of that in regular rotation on his board for many years.
As per usual - I’m mostly interested in the compact enclosure pedals - and have picked my 9 favourites of those - most of which are still in active production, but some of which are special order items.
I pretty much really like every one of the 9 I’ve selected here, while so far I’ve only acquired the Bat Fuzz Metal Distortion to date (many years ago now) - where the intention was always to get many more Jacques Stompboxes into the reference collection - but I’ve been led down so many different rabbit holes in the intervening years - and earlier intentions are so often forgotten or re-prioritised for a variety of reasons. A lot of the time to do with personal connections you make along the way - and indeed I have still to properly connect with Jacques!
There are several here that I definitely want to add to my reference collection - at the top of that list - are the 3 gain pedals I have still to get - the Electric Lamb Edge Overdrive, Fuse Blower Triple Engine Distortion, and Mercer Box Concept FuzzStortion.
In the second wave I would love to get hold of the Kashmir 3-in-1 Waveform Modulator, and Trinity 3-in-1 Envelope Filter, Auto-Wah and Wah. And then possible the Kappelmeister Flanger, and Overtube Cascaded SRV style TS808 type.
I’ve added too many delays to the collection this year for that to be of peak interest to me - while each of these 9 pedals featured here are fantastic original circuits - perhaps with the exception of the Overtube - while that one’s execution is still pretty neat too!
I’ve tried to standardise on the look of these pedals - in selecting the most similar variants - while there are differences in livery and knob choices out there.
All of these can be ordered from the Jacques Stompboxes Webstore, and there’s a fair few older versions in particular available on Reverb.com. I’m keen on securing the V2 editions of these - which I believe most of the above visual represents!
Here follow the individual details :
Bat Fuzz Classic Metal Distortion (Dual High Gain Distortion) - special order - €179
Controls - ULTRA HIGH GAIN CIRCUIT } Wings (Lows), Fangs (Mids), Radar (Treble + Bite); 70's METAL CIRCUIT : Level, Fuzz; UNIVERSAL } Mix : Mix & Morph the 2 circuits together.
This is the only one I've acquired to date probably around the time I did the French Pedal Builders overview back in September of 2018 (www.guitarpedalx.com/news/gpx-blog/best-of-french-guitar-pedals-and-pedal-builders). This is a really cool dual high gain distortion with 2 knobs to control the 70's voicing and the 3 upper knobs to control the more modern Ultra High Gain voicing - which you then Mix / Morph together as you see fit. Very much a sort of fuzz-edged style of high gain distortion - originally inspired by Deep Purple I believe! I need to dig this one out again - I had a lot of fun with it on the board for a while - but I rotate so many pedals in service of this blog - that some get temporarily forgotten - time for a reboot I think!
Electric Lamb Edge Overdrive (Super Dynamic Overdrive) - €179
Controls - Tone (Highs), Pre (Input Gain), Fat (Lows), Volume, Gain.
This is a spin-off of the larger Electric Sheep Overdrive - where Jacques calls this an Edge Overdrive - meaning it's set right on the edge of breakup - such that your playing style - light strumming or really digging in - totally shapes the output of this overdrive in the most dynamic way possible. So you tune it in to a certain point where your precise touch and feel totally controls the nature and degree of the breakup - one of the most touch-sensitive pedals currently on the market. Does all that guitar volume gain clean-up etc. brilliantly. This had a lot of press when it first came out a couple of years or so ago - and rightly so!
Fuse Blower Professional Distortion (Triple Engine Distortion) - €179
Controls - Bass (Blower 1), Mid (Blower 2), Treble (Blower 3).
And here is one of Andy Martin's favourite ever distortions - albeit significantly updated from his original version. This current Fuse Blower has Three differently 'tuned' distortion engines which marry a differently voiced EQ to a particular Blower Gain Stage (1-3). You're essentially setting the levels for each separately voiced distortion - where the lower 3 controls then fine-tune the pedal's overall output Volume, Tone and Gain. A really cool and unique take on a sort of 3-gain-stage distortion. And of course it sounds tremendous!
Kapellmeister Professional BBD Flanger - special order - €179
Controls - Rate, Depth, Regen, Manual
Jacques' Meistersinger Chorus is one of his most popular pedals and still in active production, while I kind of prefer the Flanger - which has a little more versatility to it as far as I'm concerned. I'm kind of chorused out after this year - with somewhat north of 20 analog choruses in the reference collection already. In fact I think I probably have near enough 20 Flangers now too - while between the Kappelmeister and Meistersinger - I would rather go for the Flanger.
Kashmir Vibe + Rotate + Trem (3-in-1 Modulator) - special order - €249
Controls - Rate 1, Rate Synchronisation : Off / On, Rate 2, Mode : Tremolo / Rotate, Level, Wave (form) : Square / Sine, Deep (Depth / Intensity).
3-in-1 Uni-Vibe, Leslie Rotary, and Tremolo Modulator. Readers will know that I typically say that for proper rotary you really need stereo output. While I'm willing to make an exception for this ingenious devices - which splits the Audio / Signal into Low and High bands and allows you to set a different Rate for each - i.e. Rate 1 and Rate 2. You then have 3 2-way toggles which determine mode and type of Modulation - Rate / LFO Sync, Mode and Waveform. Jacques just has a knack for doing things really cleverly and slightly differently to everyone else!
Mercer Box Concept Distortion (Twin Gain FuzzStortion) - €179
Controls - Hate (Bass), Blood (Mids), Love (Gain 2), Level, Fuzz (Gain 1).
This is another favourite of Andy Martin's as far as I understand - with a common theme here as per the other distortion pedals - where you're blending together 2 or more gain stages - here a more fuzzy looser one with a tighter more modern distortion. Again you get an enormous variety of sounds by combining those two and loading in just the right amounts of Bass and Mids.
Overtube Vintage Pro Professional Overdrive (Cascaded SRV style dual Screamer) - €179
Controls - Tone, Drive, Cascade (SRV Mode) : On / Off, Level.
So yes this is another kinda sorta Tube Screamer type - but done rather differently, So you actually have dual TS808 gain stages onboard which you can then cascade to create the same sort of effect as Steve Ray did with two TS808 pedals. For sure there are enough Screamers out there already - and I've always quite fancied Pedal Pawn's Texas Twang - while I dare say this Overtube is quite a bit more clever!
Prisoner BBD Analog Modulated Delay - €229
Controls - Rate, Modulation, Repeat, Time, Level.
A much loved modulated analog bucket brigade delay - does everything you would want it to - and sounds glorious every which way. Alas mono only - which isn't really compatible with the tail-end of my rig. A great option for those looking for something slightly different to the MXR Carbon Copy.
Trinity Envelope Filter + Auto + Wah - special order - €199
Controls - Rate, Depth, Sensitivity, Manual.
And last - alphabetically only is this ingenious 3-in-1 Envelope Filter, Auto-Wah, and actual Wah via included expression controller. The pedal comes with a cool rubber beehive-looking / old-school foot-pump style expression controller - which is so down my street. I mostly prefer to use auto-wah, but being able to flip over to actual wah when you need to, and engage an Envelope Filter also - is just a killer combination and actually perfect for my own needs.
Final Thoughts
Shame on me really that I had forgotten quite how many of these pedals I considered essential.
There's 4 here I really want - the Electric Lamb, Fuse Blower, Mercer Box, and Trinity - and most of the rest are nice-to-haves for me.
It looks like stripes are being introduced in the current incarnation (I guess V3) - as both the Overtube and Prisoner pedals have different forms of stripe motifs in their graphics.
I will no doubt need to connect properly with Jacques himself - probably in the wake of this article - as most of what I want is not available except direct from Jacques!
I'm sure several of you have favourite Jacques pedals - and I would love to hear from you about which ones are your own personal favourites.
