9 x Red Means Marshall!

This recent limited edition souped-up DLS contains more tone-shaping and punchier gain than the standard MKIII version. It sold out pretty quickly, and I was lucky enough to bag a copy. As noted previously, the Catalinbread DLS has long been Andy Martin's favourite Marshall-style drive, while I have a slight preference for some of my others - which unfortunately are not red!

The RedRox has long been on my wishlist and is something of a Rob Chapman / Andertons favourite too - I dare say they took some cues for their Snake Oil Marvellous Engine Distortion from this. 4 simple controls - Contour (Mid Focus) | Tone | Master (Level) | PreAmp (Gain). Some lovely tones and textures available here - possibly a lower priority for me now since the acquisition of the not altogether dissimilar Site Wuffy.

Another wishlist long-termer - this time in the JCM-800 category where I already have numerous options - albeit none with a separate boost footswitch in this compact format. There is some degree of uniqueness with the controls here - 5 dials - Volume | Drive | EQ (Tone) | Air (Presence) | Boost (Level), and a 3-way Headroom/Compression/Gain Character toggle-switch - 25 | 50 | 100 .

This is the Mad Professor derivation of the venerable Björn Juhl BJFE Dyna Red Distortion - a classic Marshall-style distortion in its own right. This is a really versatile pedal despite just three controls - Volume | Distortion | Presence. There's certainly a lot of competition in this category while this is the simplest on offer here - so if you like to keep things simple - this is your likely choice!

This is still my favourite Brown Sound / EVH style pedal against all-comers - I have most of the key performers in this category - and while they all get in on the rotation - this is the one that has just the right amount of sizzle for me. 3 Clipping options for different degrees of compression, combined with 3 Gain Mode structures - Low, Medium and High - and then 3-Band EQ plus Presence. For some this pedal is a touch too fiddly, but for me I can dial in exactly the voicing I like - still my favourite of its kind - although I've yet to do a full head-to-head with the JHS Andy Timmons Plus.

The lowest cost option in this group with 'Crunch' clipping option over the Mad Professor Might Red. The 'Crunch' gives you more distortion harmonics should you prefer that - otherwise it's just the usual simple Output | Tone | Distortion. It's a decent pedal for sure - and at this price will be hard to resist for many.

I previously acquired the 4-knob Sitek Silicon Pandora Fuzz which I still love and it does well on the rotation - and this pedal was sparked by a superb demo by one Pete Honoré per the above. In many ways this is not dissimilar to the Dawner Prince RedRox above - very similar controls, but the Wuffy has an additional 2-way clipping switch which adds more harmonics into the distortion. There's a really cool hint of fuzz in the upper register of this pedal which I really like - and which swung the acquisition decision for me. Funnily on Pete's demo another critic cites that as a reason he did not like the pedal. While with my Empress MultiDrive I always added in some of the Fuzz voicing to deliver more distortion harmonics and texture! This is not cited as being a Marshall-style distortion but it certainly sounds like one to me.

I currently have 11 Wampler pedals and most of Brian's key Drives and Distortions including this one. It's another great sounding variety which though is pipped by some of my other favourites of this type in my own rotation preferences. Just like there are several voices of Plexi, there are several voices for JCM-800 too - and for me I sort of prefer the degree of sizzle on the MI Effects Super Crunch Box V2, Suhr Riot and Bogner Burnley. These are all great pedals though and different players will like one variety over another for simply personal preference reasons. For me each has a slightly different character which inspires different types of playing - all 9 here are 'Best of' you can't say any one of these is definitely better than the other - you will all likely have different favourites here.