Best of Spanish Guitar Pedals and Pedal Builders

I do seem to come across this brand every now and again - probably more by accident than design. They have a pretty decent range of mostly dirt pedals - boosts, drives and fuzzes, along with a single modulation in the guise of the BJTrem. There's a number of pretty great sounding fuzzes in the range - which of course pique my interest, but my pick of the bunch is the GT73 PreAmp/Overdrive - an excellent pedal replica of the well loved 1973 Matamp GT120. As with many ranges of this ilk I feel branding / identity and uniformity could be stronger - but these are obviously well designed and built pedals (Note that above demo is of larger older pedal version):

• Like = 828 Germanium Fuzz (TB 1.5) | BJTrem Tremolo | Byrd Song Treble Booster | DS308 Distortion (Rat) | Germanium Fuzz (FF) | Gray Drive (DOD250) | GT73 PreAmp/Overdrive | Mark 1 Germanium Fuzz (TB) | Mark 2 Fuzz (TB) | Mark 3 Germanium Fuzz (TB) | Meteorite Silicon Fuzz| Range Booster Germanium | Range Booster Silicon | Silicon Fuzz (FF) | Superfuzz | V2 Superfuzz | Sustainer Circle Face (Ram) + BoostDriver | Sustainer Muff Fuzz | Sustainer OpAmp Muff Fuzz | Tweed Drive

Regular readers of this site will be very familiar with my admiration for Guillem Vilademunt's output - and his mini pedals in particular. I actually came across the Golden Horse Mini quite by chance initially - via some post to the Facebook Pedalboards of Doom group - where an early fan of the pedal was showing off his collection of several Decibelics pedals. That alone piqued my interest, and upon further research I found that indeed I somehow preferred the Golden Horse to both my well-loved Mini Tumnus and Tumnus Deluxe pedals. I am typically a 'pedal-tweaker' where the more dials the better typically works for me - and I did not think it was possible for a mini 3-knob pedal to displace my then favourite Tumnus Deluxe. But something about the Golden Horse somehow captivated me - in terms of the amazing standard of engineering employed and the precision and range in each of those 3 metallic knobs. I have said before that the tone control here is genius - but the Volume and Gain knobs are just as precise and wide-ranging. I still feel that the Golden Horse is THE brand ambassador for Mini Pedals - and is the benchmark for how well things can be done in this format. Of course the brand new Angry Swede is no slouch either - and is the perfect pedal for you if you're looking for as exact a replica of the original as possible. The diminutive form factor is just another bonus here. The power of delivery and the output Volume in particular seem all the more impressive for it. It is no doubt the perfect HM-2 clone and for all budding Death-Metallers out there - it makes ultimate sense to spring for one of these rather than a pricey second-hand Boss original of questionable provenance. I so like the Golden Horse that I won't even deign to look at the larger sized alternatives here - which do both benefit from additional internal clipping dip-switch. I understand why some players might choose to go with the Little Big Clone. I still don't understand those though that prefer the somewhat over-sized original chassis - I personally will always aim for the most compact pedal with the best combination of features and tonal output!

• Like = Angry Swede Mini HM-2 Clone | Big Vintage Klone | Golden Horse Mini Klone | Little Big Klone

Before doing this research I truly was not aware of the Don Poniz brand of pedals - which currently has no official site, choosing to connect with the world solely via Facebook page and YouTube Channel. I assume you email Don Poniz direct and he issues a PayPal invoice or similar if you wish to buy one these mostly Fuzz pedals - which seems to be dominated by the Fuzztotum series - which suits me just fine as a fuzz fanatic. I thought it apt to choose one of the Fuzztotums as the pick of the bunch, and the Golden Vox Tone Bender style one is the one that appeals to me the most here:

• Like = Black Magic Fuzzbox | Fuzzmodum Fuzz + RingMod | Fuzztotum Duplus Fuzz | Fuzztotum Piccolo Bronze (Jen TB) | Fuzztotum Piccolo Gold (Vox TB) | Fuzztotum Piccolo Red (FF/TB) | Fuzztotum Piccolo Silver (Silversound SE/80) | Fuzzy Face | The Key Clean Booster | Kossoff Custom Drive + Boost | Mastru Iaffiu Distortion | Ram's Head Muff | Rocket Overdrive

I first came across this brand courtesy of its Winona Ryder / Winona Driver branded TS808 style pedals. I fear they skirt quite close to litigation territory, but get around it by making these solely as custom orders to a customer's preferences. The Winona Driver, Stranger (Things) Fuzz, Adventure Phaser etc. can only be made to order - and are actually internally quite vanilla, while there are also more technical pedals here like the Black Hole PolyChorus (My pick of the bunch), Cy-Vorg Warp Sound, Doomsday Machine Stereo Fuzz, FG3 3-Band Formant Generator and Juno Stereo Chorus. There are lots of smaller fledgling mostly custom pedal builders that utilise pop-art graphics and themes which would have to be properly licensed if they ever hit the mainstream. So there is obviously a healthy dose of associative nostalgia and novelty which underlines much of this line of pedals - but there are some gems here too - I of course would prefer them to be in slightly more compact enclosures too!:

• Like = Adventure Analog Phaser | Batpedal Fuzz + Overdrive | Best Pedal Ever Fuzz + Overdrive | Black Hole PolyChorus - Reverb/Chorus/Phaser/DeadZone | Chorus Division Analog BBD Chorus | Cy-Vorg Warp Sound | Doomsday Machine Stereo Fuzz | FG3 3-Band Formant Generator | Football Germanium Fuzz (FF Best/Cantona/Cruyff/Maradonna/Zidane | GhostBooster | Juno Stereo Chorus | Sonic Fuzz (SF) | Spring in TwinPeaks Reverb | Stranger Drive TS808 | Stranger Germanium Fuzz | The Terminator Apocalypse Distortion+ | Winona Driver Overdriver

Electronic Engineer and Musician Chris Bradford re-located to Denia, Spain and initially started making pedals for friends before launching El Músico Loco in circa 2010. The first pedal was the Honky Dong Booster and then the various fuzzes etc. just followed on naturally. I've come across the Wee Beaver Fuzz on numerous occasions - a really fierce sort of Muff-style fuzz which totally belies its tiny dimensions. I've actually been trying to find one of those for a very long time - before I tracked down a suitable example in Japan - courtesy of Ebay actually on this occasion. The business seemingly did not take off for whatever reason, but has left a quite wonderful legacy of uniformly appealing etched/engraved steel enclosure pedals - many of which are still available on Reverb.com.

• Like = 74 Overdrive (TS808) | 83 Fuzz (Ibanez Fuzz) | Blisterlily OpAmp Overdrive | Dinky Dong Mini Mosfet Boost | Dr.Iver Overdrive | El Boludo Fuzz (Triangle Muff) | Honky Dong Mosfet Booster | La Rosa 1VOD Valve PreAmp | Old Glass Fuzz | Siamese Scream Fuzz (OpAmp Muff) | Tone Bender MKII | Wee Beaver Big Battery Fuzz (compact) | Wee Beaver Fuzz Mini

This is a bit of a wild card listing here as I was struggling to pick a 9th significant Spanish builder/brand. MegaBeat has a very small range of pretty much utility pedals, but I really like the idea of their Darth Fader. The newer version is yellow lettering onto black enclosure - slightly more refined than the above, but I was unable to source suitable photography of the newer one - so I feature the V1 here - which is also actually the one in the demo video. You get 3 knobs to set degree of fade out/in the mode knob sets Out/Both/In, then you have 1-40 second duration and degree of fade in decibels 10-60. Finally you have 3 onboard presets and appropriate coloured LEDs to reflect status. So a sort of Fade / Volume Swell Pedal as such - which I feel could be significantly improved with more features and modulations. Also I question whether you can do Fade In/Out as well as Out/In - I guess it just depends where in the cycle you start, but I feel you may have to set it in a certain way in advance - meaning possibly that you would need 4 In/Out/InOut/OutIn options I suppose. In any case - this neatly enables you to circumvent faffing around with a volume pedal!:

• Like = Darth Fader Fade Out/In Pedal | Ghost Booster Linear Booster | Loop Skywalker Audio Loop & Switcher | MIDI Footcontroller/Switcher

Principally an Amp maker, I have watched this brand somewhat rise in prominence of late with a compact but capable range of drive/distortion pedals in particular, a really neat compact delay, and a well-featured Rotary Speaker style effect. I spotted them at the relatively recent Birmingham Guitar Show, but at that time could not instantly recall the brand. Overall I feel the range is well thought out and relatively harmonious - while the branding could be slightly more prominent for more impact and association. I was always likely to select either the Breakthru or Heartbreaker as my pick of the punch here - and I settled on the sparkly Blizzard of Nails Vox style tones of the former:

• Like = Black Sun Seattle Inspired RotoPhaser | Breakthru Dual Overdrive (Blizzard of Nails Vox) | Gasoline High Gain Distortion (Mesa?) | Heartbreaker PreAmp (Bluesbreaker/JTM45) | Outlaw Soloing Boosting Delay | Uprising Organic Dual Booster

I am somewhat sad that this tremendous brand seems to be no more - as I consider Roberto García's ThunderTomate brand to be the preeminent Spanish Pedal Brand to-date. Despite superior aesthetics and tones, and universally positive reviews/reception - all that seemed insufficient to sustain the longer-term viability of this brand, or Roberto let it go for other unknown reasons. I actually only came across it some years after its dissolution - when researching Brian May Vox style tones and encountering the various Dani/Danny Gómez Signature pedals by ThunderTomate. Daniel Gómez being Spain's representative for Brian May guitars, as well as an extraordinary Brian-May-Style player himself. Besides the Vox-like Tube Amp Emulators, ThunderTomate is particularly well known and regarded for its Analog Delay and Phil Hilborne Fat TB (Treble Booster) which used to be available on Phil's site until very recently. I feel that pretty much everything was right about this brand - aesthetics, control topology, enclosures etc. and of course 'Toanz'. So I am somewhat surprised it is no longer around. I've been looking out for ThunderTomate pedals for the best part of 18 months now - and still not encountered any in the wild as it were - even though more than 6,000 are out there somewhere. My pick of the bunch and the one that I want the most is the earliest Dani Gomes AC30/Vox pedal with effects loop and tone control on the boost - it was a forerunner to the T.A.E. series, and I consider it the best of the bunch - but I guess only very few were made (Note that above video demo actually features the T.A.E. V3 with UK Brian May guitar specialist Jamie Humphries):

• Like = Acoustic Guitar PreAmp | Amp Switcher x 2 | Amp Switcher x 3 | Analog Chorus | Analog Chorus + Vibrato | Analog Delay | Analog Phaser | Buffer / Line Driver | Compressor | The Cow Fuzz | Dani Gomez / AC30 Custom | Dispositivo Martinez Fuzz | Distortion LM308N (Rat) | Distortion | Fet Amplifier FA-1 | Grandma's Tremolo | Guitar A/B/Y Switcher | Guitar Parametric EQ | Guitar Switcher | Linear Booster | Mild Overdrive | Muffin' Man V2 Fuzz | OD / PreAmp 250 | OD 800 | Opto Comp | Over-Drive+ | Overdrive / Booster | Paco el de la Bomba Fuzz (73 Ram) | Phil Hilborne Fat TB (Treble Booster) | Ram's Head Fuzz | Silicon Fuzz (FF) | Silly Rocket Boost / PreAmp | Studio Series Distortion | Studio Series Overdrive | T.A.E. Tube Amp Emulator w/ Daniel Gomez (Vox) | T.A.E. V2 Tube Amp Emulator w/ Daniel Gomez (Vox) | T.A.E. V3 Tube Amp Emulator w/ Daniel Gomez (Vox) | Taxi Driver Overdrive (OD-1) | Treble Booster V2 | Twin Booster | Twin Tremolo | Violet Ram's Head

THE REST:

This seems to be a somewhat fledgling brand with the main website undergoing re-design, and just a couple of official pedals in the range so far - the Dr. Fuzz (FF?) and Dr. Screamer (808?). Not that much more to report at the moment as there are very few references on this brand to-date:

• Like = Dr. Fuzz | Dr. Screamer Drive | Purple Face Vintage Fuzz

DAGPedals seems to be another fledgling pedals with several in the works and being finalised - including a series with Skull motif. This is pretty much entirely a Fuzz and Drive pedal specialist with some intriguing offerings for sure - a little early days though for a full verdict - file under encouraging!:

• Like = Aguila Fuzz | JetFuzz | Maximum Overdrive | OverBooster | Pinball Warp Fuzz | Republica Fuzz | RocketDriver | StarFuzz Hybrid Fuzz | Sundial Fuzz | Supamodel Fuzz | Thunderbolt Fuzz | Women Power Fuzz

Delcam Audio is principally a boutique amp manufacturer - they make beautiful amp heads with carved / etched wooden facias and complementary Cabinets of course. They also have 3 dual footswitch medium enclosure pedals in the range - A Dual Channel Boost/Overdrive/Distortion - The Nameless King, Distortion + Boost - California Doom, as well as an Octave Fuzz - Mr Fox MK2. The Nameless King is firmly in KOT territory - sort of Bluesbreaker/JTM45, the California Doom is based on the Sunn Model T, and the Mr Fox is your classic sort of Octavia with separate Octave footswitch, along with clipping and fat-tone-shaping toggle options. As I already have the all-singing and dancing JHS 4-Star Modded version of the KOT and a tonne of cool Octave Fuzzes, my pick here would likely be the California Doom with its 3-band EQ and additional gain stage options. A very good looking and well-made compact range of pedals:

• Like = California Doom Sunn Model T + Boost | Mr Fox MK2 Octave Fuzz | The Nameless King Dual Channel Boost/Overdrive/Distortion

Faustone AKA Fausto Pérez has been going for a while, but the Amp and Pedal business has become less important in Fausto's life of late where his life is evidently moving in a different direction. He does though have a couple of semi-active projects and is open to the very occasional build - which tends to be rather sporadic nowadays, and is not really for anyone in any hurry! He has a couple of what I consider somewhat over-sized traditional style pedals listed - the vintage style Fuzz Unit and Tube-powered Valve Klipper - and you would need to contact him though his site and negotiate/bribe as appropriate!

• Like = Fuzz Unit (B&M Champion Fuzz) | Valve Klipper MKII Tube Distortion (Peavey/Marshall)

This is principally an Amp builder with a pretty significant range of Heads, Combos and Cabs, and just the one medium gain Drive Pedal. That one drive pedal being the GTA AcePow which allows you to switch between two gain settings and has a sort of 'Pow' boost toggle - hence earning its Double Overdrive moniker:

• Like = AxePow Double Overdrive

LME do a mix of mods and own-line pedals with a variety of custom finishes. They very much sit in the usual Boost/Drive/Fuzz kind of territory, and while there are some interesting aesthetics here, there is not much else for me at least to single these out as particularly distinct or unique:

• Like = 36 Civil War Distortion (Muff) | The Brain Semi-Analog Delay | Deluxe Mosfet Booster | EvOverdrive / Custom (TS808) | The King Buffer | Ratpac Distortion (Rat)

A pretty decent traditional looking range of pedals many with vintage hammerite style finishes. Typically 2 and 3 knob affairs - apart from the very interesting looking Bass King - which is a dedicated Bass guitar pedal - and thus not really for me - but really the pick of the bunch here!:

• Like = 66 Bender Fuzz (MKI.5) | The Aladdin Silicon Fuzz | Baby Face Fuzz (FF) | Bass King Dual Fuzz/Drive | M-200 Drive (Marshall Major) | MK3 Fuzz (TB) | Pro Boost (Power Boost) | Ronno Bender Fuzz (MKI) | The Sound Drive (Early Marshall) | Super-Bender Fuzz (MKII)

Massive Unity seems to straddle both UK and Spain, and has something to do with Dani/Daniel/Danny Gómez mentioned in the ThunderTomate feature above. Being a fan of the ThunderTomate T.A.E. I sprung for the newer Massive Unity 1964 TAE PreAmp assuming it to be some sort of derivation - which still took me a while to track down, but which I ended up being somewhat disappointed with as it's no way near as dynamic as my Bearfoot FX Emerald Green Distortion Machine - which also seems to have more range and oomph to it. I'm not sure if I'm somehow using the 1964 TAE wrong - I've made several attempts to get on with it, but I cannot get it to perform to even Catalinbread Galileo levels, let along EGDM's peak prowess. I find the enclosure somewhat over-sized and awkward - just not sure about this pedal at the moment - but I'm still giving it a chance to persevere and come good!

• Like = The 1964 TAE PreAmp (Vox + Boost) | The Dirty Boy TAE PreAmp

This simply put is the Spanish BYOC - you can buy these pedals in both Kit and Assembled form - at various levels - just the circuit boards even if you wish. They are all very obviously named and typically very anonymously branded. This is quite an extensive range of clones - less so Boss for whatever reason, but several replicas of BJFe, DOD, Keeley, Lovepedal, Mad Professor, MXR, Xotic and Zvex pedals etc. By all accounts a decent proposition at a fair price, but surely some of the naming is skating well onto thin ice?:

• Like = AC Booster | BB PreAmp | Centaur Overdrive (Klone) | Compulsive Overdrive (OCD) | Deep Blue Delay | DOD 250'77 Overdrive | EA Tremolo | Elephant Fuzz (W.Mammoth) | EP Boos | Eternity Overdrive | Fire Red Fuzz | Fuzz Factory | Green Ringer | HoneyBee Overdrive | Kalamazoo Overdrive | Katana Booster | Little Green Wonder Overdrive | Marshall Bluesbreaker | Marshall Guv'nor | Micro Amp PreAmp | Mr Q Envelope Filter | Phase 90 | Pineapple Overdrive/Distortion | Plexi Overdrive | Rangemaster Treble Booster | RC Booster | Reverb | Ross Compressor | Ruby Red Booster | Sea Blue Equaliser | SFT Distortion | Sky Blue Overdrive | Snow White Autowah | Soul Overdrive | Stone Grey Distortion | Super Hard On Booster | Sweet Honey Overdrive | TB Octave | TubeScreamer TS-808 | Zombie Chorus

Javier Rubio is a Spaniard transplanted to Offenbach, Germany so I originally just included the Servus! Pedale entry under Germany - where I've now decided it should sit here too after a few said that I really should include it under Spain. As mentioned previously I believe Javier is best known for his Yodelmaster / Yodelino Delay & Echo Pedals - but he also has the really cool GLAM Programmable Analog High Gain Distortion and A Sound Odyssey Programmable Reverb - the range is developing nicely:

• Like = GLAM Programmable Analog High Gain Distortion | Photophobia Optical Compressor | Roadie Programmable Effects and Midi Controller | Servus! Dual AB Loop with Trails | Servus! Roots Overdrive + Tremolo + Reverb, A Sound Odyssey Programmable Reverb | Yodelino Delay & Echo | Yodelmaster 2 Tap-Tempo Delay & Echo

A range of 6 Boxing-themed pedals - drive, fuzz, tremolo and delay. At one stage I was considering the Punch Drunk for one of the 9 featured slots - but failed to find suitable product shots, and then decided that the MegaBeat Audio Darth Fader was probably a little more significant / appealing. Nonetheless a decent range of well-designed pedals with an appealing feature set:

• Like = Bee Sting Modern Clipping Distortion + Boost | FootWork Dual Mode + Two Speed Tremolo | Knockout Creamy Overdrive + Boost | Punch Drunk Germanium Fuzz + Oscillation | Seconds Out 600ms Analog Delay + Infinite Feedback Footswitch | Uppercut Medium Gain Overdrive + Boost