Catalinbread unleashes smart semi-budget One Knob Elements Series of Overdrive, Distortion and Fuzz Pedals

Kind of taking a leaf out of JHS Pedals’ and Fender’s playbook  - or their respective 3 Series and Hammertone Series budget ranges. Catalinbread has sort of delivered its own range of 3 semi-budget pedals - priced not at the killer $99 or below benchmark - but at 50% more at $149. In some ways there is less here than those others’ typically 3+ knob designs. While the Catalinbread Elements Series has THT components onboard versus the others’ SMT types, and a lot of time has been spent crafting exactly the right kind of output to work with just a single Master Volume control topology.

There are several pros and cons of such a design - where you definitely need to have dynamic gain cleanup via guitar volume knob to make those pedals entirely practical - and they need to react very responsively too - to the guitar’s tone controls - so there is a lot of engineering discipline required here - while you don’t get that instant set and forget kind of playback. With more knobs on the pedal you can precisely define the flavour of output you want well in advance. While with One Knob style pedals - you switch them on - and then quickly need to ’tune in’ via your guitar’s controls. So there are pros and cons of each approach. While I always appreciate a pedal with high dynamics - which all 3 of the Elements Series here have.

Catalinbread is being very opaque about exactly what these 3 circuits are based on - each one actually sounds impressively thick and richly detailed. I would presume that the Fuzz is some sort of Silicon Fuzz Face derivative, the Distortion most likely a classic 70’s hard-clipper style circuit somewhere in the ballpark of ProCo Rat, MXR Distortion+ and DOD250. While I’m kind of stumped by the Overdrive - it doesn’t really sound properly like a Tube Screamer or Klone or Blues Breaker - possibly more of a JFET or MOSFET design - all 3 pedals sound really great actually.

I was initially going to do an article here comparing different budget ranges - but felt that wouldn’t necessarily do these 3 Catalinbread ones justice. They certainly sound the part - while I’m not entirely convinced they look the part - and surely Catalinbread would have sold more at the magic $99 price level. So I’m not entirely clear on the strategy here - which is why I labelled this a semi-budget pedal series - as the look and application is definitely budget, while the pricing and quality of output is not.

All innovations in the pedal trade are to be lauded as far as I’m concerned - while I’m not entirely convinced as to the wisdom of this particular approach.

If we look at yet another brand - which doesn’t have a budget range yet per se - but definitely has budget pedals - or namely EQD’s Plumes and Special Cranker pedals - which have the high values and quality of any of EQD’s mainline pedals but are priced at a way more appealing $99 level.

Catalinbread’s Elements Series is in stark contrast to the level and attention to detail of those EQD ’budget’ pedals which each has its own character and design - while the Catalinbread ones will always be viewed as part of a group - as they have near identical very simple and ’industrial’ style enclosure graphics - the kind you always see on B2B and budget brands.

Budget pedals are typically aimed at newby / newly minted guitar players - as their very first properly affordable pedals - when they are first dipping their toes into this area. This is where the JHS and Fender budget ranges work particularly well - while I’m not sure exactly who Catalinbread are targeting their pedals at? There are too many incongruities to be fully successfully and satisfactorily rationalised.

I kind of like what I hear, I’m not sure what I’m seeing, and the price point is not set quite right for a quick impulse buy. And where there is confusion - there are significant barriers to sales!

Here below is a selection of the various launch demos - and like I said - there is much to like here - while I’m not sure I 100% understand what Catalinbread is trying to achieve here and for whom?

What say all of you?