Funny Little Boxes' 1991 Dual-Drive / Distortion is the Perfect Pearl Jam Ten Tone Machine!

I’m a little late reporting this - which has everything to do with my place in the pre-order queue! I actually thought I was quite quick to react initially! I believe the first batch consisted of around 50 or could have been 99 pedals which were instantly snapped up, and then it all went stratospheric when further Pre-Orders were announced. I reacted relatively quickly, while I can see from my serial number - that there were 613 people that reacted quicker than me!

The £99 or $99 price tag seems to be that perfect pedal pricing sweetspot these days - that seems to get everyone excited - considering that £199 / $199 tends to be the typical price point for boutique pedals. Here you get unique aluminium milled knobs, and a really nicely designed enclosure - while inside it’s a modern mix of full-size THT and SMT style construction.

I consider this 1991 pedal very good value for money indeed - while you will need to wait for the privilege of ownership! I officially joined the queue on October 1st last year (2021), at 07:08. My invoice arrived and was paid almost immediately on the 4th of February this year, while despite saying delivery would be a month after payment - it turned out to be closer to 2 months - landing finally on the 26th of March.

Controls - Gain 1 (TS808), Gain 2 (JCM800), Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble.

This pedal was initially created at the behest of Let’s Play All’s Matt Webster who challenged Funny Little Boxes’ Andrew Ilgunas to create for him a £99 pedal based on the core tones found on Pearl Jam’s legendary debut release ’10’ - of course released in 1991.

The two lead guitarists of Pearl Jam (Stone Gossard & Mike McCready) largely create their core tone for that album by playing a Tube Screamer into a Marshall JCM 800 amp - and that’s principally what the first two knobs represent here - or TS808 into JCM800. You then have a typical 3-Band Marshall style tone stack to further shape the output.

You get a suitably broad range of tones and textures in how you combine the first two knobs, and the 3-Band EQ is pretty perfectly calibrated. I could have done with a little more volume though, and just a touch more juice on the second gain stage. For £99 though you really can’t quibble. This is very similar topologically to the Aleks K Production Dual Drives - which are of course more than 2 times the price - often nearly 3 times the price - those have even more range and texture, and slightly better quality components all-round, while the 1991 does pretty much everything it is supposed to do - really well.

Obviously Josh Scott’s JHS Pedals made quite a splash with their $99 / £99 3 Series Pedals - which have sold pretty briskly ever since - and I believe the 1991 sales are in the thousands now - while they’re being built at a rate of 150-200 pedals a month by the looks of it.

I think it’s well worth getting in on this - while there is a considerable waiting list of around 5 months, per my experience, from when you get onto the pre-order list / queue - so not quite as bad as King of Tone or some of those other high-demand boutique pedals!

I have a number of dual drive pedals in the collection - and will do another follow up soon on the best of those - which will certainly include the 1991. For a first major release for Funny Little Boxes I feel this has gone some way beyond even the most optimistic expectations - and I look forward to witnessing whatever comes next! It’s always nice to see when something is a major success.

Who among you has one of these - and what are your own insights?