Pedals

The Depths is our take on the classic optical vibe circuit. Now you can swab the decks with the same lush, pulsating, three-dimensional swirling sound you know and love, with some modern accouterments for all you land-lubbers out there. The Depths is optimized for use with all kinds of instruments, pickups, and to play well with dirt, so nobody’s left waiting on shore. If it’s got a ¼” output, plug it in and get deep!

The Avalanche Run is a dreamy stereosonic exploratory multi-tool that includes up to 2 seconds of delay time, reverse delay, tap tempo with subdivision control, switchable true bypass or buffered bypass with 5 different tail lengths (including a sound-on-sound style lo-fi looping mode) and an assignable expression control that maps the expression jack to a control of your choice, including the toggle! The delay section allows tweaking from tape emulation to bucket brigade styles with a twist of the wide-range Tone control. The cavernous, plate-style reverb has just a touch of modulation similar to the one found in our precious Dispatch Master only more lush with an adjustable Decay. Otherworldly reverse delay and dynamic swelling reverb settings are accessible through a 3-way toggle switch. And that’s just the beginning...  

The Afterneath sounds a lot like it looks – a wizard bursting forth from ethereal cave and ready for the ambient battle. You are the wizard – or sorceress, if you prefer – and the cave is your instrument’s signal, vast, expansive, and magical. Do you go inside? Roll a D20 to proceed! Once inside, a reflection of light from an unknown source catches your eye, and you notice a bizarre sheen on the walls of the cave. You timidly inch closer to the walls of the cave. Placing your hand gently on the cavern wall, you feel the rock move. The cave is alive! Alarmed, you emit a loud gasp, which reverberates throughout the subterranean landscape. Upon further listening, it appears as though the reverberations of your voice are in fact a swarm of short digital delays which may be used to create wild and cavernous reverbs, or scattered, short, rhythmic delays with bizarre characteristics.

The Acapulco Gold is a dirt-simple distortion Device modeled after the sound of a cranked vintage Model T amplifier, bringing the openness, clarity, and crunch that only a dimed tube amp can provide, at a fraction of the size, and without expensive maintenance costs! Since tone is in the hands, we decided to keep the controls of the Acapulco Gold as simple as possible. The footswitch turns the pedal on and off, and the giant knob controls the output volume. That’s it. The rest is at your fingertips. Want less gain? Turn down your guitar’s volume knob. Need a darker rhythm tone? Roll back your guitar’s tone control. Easy, right?

The JHS Pedals 3 Series is a collection of pedals designed to give you affordability and simplicity without compromising quality. Each 3 Series pedal is made by us in Kansas City, MO, using high-quality parts, quality control, and attention to every detail. Each pedal has three simple controls and one toggle that offer a wide range of sounds, perfect for beginners and professionals alike. The JHS Pedals 3 Series will inspire your playing and help you explore new sounds at a totally approachable price point. The 3-Series Screamer is the beloved JHS Tube Screamer “Strong Mod”, but in a brand-new $99 pedal. This pedal represents years of Josh playing around with the legendary Tube Screamer circuit and wanting to offer those changes in an affordable package. You will find more clean headroom, better usability as a boost, more versatile drive and tone controls as well as a more pleasing frequency response. This may be the most well-balanced Tube Screamer on earth, but that’s for you to decide. The 3 Series Screamer runs on 9V DC negative center power and consumes 12mA.

In 1978, the most versatile and influential distortion pedal of all time was invented in Kalamazoo, MI. Scott Burnham and Steve Kiraly first had the idea after playing, repairing and modifying all the available distortion pedals on the market. They wanted something that didn’t exist in the then mainstream throes of MXR, DOD and even BOSS’s product line; they wanted a pedal that could go from overdrive to distortion and then all the way to fuzz. By 1979 Scott had perfected the circuit in his RAT-infested basement workshop, and the rest is history.  The PackRat is the ultimate tribute to the 40+ years of rodent evolution and its impact on the guitar’s sound. Artists from every genre have used the iconic tones in this unassuming black box to create their sounds, including Nirvana, John Schofield, Pink Floyd, Metallica, REM, the Eagles, Jeff Beck and Radiohead.  Building on our Multi-Mode pedal series that includes the Muffuletta and Bonsai, the PackRat uses the same unique digital runway system to direct the paths of 261 components through 40 individual switches. This means that when you choose one of the nine legendary or rare modes, you are playing fully analog circuits that perfectly replicate that mode, even down to the aging components (also known as component drift). If you purchased these nine hard-to-find pedals on the used market right now, you would pay around $4,000. When you put it that way, $249 sounds pretty reasonable, right?

When designing the temperature controlled fuzz, we tried some unusual approaches. One false start utilized a voltage controlled error correction circuit to bias a single germanium transistor. It ultimately didn’t work for the fuzz, which is comically sensitive to transistor gain attributes. We did find a place for it though. It turns out it was PERFECT for achieving a germanium clean boost that, (like our fuzz) is impervious to component drift, leakage, and temperature....moreso in fact. We also fixed a couple other issues preventing the germanium transistor from being used as a convinc- ing linear boost...we increased the input headroom (even a normal guitar signal will drive a germanium transistor into unwanted input distortion without some tweaks) and increased the input impedance (a BJT transistor would normally thin out bass frequencies and interact negatively with whatever flows into it). The result is a germanium clean boost that can utilize a germanium transistor WITHOUT the weird artifacts that were previously accepted as part of the deal...temperature sensitivity, drift, and suboptimal input impedance and headroom. After the boost is first powered up, it takes about ten seconds before the error correction circuit correctly biases the germanium transistor After this things get interesting....we can hear how having the boost engaged makes guitar signals sound more musical...even when set at the same volume as the bypassed tone. Notes are given a simultaneously smoother and more detailed character, like a compressor but different. Some people we’ve shown it to have noted that it appears to deemphasize the unwanted parts of a signal and enhance the good. It’s killer on bass. It helps acoustic guitar pickups sound more natural. And of course it’ll push your amp into a frenzy. We hope you like it.

Listen to any recording from the 70’s and you’ll most likely hear the sound of a plate reverb, a giant mechanical contraption roughly the size of a king size bed. It was ubiquitous in the studio, and was the only reverb used on Pink Floyd’s iconic Dark Side of the Moon album for example. What made plate reverb so cool? It adds lush ambience, dimension, thickness, and depth in an unobtrusive way. When you listen to your favorite albums from the 70s you probably don’t even realize how much plate reverb you are hearing. Go back and listen and hone in on the reverb sound and you’ll probably be surprised how much reverb is actually there. In the studio the plate reverb signal was often processed on the way back to the console where the things like filtering and delays were applied.

One of the most recognizable pieces of gear in classic rock canon is the old Hornby-Skewes Treble Booster, a version of the classic effect used by too many artists to list. While almost all of them used a Rangemaster, the Hornby-Skewes version came stock with a silicon transistor for a more biting sound that cut through even the densest of mixes. The SKEWER stays true to that circuit, giving the old JHS unit the same treatment as our Naga Viper. This lets you dial in the desired frequency range from rich and full to treble-heavy, as well as control the amount of boost. You can also vary the amount of transistor gain for some extra juice. Some players had their original Treble Booster modded to play nicer with the rest of their gear. We’ve taken the liberty of giving you that mod as well, which is fully adjustable via the trimpot inside. Further enhancements include a noise reduction filter and anti-pop switch circuitry. This one bites just a little harder than our Naga Viper, and sounds fantastic with the DREAMCOAT.

 The Naga Viper is a booster that lives in the grand old tradition of the Dallas Rangemaster “Treble-Booster”. The original Rangemaster has been used by many influential British guitarists including Tony Iommi, Brian May, Marc Bolan, and KK Downing and Glen Tipton of Judas Priest. These guitarists, while completely unique in their styles, share the Rangemaster as the secret of boosting their cranked British tube amps into a juicy, harmonic-laden rock tone that always cuts through the mix and is ultimately proto-metal. The Naga Viper is hommage to this famous circuit. Beyond it’s basic tuning, the Naga enhances the classic circuit with the addition of two extra controls – Range and Heat. The original Rangemaster had just one control – Boost which everybody dimed anyway but essentially controlled the output volume. Our RANGE knob is a continuous control which allows you to go from classic treble-boost to a full-range boost and anywhere in-between – as the original could only function as a set frequency “treble-booster”. The HEAT knob gives you control over the gain level saturation, unlike the original which was fixed at maximum gain.

Featuring a plethora of useful options, the Giygas gives you everything you’ve ever wanted in a fuzz box, along with some stuff you never knew you wanted (but deep down, you totally knew).  The core of the fuzz circuit is brawny and fierce, yet with plenty of violin-like sustain and articulation on tap, and the entire thing is wrapped in a clean blend circuit. From there, the fuzz gets catapulted into a gyrator-based mids boost, and then into a tilt EQ circuit. With the blend rolled all the way back, you can use just the powerful high-headroom EQ to sculpt your clean tone. A horde of options await you under the hood, ones that will make our four-stringed friends extremely happy. 

Big and powerful, yet refined, the Formula No. 55 melts into your amp, transforming it into a wide ranging tweed monster!The Formula No. 55 is a Foundation Overdrive that reproduces, in exact detail, the preamp section of the classic Fender™ tweed 5E3 Deluxe using an all-discrete JFET-based signal path. The Volume and Tone controls replicate, part for part, the circuitry of the 5E3, giving you authentic tweed amp response. The output section is designed to give you punch and volume with a low output impedance to drive your amp perfectly. Set the Hi-Lo button to "Lo" for the cleaner response of a vintage tweed. "Hi" is like hot rodding your amp by swapping in higher gain tubes.

You’ve heard the rumors: Some of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest tones were achieved without pedals. Not so fast! While that’s technically true, some of the most venerable guitar gods relied on an old tape echo unit to help achieve their legendary tones. This unit is the Maestro Echoplex EP-3. While some guitarists made great use of its echo effect, others dragged one to every gig just for its magical preamp. This preamp circuit was wired always-on, and so even those using it as an echo effect received significant tonal enhancements from the preamp circuit as well. Everyone from Eddie Van Halen to East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys relied on the EP-3 preamp to take their sound to previously unreachable heights. And now you can also, with our Epoch Boost.Around the shop, we refer to the Epoch Boost as a “mastering pedal,” because it sounds like your base tone, but sculpted to perfection by a mastering engineer. This is accomplished  by employing the same internal circuitry as a real EP-3, from the NOS Orange Drop capacitors to the output mixer stage that acts as a rudimentary frequency selector---it’s all there. We’ve taken the liberty of kicking the internal voltage all the way up to 22 volts, just like the original unit, giving you unparalleled headroom and clarity. Inside, we’ve included a switchable hi-Z input buffer if you’d like to use the Epoch Boost as your only pedal (don’t worry, we won’t judge). The Boost control gives you just the EP-3 tone when rolled off, but adds up to 20dB of crystal-clear boost as you crank it. And trust us, you’re gonna want to.

The Binson Echorec was so cool we had no choice but to bring it back. And we wanted to bring it back right. We wanted to take all the goodness of that huge Binson Echorec and squeeze it down into a standard sized stompbox without losing anything. In fact, in addition to not losing any of the qualities that made it such a compelling musical device, we wanted to EXTEND its capabilities because the original Binson hinted at possibilities that it couldn’t realize. We’re talking about variable delay time! We thought, “What if we had the same four playback head concept but could stretch the delay time out beyond the 300mS of the original Binson?” Then the rhythmic patterns suggested by the various combinations of those four playback heads could really come to life!

Marshall amps helped supercharge the performance, and shape the sound of rock and roll. When the house lights dimmed, all you could see through the hazy darkness was the array of red pilot lights shining from a backline wall of Marshall stacks. In the absence of your own personal wall of Marshalls and the necessary road crew required to lug them around, the Dirty Little Secret (DLS) is the perfect secret weapon in your tone arsenal. This is your “always on” pedal, designed to be the “foundation” of your pedalboard, transforming any amplifier into those raging British stacks. It forms the core of your guitar sound which you can enhance and embellish by adding boosters, fuzzes, filters, and other overdrives in front of it.