fulltone gt-500 price : $202.50

discrete f.e.t hi-gain distortion and overdrive booster in one box. you could think of them as 2 separate pedals..or think of them asstages to be linked together for endless combinations. hi-gain side has volume, distortion knobs, bass, mid, and highs minipots. boosterside has volume, overdrive knobs, bass and highs minipots. (these new hi-q sealed minipots don't break btw)

hard clipped distortion (the way most pedals achieve distortion) at one point in a circuit can be cool, but stage after stage of fet(gt-500) is very real, very amplike, has ridiculous amounts of sustain even at low volume, does the great chunky low string rhythm stuffand cleans up incredibly well when you turn down the guitar's volume. the gt500 contains 9 x fet's, 2 mosfets and 1 x transistor with noopamps or clipping diodes used.

what's special about the eq?
the hi-gain side has a discrete inductor-driven midrange circuit....never been done in a pedal before. yes there's a wah wah inductorinside the pedal that gives the midrange control its ability to drastically increase or decrease the entire low mid, mid, and hi-midfrequencies, to comical proportions. all this is done without any opamps because all of the active 3 band eq's i've tried are horrible,killing all harmonics, all excitement, and sounding as sterile as the "eq" in a digital recording program. nope, this has 100% discretematched fet's ;)

this mid control mixed with a strong bass and treble control help give the gt-500 the ability to dial in more variations than a simpletone control, which can only roll off the highs.

what's the "series switch" in the middle do?
the series select switch allows you to choose which pedal comes first (allowing you to instantly change the order of the 2circuits)

booster ------> distortion
or
distortion-------> booster

for example:
a clean boost slamming into the front end a distortion sounds way different than a distortion followed by the cleanboost...and when the eq"s of the respective sides come into play, it's a wide open canvas. regardless of which side of the pedal isdesignated as "first in line" you can still use each side by itself...completely independent of the other side.