High Gain Pedals for 2022

High gain is where heavy metal lives, and since the 80s there's been no shortage of both amps and pedals designed to capture the right amount of clipping, distortion, grind and punch to deliver what demanding metalheads crave.

A few years ago, Horizon Devices came out with their Apex preamp and Precision Drive, and these have since become industry standards for boutique-built sonic fury. The Precision Drive especially, developed by Misha Mansoor, is a djentleman's dream...a tight, crisp overdrive that doesn't overburden the amp tone, combined with an onboard noise gate that clamps the signal between notes, giving the user a scalpel-like precision in hard and fast rhythm passages.

Well, this fall there are three signature dirt pedals that are making a huge splash in the marketplace; so much so that their builders are having trouble keeping them in stock. What's remarkable about these, though, is that of the three, only one is actually made by a traditional pedal company. The other two come from an amp manufacturer and a guitar company. But all three are lethal in their fields of sonic mayhem.

The Devil's Triad

The first on the list has been out for a few months as of this writing. It's the Jeff Loomis signature "Devil's Triad" from AllPedal. Given Loomis' stature as an artist, it's hardly surprising that this was a long-awaited entry into the tone market. Having spoken with Patrick at AllPedal, I can tell you firsthand that this is going to be highly collectible as well.

They're having trouble keeping up with demand.

It's also the most expensive of the pedals on this list; and with good reason. The Devil's Triad is more of a lead multi-effects pedal that incorporates an aggressive, tight overdrive, a boost, and a combined reverb/delay to give space for both tight rhythms and soaring leads.

It's important to note, however, that this is an overdrive and not a true distortion. As Glenn Fricker noted in his playthrough, the drive alone is thinner than expected, until you power it through a high gain amp. I haven't tried this myself, but my question would be: does that mean you'd end up pushing a boosted overdrive through an already clipped amplifier? And, does it mean you'd also push a reverb/delay into the front of the distorted amp?

All of that is alleviated, of course, by placing a distortion pedal in front of the Triad, and using the gain and boost that way. But what's really clever here is that the time effects section has a separate in/out, which means you can split the reverb/delay into your amp's FX loop without having to run a separate chain on your board. 

(MSRP: $345 USD)

Chug

Ola Englund's perpetual question, "will it chug?" has been almost a running joke in the guitar community on YouTube for some time. Essentially, the series of videos takes different pedals, amps, and even guitars, and attempts to determine whether or not the product will, in fact, chug.

Well, to solve this problem, Ola's own guitar company, Solar, has come up with the obvious solution: make a pedal that actually will chug. And they called it "Chug" so there's no ambiguity about its purpose.

Chug is unique in that rather than being a distortion effect or an overdrive, it's conceived as a preamp pedal with a built-in gate. So, while the Precision Drive offered an OD with a noise gate to run into your preamp, this pedal is the preamp, intended to bypass the gain stage on the amplifier and shape the tone on the floor.

Conveniently, the documentation also includes instructions on how to get the best tone in the front of a combo amp; but then again, one could do the same bypass strategy as a tube amp and use the FX Return on the combo amp to bypass the amp's preamp and go directly to the power section. 

Being a preamp, Chug allows you to place your other pedals, like your wah and overdrive, ahead of the amp like you would with an amplifier. What's unclear is where you would go with time and modulation effects. Presumably these would go after the preamp, before the power amp (like an FX loop). But, to get cleans you'd have to turn off the Chug pedal, which would mean nothing but pure power amp tone hitting the speaker. An A/B amp setup or wet-dry-wet arrangement might solve this if you need to go to clean tones on stage. 

(MSRP: $199 USD)

Northern Mauler

From Canada's heartland, Winnipeg high-gain masters REVV Amplification have teamed up with Spectre Media Group's Glenn Fricker to create a pedal worthy of the Nordic roots of black metal: the Northern Mauler.

Now THIS is a distortion pedal.

Actually, it's two distortion pedals.

On the left side, you have REVV's take on the classic Boss HM-2 heavy metal distortion; an often-maligned warhorse known for producing the incredibly hairy and slightly obnoxious "chainsaw" distortion that became the tonal trademark of Nordic black metal in the 80s and 90s. On the right, REVV's always-innovative modern metal distortion, modeled on their own tight and punchy lead channel amp distortions.

The genius of this pedal, however, isn't in having two pedals side by side. Rather, it's a single footswitch unit that uses a clever BLEND control to combine the two sides of its personality. This blending allows the user to create a truly unique signature tone all their own.

(MSRP: $249 USD)