To nonagon infinity and beyond
Were there ever a band to check out for a clear example of following your bliss, may we suggest King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard? Melbourne, Australia's resident "What the heck"-core rockers, KG&LW has more than made than a name for themselves with their toolbelts of diverse genres, their peer-lapping recorded output, and their seemingly endless energy for live performance and musicmaking.
Wielding a creative ethos arguably hyperactive, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has made an impression on plenty. Their globetrotting tour schedule and prolific catalog has earned the attention of Athens, Greece's JAM Pedals and all the analog wildness they peddle. Today, we're talking about a couple things. JAM Pedals, King Gizzard, and the classic question of, "Is there such a thing as too much – and can there ever be enough?" Let's discuss.
This is the JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer Distortion.
Shop the JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer
Welcome to an Altered Future
Introducing the JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer Distortion
One of the most popular rock bands of today, Melbourne, Australia's King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard seems to have an interesting problem. Cómo se dice, "How much do you think we could get out of this?" Were there ever a band to have faulty powers of estimation, it's King Gizzard.
"How many albums do you think we could get out of just the few of us here?"
"Twenty-eight?"
"That sounds about right. How about in 2022 alone?"
"Oh yeah, five. Certainly."
"Awesome, let's do that."
A captivating quirk to have as a band if there ever were one, King Gizzard and its bandleader Stu Mackenzie seem to have no perception of what's a general consensus on an amount of output for your time and tools at hand. Whether we're talking about music recording, tours embarked upon, genres covered, or sound from their equipment, the crew at Camp Gizzard is among the modern rock world's busiest bees and charmingly ineffective mathematicians.
It only makes enough sense that Mackenzie, closely working with JAM Pedals, might make a signature pedal to perfectly mirror this dynamic of his band. The Tiny Amp Destroyer is a distortion pedal designed to replicate the tones of one of Mackenzie's own favorite guitar tones. A $30 tiny combo amp from Cash Converters overdriven to oblivion by two JAM Pedals Boomsters has become the blueprint for many King Gizzard works. Today, the Tiny Amp Destroyer employs JAM's classic analog mastery to replicate such a tone in a compact, pedalboard-ready package. How much juice do you think you could get out of this tiny, crappy amp? The answer might surprise you.
Grow Wings and Fly
JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer Distortion Design and Controls
As we alluded to, the Tiny Amp Destroyer is just that. Living up to its moniker and its origins as a tonal soup of low-wattage, low-quality amp design and massive analog boosting from JAM Pedals, the Tiny Amp Destroyer replicates the tones and response of a combo amp pushed to the other end of sanity. Classic JAM analog expertise brings the whole vision together vividly with authentic, amp-like response and cataclysmic, disastrous muscle, alike. Let's talk about the pedal's design a little bit, here.
JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer Distortion Controls
The JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer centers around two independent analog gain stages, one running into another, with an independent treble boost onboard. A couple more bells and whistles are found throughout, and we'll get there before long, but for now, let's just lay this out.
Moving right from left, we have our gain flow. To the rightmost switch and dial, we have our first gain stage. Stomp its footswitch and work its pink dial for more or less gain. On the pedal's opposite side, we have our second gain stage performing identically. Hit one of these footswitches, the other, or both at the same time different stacks of pure, amp-like gain and saturation.
- Level – Our top leftmost blue dial in between our two Gains, Level controls the total output volume for the whole pedal. We get pretty loud and unapologetic on the Tiny Amp Destroyer pretty quickly – fair warning.
- Bass and Treble – Beneath our level, we have our two-band EQ control set. Capable of spiking our top-end to eviscerating ends or bottoming out our low-end to thunderous bellows, our precise, amp-like tone shaping offers great opportunities to get fine-tuned with our tiny amp destroying.
- Notch – Down once more, Notch gives us a unique tone control that subtracts out a specific EQ band and introduces a "scooped" voicing. Perfect for making your distortions all the more artificial, otherworldly, unfamiliar, and nefarious, keep this knob in mind.
- Treble Boost – The Tiny Amp Destroyer features an independent treble boost circuit. Particularly spikey, the pedal's treble boost circuit can be engaged independently as its two gain stages can.
- Magic – Tantalizing, isn't it? Finally, this two-way switch engages a circuit to make the Tiny Amp Destroyer sound more specifically "tiny amp" with a pronounced "boxy" gain structure.
The Tiny Amp Destroyer offers a pretty streamlined control scheme to get along to great distorted tones. Wide sweeps across each gain and EQ control from the get-go present a vast and varied palette of tones on any control. All the way throughout the pedal, an expressive mix of distortion tones makes for a multi-barreled drive to check plenty of boxes.
Supreme Ascendancy
JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer Distortion Tones and Playability
As you might expect from a collab between JAM Pedals and Australia's resident psych-garage-doom-thrash rockers, the Tiny Amp Destroyer is a massively powerful and expressive distortion pedal. Between these two gains circuits, onboard treble boost, and Notch and Magic controls, we're treated to a cornucopia of dirt. To simplify it for a second, let's talk about the two paths you're likely to most fall into from the jump:
Tiny Amp DriverAs its name implies, the Tiny Amp Destroyer naturally starts in "tiny amp" territory. Reminiscent of low-watt, small-speaker combo amps, the tones possible from the Tiny Amp Destroyer can cover more authentic, amp-style drives. Stomp on just one of the gain stages an explore the honest, low-gain overdrives on tap. This utility shows off the Tiny Amp Destroyer as just one piece of your whole distorting setup.
Summoning RitualAlright, you probably saw this coming a mile away, but yes, the Tiny Amp Destroyer is as much – if not way, way more – of a monster of a distortion as a "tiny amp" tone emulator. Start stomping more than one footswitch at once to start stacking gains and boosts. Watch as the Tiny Amp Destroyer builds up and ships itself off past the proverbial musical horizon.
When it comes to the Tiny Amp Destroyer, it's a bit of a question of perspective. The Tiny Amp Destroyer can be a chunky overdrive, a double-barreled distortion, a blistering fuzz – your call. One way to take on the Tiny Amp Destroyer is as a single distortion with an additional stage and treble booster. Take on your rightmost gain stage as your "baseline," set your leftmost gain stage to a beefier level, and use the Tiny Amp Destroyer as your lone drive pedal – one stage for verses, another for choruses, you catch our drift?
Moving toward its more disastrous, messy, "lizard-like" tones, the Tiny Amp Destroyer morphs into its truest form. With both gains stacked, the treble boost spiking highs, and your Notch control getting exploratory, the Tiny Amp Destroyer assumes its rightful throne as your sole noise rock, drone, doom, and shoegaze engine. Buckets upon buckets of saturation and sustain pour out of the Tiny Amp Destroyer flirting with the interminable. Searing sustain burns throughout the effect for a fiery distortion doing its best fried fuzz impression. Spiked, sizzled distortions fire up distinct character for your best chords, solos, or thrash breakdowns. Was there ever any chance that a King Gizzard signature drive would be clean cut with shined shoes and an ironed tie? We wouldn't say so.
The Dripping Tap
JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer Distortion Further Functions
Like so many other JAM Pedals creations, the Tiny Amp Destroyer has a couple tricks up its sleeve to elevate its experience. No one ever complained about a few bells and whistles, right?
- Default Mode Change – The Tiny Amp Destroyer has plenty of footswitches to hit. Just in case you're looking to maximize your switching with minimal effort, the Tiny Amp Destroyer can be setup to link its functions to the rightmost footswitch, enabling single footswitch control over its treble boost and Gain 2 channel at once.
- Treble Boost Voicing – Underneath the hood, the Tiny Amp Destroyer features a dipswitch to swap its treble booster between a "standard" level of boost and a heightened one – just in case its normal amount of boost isn't enough.
JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer Distortion Final Thoughts
For fans of JAM Pedals, King Gizzard, or devilishly disastrous distortions, we can only imagine that the Tiny Amp Destroyer is a pedal that perfectly fits the bill. Scrambled psych-rock tones, dirty garage rock tones, debaucherous doom metal tones, you've got it all here. JAM's latest drive shows off the best of its multi-barreled gain and distortion mixing found in a number of their other drive pedals, the Tiny Amp Destroyer plays the parts of JAM Pedals distortion specialty and King Gizzard signature circuit swimmingly.
A King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard signature pedal so strange and monstrous. Who'da thunk?
