Boutique Tone…For Less

Tone is in your hands, in your backline and on your pedalboard. It’s also in your wallet and we’ll show you how you don’t have to break the bank to get first class sounds

- Rob Laing, Alex Lynham, Chris Bird

Do you get what you pay for with gear? Sometimes, but not always! A great tone that can enhance and inspire us isn’t an exclusive club for the elite. Whether you’re looking to emulate a boutique overdrive for a fraction of the cost, or a legend’s tone for real-world money, we’re here to help show you the shortcuts to guitar nirvana. We’ve broken the theme of getting more tone for less money into four distinct chapters here but no matter what kind of player you are, we think each one will have value for you.

01 BOUTIQUE FOR A BARGAIN?

We try out five temptingly priced overdrives to find out If you can get close to a Klon… and beyond!

So-called boutique overdrives are an increasingly broad set of drive pedals that offer something a little different to the mass-produced pedals on the market. With the rise of online pedal forums and gear videos, there’s never been a larger contingent of cork sniffing guitarists than there is now, all seeking that perfect tone. For many, that can be found only through often rare, often expensive boutique overdrive pedals.

It would be easy to wax lyrical about what a boutique overdrive is, its mythical qualities and what circuit trickery sprinkles the magic dust, but more often than not, economics drive a reputation as much as tone. An excellent but scarce drive becomes expensive; players have to save and wait to get their hands on one, and then the placebo effect turns a great drive into a drive worthy of exultation.

Does it have to be this way, though? Well, some drives like the Paul Cochrane Timmy aren’t that hard to find, as they’re still in production. Moreover, the most popular designs have usually been cloned or ‘reimagined’ as the original circuits were often not complex. So these five have a fighting chance of impressing us…