The best distortion pedals: jagged sounds from ProCo, Boss, EHX & more
Distortion is the gain effect of choice for guitarists who want to scuzz up their sound without rounding it off or flattening it past the point of musicality. This type of effect has a more jagged and aggressive character than an overdrive, while allowing far more dynamism and nuance than a fuzz pedal.
The basic idea behind distortion pedals hasn’t really changed since these unruly effects were pioneered in the 1960s – they clip your signal, hard, to give you a sound that’s heaven-sent for hellishly heavy rock, metal and punk (or Prince-style solos!) This doesn’t mean all distortions are alike. Sounds and controls vary, and plenty of guitarists will swear by one model or another.
These pedals take various approaches to tonal adjustment, from three-band EQs and special mids-tweaking features down to simple high-end filters or pared down designs where only the gain can be adjusted, and some distortions simply sound heavier or more chaotic than others. One thing that you can usually count on is that distortion pedals are generally less expensive than more technologically intricate effects like delay pedals, although they do range from budget to boutique.
To help you find the soundwave-slasher of your dreams, we’ve brought together our top ten distortion pedals below. There are options from ProCo, Boss, EHX, Fender, JHS and more, spanning the gamut from plug-in-and-play noisemakers to leftfield gain laboratories. Any one of them will add some edge to your sound.
At a glance:
Our Pick: Pro Co RAT 2
Best unusual distortion pedal: Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture
Best Boss disortion pedal: Boss DS-1W Waza Craft
Best high-gain distortion pedal: Electro-Harmonix Hell Melter
Best dual distortion pedal: Fender Pugilist
Best affordable distortion pedal: TC Electronic Dark Matter
Best multi-voiced distortion pedal: Walrus Audio Fundamental Distortion
Best 2000s-style distortion pedal: JHS pedals Hard Drive
Best distortion pedal for metal: Boss MT-2 Metal Zone
Best simple distoriton pedal: EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold
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Our Pick: Pro Co RAT 2
The RAT 2
The RAT distortion line has been around since the 1980s. And when we say around, we mean it, as these pedals are at the gritty heart of recordings from Radiohead, The Arctic Monkeys, Nirvana, Blur, Foo Fighters and countless others.
With sumptuous sustain and era-defining abrasiveness, the RAT 2 is our pick of ProCo’s range. It’s so straightforward (and reasonably priced) that we’ve also named it among the best guitar pedals for beginners, but there’s a deceptive depth of sounds available via the ‘Filter’ control. This rolls off varying degrees of high-end, meaning the output signal can range from tight, radio-friendly rock to avant garde freakout territory.
Need more? Read our Pro Co RAT 2 review.
Best unusual distortion pedal: Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture
Image: Richard Purvis
Put Skindred guitarist, Mikey Demus, together with Thorpy FX mastermind, Adrian Thorpe, and monumental sounds tend to ensue. The Bearded Vulture is the Redbeard Effects duo at their best, inspired by a classic valve preamp and delivering a streamlined stompbox with surpassingly smart tonal control.
You won’t find another distortion pedal quite like this one. There are two circuits to get your teeth into – straight-up ‘drive’, and ‘octave’ – which can be used independently, or mixed together for the mightiest of distortion sounds. And for further ear-catching idiosyncrasy, you can use the ‘bias’ control to bring in a gating effect, or ‘timbre’ to shape the mids.
Need more? Read our Redbeard Effects Bearded Vulture review.
Best Boss disortion pedal: Boss DS-1W Waza Craft
Credit: Boss
The ‘DS-1’ is aptly named, because there’s a decent chance that the orange stompbox from Boss was the first distortion pedal that you encountered. But before you don your rose-tinted spectacles and dig out the original model, you might consider trying the DS-1W Waza Craft instead. This is a boutiquified version of the classic pedal, with added custom voicings that boost the gain and increase the touch response.
Yes, there’s a ‘standard’ mode here that sounds very much like the DS-1 – but it’s the newly added ‘custom’ mode that really impresses, with amped-up gain, more focused mids and higher responsiveness than the original.
Need more? Read our Boss DS-1W Waza Craft review.
Best high-gain distortion pedal: Electro-Harmonix Hell Melter
If the Metal Muff isn’t quite metallic enough for you, try EHX’s Hell Melter. This pedal will put the chainsaw in your signal chain, whether you’re a metal guitarist or some other fabulously freaky soul in search of maximalist sounds.
Electro-Harmonix refers to this as an ‘advanced metal distortion’, and there’s certainly plenty to master. The deathly jewels in its crown include an active boost mode (with its own footswitch) that allows you to toggle dial-adjusted boosts to bass, mids and treble, and ‘Burn’ mode, which produces a barely-clipped distortion sound that could cut down a whole forest with just a few riffs.
Need more? Read our Electro-Harmonix Hell Melter review.
Best dual distortion pedal: Fender Pugilist
Why choose between drive and distortion, when you can get yourself a pedal that does both? The Fender Pugilist is gainfully employed in delivering these two effects, with a separate channel (and circuit) devoted to each. It’s at its best when the two circuits are mixed together in ‘blend’ mode, which gives you scope to balance musicality (channel A) with distorted brutality (channel B).
Like any seasoned fighter, the Pugilist has some tricks up its sleeve. The bass boost is a handy option when you need to beef up your signal, and the togglable LEDs on the control knobs make for easy tweaking on a gloomy stage.
Best affordable distortion pedal: TC Electronic Dark Matter
This affordable distortion pedal sounds better than you might expect, with 1970s Marshall-style tone that’s tailor-made for hot blues licks and classic rock. Its standard voice is responsive, musical, and bordering on an overdrive sound when the gain is set low. Flick the switch, and you’ll hear a bullish, bassier voicing that’s decidedly more alt-rock.
For about the price of a cheap haircut, that’s a lot of scope to sound like guitarists with haircuts of varying styles and costs. The bass and treble knobs give you further control over your tone, rounding out a pretty spectacular budget-friendly pedal.
Best multi-voiced distortion pedal: Walrus Audio Fundamental Distortion
You might know Walrus Audio as a fancy boutique pedal brand – and if you simply heard the Fundamental Distortion’s trio of distortion voicings, you might be unshaken in that belief. But what’s different in this pedal (and others from the Fundamental range) is the simplicity of the on-unit controls, which cram oodles of functionality into an iota of space, and the accessible price.
The three voicings cover a huge breadth of possibilities, especially when used artfully with the tone, volume and gain sliders. ‘Dark’ smothers the high-end and clips characterfully; ‘Si’ sounds crunchily compressed; while ‘LED’ uses your old D.T. teacher’s favourite diodes to ratchet up the noise.
Need more? Read our Walrus Audio Fundamental Distortion review.
Best 2000s-style distortion pedal: JHS pedals Hard Drive
Josh Scott’s love letter to turn-of-the-millennium high-gain tones, the JHS Hard Drive Distortion is all (or at least largely) about the mids, which can be controlled to create a scooped or boosted sound. The really nifty thing here is that two knobs work together for maximal mid-sculpting finesse: one to select the exact range of mid frequencies that you’ll tweak, and another to set the level of the selected frequency range.
The necessary companion to all of that tonal adjustment is great-sounding distortion. JHS described the Hard Drive as its “heaviest pedal yet” at launch in 2024, and we’d say that’s on the money. It’s an ideal noise-maker for modern alt-rock or classic metal.
Best distortion pedal for metal: Boss MT-2 Metal Zone
Image: Boss
The Boss MT-2 Metal Zone does what it says on the die-cast enclosure. Its high-gain distortion sounds are loved by legions of rock leviathans from Dave Mustaine to Simon Neil.
The three-band EQ controls give you final say over the style of slay, and it’s worth tweaking these with an attentive ear to get the best out of the pedal. Your first instinct might be to cut the mids for a scooped sound, but – whisper it – you might try boosting the mids if you’re exploring noisier or more abrasive territory. That’s the joy of the MT-2: its comprehensive controls let you zone in on your own strand of metal mayhem.
Best simple distortion pedal: EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold
Flaunting its own simplicity with one giant gain control, this power amp distortion pedal is all about Model T-style tube amp distortion tone – and you’ll enjoy that sound strictly as the maker intends.
If you’ve always preferred amp distortion to distortion pedals, but you can’t stretch to a classic tube amp (or you can’t crank one till the signal distorts, perhaps because you have neighbours), then the Acapulco Gold is for you. Depending on the gain setting, its sound ranges from a lively sparkle to a doomy facsimile of full-bore power amp distortion. Sometimes this feels almost like an overdrive rather than a distortion – but treasure abounds in that grey area.
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