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If you don’t yet know the Big Tone Music Brewery name, you probably know the people behind the company. It’s a sister of Build Your Own Clone (B.Y.O.C.), the little-stompbox-kit-company-that-could whose pedals often top best-alternative lists for everything from Big Muffs to Boss Vibratos.
Given that history, it goes without saying that Big Tone Brewery is way more into substance and circuits than style. And their fixation with what makes a stompbox tick, buzz, rip, or roar led to the creation of the EQ’d Vintage Series pedals—a line of fuzzes, overdrives, and distortions that add parametric EQ functionality to classic dirt circuits. Though the line includes everything from Ram’s Head and Triangle Muffs, Fuzz Face clones, and DOD Overdrives, we checked out the British Overdrive, which effectively unites the relatively unsung Marshall Bluesbreaker and Guv’nor pedal circuits in a single, very impressive overdrive/distortion hybrid.
B.Y.O.C.’s deep, diverse, and probing knowledge about what makes a good circuit work is easy to see in the layout of the British Overdrive circuit. With two switchable clipping sections and the parametric EQ, it’s not exactly simple.
But the through-hole wired board could not look tidier or more ordered. The EQ section has it’s own dedicated board, which is situated neatly at a right angle to the board that’s home to the drive section. Even with all that going on there is ample room for a 9V battery and a 9V DC jack.
The exterior of the enclosure is all biz and very little flash—the better to illustrate the functions of the smart, compact control set. The two lower knobs are for level and gain, while the toggle above switches between “vintage” (Bluesbreaker-style silicon clipping diodes) and “crunch” (Guv’nor style LED clipping diodes). What look like two knobs just above the switch is actually two concentric knob sets that make four. The left knobs control bass and treble. The right knobs are for midrange and isolate and fine-tune specific midrange frequencies. The footswitch is a pop-free soft-touch relay. It’s especially nice (and quiet) when you’re using the British Overdrive in high gain situations.
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