Best pedal for classic rock /hard rock crunch?

[asianaxeman]

Hey dudes, I'm looking for recommendations for a new pedal for my board - a crunchy, maybe marshallesque, pedal for the clean channel of my engl fireball to handle rock tones / brown sound - to  ideally add a 3rd channel in between the pristine clean channel and insane lead channel. Any ideas? maybe something with 2 gain stages for versatility..? so far had a brief look at some lovepedal and rockbox stuff..

[Sancho]

Don't disregard the Marshall Guv'nor. Not boutique, but it does very good Marshall tones for a very nice price.

[Denim n Leather]

Xotic BB Preamp. Dirty Little Secret. Way Huge Green Rhino. EMMA Stinkbug.

[Ratrod]

Don't disregard the Marshall Guv'nor. Not boutique, but it does very good Marshall tones for a very nice price.

I have the GV-2 Guv'nor Plus.

Brilliant pedal, got it for 45 Euro.

[Twinfan]

My favourites:

Marshall Guv'nor
Marshall Drivemaster (basically a lightly tweaked Guv'nor)
ZVex Box of Rock
MI Audio Crunch Box
Tonerider British Distortion

Of the lot, the Tonerider at £50 posted from Dangleberry Music is the best bang for the buck.

[metale]

I have both the Guv'nor Plus and the Bluesbreaker II. My strats seem to favour the BB2, while my LP with EMGs seems to get along better with the GV2.

[asianaxeman]

wow I'm liking the guv'nor the most! stinkbug has amazing harmonic content and digging the dirty lil secret too! cheers guys

[MrBump]

The Crunch Box is an amazing pedal across all it's distortion range and with a variety of guitars.

[Mr. Air]

I like Emma Electronics pedals so I'll say Stinkbug and if you want some more gain available the Reezafratzitz  :D

[HTH AMPS]

Crunchbox, no question.

The Tonerider one Twinfan recommended may be a similar design - it certainly sounded similar (from memory)...

http://www.tonerider.com/effects/britishdistortion.html (sound clips on this link).

[asianaxeman]

I'm gonna listen to the crunch box again but check this baby out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dydfMoF5pQ&feature=relmfu

they also do a plextortion and a super plextortion sounds awesome, near to the 200 quid ball park tho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8FAgOWShbQ&feature=relmfu

[_tom_]

MI Audio Crunch Box. I had one for a while to play around with and it was great. Sounded very similar to my Laney's distortion which is why I didn't keep it (not saying that in a bad way I was just hoping for a slightly different tone). If I was using a decent clean amp (a fender or something) I would most definitely be using a Crunch Box!

As Ratrod says the Marshall Guvnor Plus/GV2 is also a great pedal especially for £45. Not as good as the CB (sounds a bit "fake") but at least half the price.

[Crunch]

Electro-Harmonix English Muff'n or the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic.

[dave_mc]

tonerider one's pretty good for the money, though to my ears it's better at the 80s hotrodded tones than more vintage marshall tones. at that kind of money you could get one pedal for the higher gain marshall and one for the lower gain marshall tones, though.

if thomann ever gets it back into stock, the harley benton/joyo ultimate drive might be worth a look, too- supposedly a clone of an OCD, and 29 euros. they also do an (alleged) crunch box clone for the same price. Haven't tried them, but they did fool a fair few tgpers in the whole freekishgate affair.

also really would like to try one of the cascading mosfet-based pedals (e.g. DLS, BSIAB), just to see what they're like. The soundclips are good, but obviously soundclips don't tell you everything...

[Telerocker]

Emma Reezafratzitz delivers this in spades. I had the old Guv'nor, which is not a match for the Reezafratzitz. This one stays dynamic, keeps the tone and sounds like an old Marshall amp. Has a wide gainrange. Never will leave my board.
Other great pedals to slam the clean channel - they are specially designed for this - are the Suhr Riot and Shiba. I have the Riot and it's stellar, even on very low volumelevels. Very amplike tones.