You will have no doubt have seen the Godzilla Stratocasters that Fender Japan unveiled last year, especially the $36,000 Custom Shop monster that comes fitted with a “Roar” button. Well, now meet the Fender Godzilla Distortion pedal – an all-new limited edition gain machine that comes with a wraparound custom art finish.
You could call this a “Roar” box, a fitting tribute to the original superstar Kaiju. There is nothing atomic about its provenance, however – Fender’s guitar effects pedal team has come away from the breadboard with a circuit that’s a little more conventional.
With an op-amp at at the heart of it, this distortion is equipped with an active 2-band EQ, offering 15dB of boost or cut via the Bass and Treble knobs. Your other controls include Volume and Gain.
Article continues belowThere is more. Unscrew the baseplate and you’ll find an internal trimmer for adjusting the pedal’s midrange, allowing you to cut them for that modern scooped sound (wait, is that still modern!?), or boost them for a bit more muscle.
All of the above makes it seem not unlike Fender’s Hammertone Distortion pedal, which shared the same EQ stage, the internal trimmer, and control setup, as does the Hammertone Metal pedal.
It would be interesting to run a shoot-out of all three – there’s only one way to find out which one is the most beastly when the Gain dial hits 5 o’clock.
Anyway, tone-wise, this won’t be subtle. Fender promises it will run hot, with “low-noise, heavy-hitting saturation, pumping out powerful gain tones with rich harmonics”.
C’mon, it’s a Godzilla Distortion. We’re not looking for edge-of-breakup; we want the city in ruins, or at least the first three rows of the venue.
Elsewhere, this is a familiar Fender guitar effects pedal, with the Godzilla Distortion sharing that gratifyingly tough Hammertone Series aluminium enclosure, the top-mounted jacks, the F-branded skirted knobs, only its LED illuminates orange, and it lights up inside the gaping maw of the heat-ray breathing beast. Sometimes that is just what your pedalboard needs.
Just feed Godzilla 9V DC from a quality pedalboard power supply, drawing a minimum of and it’ll be happy. If only the real thing were so easily placated.
The Godzilla Distortion is true bypass and available now. It’s technically a limited run but Fender does not say how limited. That said, like the Hello Kitty Fuzz, this collab stompbox is likely to sell like hotcakes among monster freaks and gain heads, so don’t sleep on it. It’s priced £145/$149.
Head over to Fender for more details.
