Do you need more colour in your sound?
Head to Athens!
Yes, it’s not just incredible weather and classical history out there in Sunny Greece, there are also some of the most epic, gorgeous effects pedals erupting from there, too!
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JAM Pedals
Let me introduce you to Jam Pedals, a company founded over ten years ago by Jannis Anastasakis. Since then, Jam pedals have found their way on to the pedalboards of players like Nile Rodgers, Richie Sambora and Bill Frissell. Now that is some good company to be rubbing shoulders with!
“Art for Your Ears” is the company motto, and they walk the walk like nobody else. As you’ll see, their commitment to the creation of visually and sonically stunning effects is inspiring, not to mention encouraging!
Hand-Made, Hand-Painted
Jam pedals are all about hand-wired construction, using the best quality NOS chips and transistors. Every pedal is built by hand, and then those glorious paint jobs are meticulously applied in the same Athens workshop, before being shipped out over the world. I love the ideas and creativity on display here!
Teams of artists paint, spray, cut stencils and mask up colours in order to give Jam pedals their distinctively beautiful look. Paint brushes, spray booths and custom-mixed colours are all part of a day’s work for the talented Greek artists. The end results are glorious and really help set Jam pedals apart.
In terms of the hand-made circuits, it seems to me that the overall ethos of JAM pedals is to reference classic effects (like the Big Muff and the Tubescreamer) but adapt them and modify them for today’s player.
This transformation can take place in a number of ways, from adding more tonal options, to building in greater extremes of dynamics or headroom, to a host of other variables. Classic pedals are the jumping off point for the imagination of Jam’s designers, and the results are some of the best pedals we’ve ever seen. Wanna hear about some of our favourites?
Whacko Wah Pedal
The Jam Whacko may be the coolest looking Wah pedal I've ever seen. In a market that tends to cater more to moodiness and shades of stealthy grey, it’s quite lovely to see such bursts of joyful colour splashed on these Jam pedals. The Cure's Reeve Gabrels agrees, and has one as a fixture on his pedalboard.
People don’t buy pricey wahs for their graphics though, so it’s a good job the Jam Pedals Whacko is also one of the best sounding, most versatile Wahs out there, too. The Whacko uses a red fasel conductor for its tone, and the huge rotary control allows you 6 variations of frequency sweep. A clever circuit allows impedance-sensitive pedals (and we’re looking at you, every retro germanium fuzz ever) to be sonically safe when placed after the wah in a pedal chain. Great news! Hey, if this pedal is good enough for Reeves AND Nile Rodgers, it’s good enough for me!
Tubedreamer
Every company does one, and this is Jam Pedals’ TS-808 Tubescreamer clone. However, as you’ve hopefully come to expect, things are not quite so straightforward! Jam have added a third diode to the circuit of their Tubedreamer, which makes the pedal clip in an asymmetrical way (see my Guide to Overdrive for more on this), which alters the response. This way seems to give more dynamic response, so your pick attack will be more significant. Good news for expressive players!
Jam utilise the near-mythical JRC4558D chip here, and more significantly, they have built a great circuit around it, so it’s not just boastful cork-sniffery! There’s a toggle switch on there to introduce a higher gain stage, making the Jam Tubedreamer one of the most versatile and dynamic 808’s out there!
Now, some of you love tone-stacking, right? Well, if you like the sound of the Tubedreamer, you’ll love this one...
Double Dreamer
The Jam Pedals Double Dreamer gives you two overdrives for stacking! You get the Tubedreamer plus Jam’s sister model the Lucydreamer. The main difference with the Lucy is the ability to blend back in your clean, unaffected signal. It’s a great thing actually, because you can win back a bunch of clarity and even low end by just nudging the clean sound back in a little. The drives already sound great, they stack well, and this extra feature just makes everything more useful and creative.
Rattler
Who doesn’t like a huge dose of heavy distortion? No one reading this blog, I can safely assume. Take the first three letters of this pedal’s name and you can ascertain where the Jam Pedals Rattler lies in terms of inspiration. It’s a fat, angry gain with buckets of attitude and sustain.
The Rattler delivers that child-like feeling of joy you get when you just stamp on a maxed-out gain pedal and instantly sound enormous. Like, ‘Godzilla rampaging on Tokyo’ enormous. It’s a real rush. I could mention how Jam Pedals have used an NOS LM308N chip here, and how it’s still surprisingly responsive to your pick dynamics, but I already know you’re going to buy this for its heroic filth levels instead. What else is a distortion pedal supposed to do?
Set this thing to stun and get ready to accept an ASBO from your neighbours.
Octaurus
What sort of Greek pedal company would JAM be if they didn’t at least occasionally allude to their country’s rich mythology? So it is that one of their coolest fuzz pedals pays reference to the intimidating Minotaur, the cursed half-bull son of King Minos of Crete. You won’t need to negotiate an underground labyrinth to find this gem of a pedal either, since we currently have it in stock at time of writing!
The Octaurus is, as the name suggests, an octave fuzz pedal. JAM have once again brought something novel to the table, and this time it’s an octave effect that works across all notes. This isn’t something you’d find in old octave fuzzes, which tend to exaggerate certain frequencies and leave out others.
Not so here, and there are two toggles too: one scoops the mids and makes more of a feature of the octave (this is the setting to go for!) and the other selects between symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping.
One other cool thing about this is the fact that there’s no option about having the octave on or off: it’s always on! Why on earth would you ever want it off?
Art For Your Ears
It’s obvious that the team at Jam Pedals really care about what they are making and sending out into the world. These are not anonymous stompboxes, but hand-made, hand painted and hand-finished pieces of art. You’ll love gazing at them on your board as much as you’ll love stomping on them and unleashing the blissfully crazy tones contained within!
Jam pedals are making the world a brighter and louder place!
Click to View our Current Selection of Jam Pedals
