“It feels like a real amp” is a big claim made by a lot of pedals, but our engineering team has worked themselves to exhaustion to really nail the sound and response of a real amp when developing the Palladium Gain Stage.

The Palladium isn’t a distortion pedal: it’s a comprehensive gain generation system that you can use as a stompbox or direct into a power amp as a preamp. You can use it on a clean amp channel to effectively become your dirty rhythm and lead sounds, or you can use it on top of an already crunchy amp for minute-level control over your saturation and harmonic complexity. It has three gain stages: one to control the overall saturation, a Resonance control for low frequency gain shaping, and a boost control that adds overdrive to the beginning of the signal path.

The boost is based on a modified version of our 805 Overdrive, and these three gain stages allow for a versatile range of tones from classic rock at lower settings to modern metal at higher gain settings. There’s also a comprehensive EQ with bass, treble, presence and sweepable midrange-frequency control, and you can dial in anything from warm ‘edge-of-breakup’ vintage tones to the most extreme modern metal mayhem.

It’s also designed and made in the USA.

Check it out in the capable hands of Mr. Keith Merrow:

And Premier Guitar checked it out alongside the Catalina Dynamic Chorus with Dave Nassie at NAMM.