As a guitarist, when you need power, it's generally because you want to lay down chunky rhythms or you need to bust out a blazing solo. Enter the Power Grid, Seymour Duncan's newest pedal, which is designed to provide thick, searing distortion; powerful overdrive; sweet overtones; and distortion suitable for rhythm and lead playing, thanks to five stages of class A discrete circuitry, which are cascaded to provide nearly 100dB of gain. Now that's power!

But the Power Grid is not an untamed beast. All this raw horsepower is managed by a multi-element gain and volume control system that allows fine control. For example, if you crank the gain, you'll get a very thick, saturated "Modded British" distortion, reminiscent of the big guitar sounds that defined metal. But if you back the gain off, you'll get a very responsive "crunch" distortion similar to the Rhythm Channel on the SFX-03 Twin Tube Classic. And in between there are myriad levels of overdrive and distortion.

With the Power Grid, your tone is further refined thanks to three bands of active EQ. Each band allows for up to 12dB of boost or cut at frequencies selected for maximum control of the electric guitar. This allows you to create tones with a far greater degree of precision than what's possible with any distortion pedal with passive EQ. The three band EQ can take you from dark, swampy, grunge sounds to slicing, present, treble tones to notched-mid metal and a million points in between--all with the precision of a professional mixing console. It's flexible enough to handle everything from a slightly dirty rock riff to a fully saturated, high-gain wall of sound. Despite the extreme gain levels in the SFX-08, it's a very dynamic pedal that retains definition and clarity no matter how much gain you run.

With all the power and control built into the SFX-08 Power Grid, it could just be the last distortion pedal you buy. Ever!