JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer A NOTE FROM STUWhat kind of absolute maniacs would decideto recreate a tiny $30 pawn shop amp in a guitar pedal? An amp that no one (except me) thinks is cool. One deliberately designed to be cheap and nasty. Crunchy. Boxy. Buzzy. But... there’s something about that amp... It can do things that nice big amps can’t do. And anyway, shitty is pretty! JAM pedalsand I chatted a couple of years ago about someother cool ideas which never eventuated, but when they asked if I’d be up for a limited-edition King Gizz pedal to celebrate our 2025 residency in Athens I said:“TINY AMP DESTROYER!”I’m sure they thought to themselves “what the f***”, but what they said to me was: “Colour us intrigued!” (I’d been running two Boomster clean boost pedals into my favourite tiny amp and it felt like destruction.)JAM pedals tracked down the same amp and I told them all about how it had been around the world with me and why I loved it, and through some kind of sorcery they recreated my favourite tiny amp ina pedal (I have no idea how).I am forever grateful because this pedal rules. It also has some other cool tricks up its sleeve. Like a treble boost. And a “magic” switch. It can actually be subtle if you want. Or extremely wild. You can use a clean amp or a dirty amp. Any guitar, any pickup. You’ll get different results, but always exciting. But you don’t need to know any of this. You just need a guitar. And a couple of cables. And a 9V power supply. And some fingers. And then you can be the destroyer. It’s fun.Enjoy the Tiny Amp Destroyer! Love, Stu xoxHOW WE GOT HEREStu had been building around a very particular sound in recent KGLW records: two Boomsters pushing a tiny Cash Converters amp far beyond where it was meant to go.We recreated that setup on our side and spent time with it until we understood where it starts to come apart. There’s a point where the amp stops smoothing itself out. The breakup shifts, the response changes, and the whole thing starts behaving in a way bigger amps simply don’t.That’s the part we kept.TAD is a way of getting into that same territory, but with enough control to shape it. The gain is split into two stages you can run on their own or stack, letting it move from driven tones through to much heavier ground.It can lean into that blown-out, small-amp character, or sit as a full-range drive that holds its place in a mix, from low gain breakup through to dense, saturated distortion. There’s enough shaping there to move well beyond that boxed-in feel when you want it to.It’s not a polished distortion. It comes from pushing something past where it’s meant to go and staying there.The artwork by Jason Galea, the visual mind behind much of King Gizzard’s world, reflects that same idea. Something held in place and forcing its way out.We took a prototype to Stu during KGLW’s residency in Athens to see how close we had got. He plugged in, played for a minute, and said, “you nailed it.” He used it for the rest of the tour, and from there the final shape of TAD came through real-world use.
