TC Electronic Spark

The deceptively innocuous Breakdown guitar effect pedal from Danelectro is basically a tiny six-stage gain booster that serves up everything from light, subtle dirt to smooth overdrive and further on to heavy, full-on distortion. Set the gain level with the Break-Up rotary switch and shape it further with the pedal’s Volume knob as well as your guitar’s own volume controls. This slim form stompbox doesn’t run on battery juice and needs to be connected to a compatible 9V power supply.

The Danelectro BB-1 Billion Dollar Boost pedal not only increases your tone’s volume and responsiveness, but it also gives you enough EQ versatility to keep that boosted signal under your complete control. You get plenty of gain via the Volume knob, plus there are dedicated Treble and Bass knobs for controlling the mix. There’s also a two-way selector switch for Flat and Low Cut modes, the latter of which lets you drop the lower frequencies to add a subtle variation to your sound.