The genesis of the Junior Special lies in the desire to offer a companion pedal for my “Deacy” style radio amps. These amps sound incredible, but only when paired with a pre-amp of some kind. Overdrives and clean boosts work very well, but for maximum flexibility, I wanted to be able to offer something more full-featured with a versatile tone stack. I also wanted the pedal to be useful as a straightforward overdrive.

The decision to base the pedal on the Dumble Overdrive Special hardly needs any justification, but I did feel there was a gap in the market for a relatively low-cost D-style preamp pedal that is more than a modified Tubescreamer. Does the pedal sound exactly like the amps? Obviously not, but it is a recreation of the topology as opposed to an attempt to capture a specific tone. Aside from the mythic status, the Overdrive Special design ticks the boxes I was going for - flexible and feature-rich, and still great sounding even in approximation. Also, compared to the original amps, this pedal is roughly £100,000.00 cheaper.

I have used an op-amp to recreate the clean channel, and the overdrive channel has a couple of Jfets doing their triode emulation thing. Like the amp it’s based on, the overdrive channel is on a footswitch, and when the overdrive is disengaged, the pedal works well as a versatile clean boost. The tone stack is based on the late generation “Bluesmaster” Overdrive Special and includes the “Rock/Jazz” switch as well as the “Mid” boost. I have omitted the “Bright” and “Preamp Boost” features as I had to draw the line somewhere in terms of making the pedal doable without the price spiraling.