Greatest Pedal Names EVER

In this week’s article, I'm going to show you the greatest pedal names I've ever seen. The best names. Period. That’s a pretty tall order for a guitar nerd like me, to look through my collection of literally thousands of guitar pedals and pick out the pedals with the greatest names. It's a lot of work, a lot of stress, but I have accepted the task. I’m going to paraphrase Uncle Ben here: “With a great pedal collection comes great responsibility.”

That said, these are my opinions, and that's all they are. You're going to have your own opinions (heck, you might even have opinions about my opinions), and that’s okay, because that’s how the internet works. Cool? Cool.

Midnight Amplification Moon Funeral

The first pedal on my list is the Midnight Amplification Moon Funeral fuzz. Moon Funeral. Great pedal name or greatest pedal name? I’m going to let you be the judge. I’m not sure what a moon funeral even is, to be honest, but I know I want to go to one. The controls on this pedal are equally mysterious/epic: star, blade and cloud.

This pedal is the perfect accompaniment to a moody sci-fi soundtrack. If you go back and listen to the jam Nick and I laid down with this pedal in the JHS Show episode (which you totally should), that’s pretty much what we were going for.

Fuzzrocious Knob Jawn

Next up is the Fuzzrocious Knob Jawn. I dare you to say that five times fast.

A little background on the name: “jawn” is apparently a slang word from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that means “anything.” Maybe this is saying that the knob is anything you want to do with it? That it can be whatever you want? That its limits are only the limits of your imagination? I honestly don't know. I do know that the knob is huge, so this pedal is definitely a contender for the future World’s Biggest Knobs episode.

Basically, the Knob Jawn is a plus/minus octave with a dry/wet option, so there’s a ton you can do with it. This is a really cool pedal, and I love this company. They're good people.

DOD Tuna FX12

I’m not ashamed to admit it: this pedal is near and dear to my heart, even though it doesn’t technically do anything. I’m talking about the DOD Tuna FX12 guitar tuner. That’s right, it's a tuner pedal called a tuna. DOD’s pun game is strong.

The enclosure is even painted with fish scales. That shows the kind of serious dedication to the bit that I can get behind.

Guyatone Hell Monster

If I had to pick the absolute best name on this list, I think it would be the Guyatone Hell Monster distortion. Guyatone is a Japanese brand. This is from the Flip Series. This actually has a 12AX7 tube inside of it. These were released sometime in the ’90s.

Honestly, it just makes me happy that I live in a world where the Hell Monster exists. When I play the Hell Monster distortion, it makes me feel a lot of things, all of them good. It makes me want to play those classic guitar riffs and those catchy hooks. It makes me want to jam.

Danelectro Sitar Swami

This next pedal did not get the recognition it deserved when it debuted at Winter NAMM in the late nineties, and that’s not okay. The Danelectro Sitar Swami deserved better. That said, I can see how this may have been a tough sell -- there’s not an obvious market for a pedal that makes your guitar sound like a sitar. The original box describes the Sitar Swami as having the droning, resonating tones of the sixties and a sitar simulator, and invites guitarists to “skip the trip to Bombay and dump the guru.” I don't know what that's a reference to, and, honestly, I don't really care. To paraphrase the movie Jerry Maguire, “You had me at sitar.”

This is a very unique sounding pedal, and I’ll be the first to admit that unique doesn’t always translate to usable, but in this case, it does. The Sitar Swami is a creative, interesting and strange piece of gear. It checks a lot of boxes, and the name is just fantastic. The Sitar Swami is kind of like a cone filter moves quickly like a phaser -- but it's not phasing, it's filtering. It has an octave-up effect, and it even feels like it has ring modulation because there's distortion.

TLDR, this is a really unusual, surprisingly usable pedal.

Exar MM-03 Moon Metal

The Polish pedal brand Exar could honestly have half a dozen pedals on this list. A few very close runner-ups for this slot were the Metal Mind, the Pig Nose envelope-filter, the Hoover distortion and the Hammer distortion. But none of those names can top this one: the Exar MM-03 Moon Metal. You’ll remember the Moon Funeral fuzz from the beginning of the article. Well, this is the next step up, but it ain’t a funeral. This is a celebration, a party space-ship that’s going to take us on a journey through Earth’s atmosphere, straight for the Moon.

Bonus: I’ve always said that you can never have too many Metal Zones on your pedal board, and I stand by that. Here’s one more you can sneak in.

SPAMPeko

Next up is not a pedal, but it's a pedal. Let me explain: it’s a pedal in the sense that it sits at your feet and adds cool effects to your electric guitar or bass. It’s not a pedal in the sense that it has no footswitch. I’m talking about the SPAMPeko preamplifier and reverb/echo effect.

If you’ve never heard of this truly bizarre pedal, I’m not surprised. I literally bought it on Etsy because it just looked amazing, and I couldn’t even tell you the name of the guy who built it, although I can refer you to a pretty interesting interview on his website. The SPAMPeko is an actual Spam can with an echo/reverb circuit inside. It has knobs for reps, delay, heat and mix. I’m fairly sure the heat is a metaphor for distortion, as in the extra crunch and sizzle you get when you fry a piece of Spam in a pan before eating it. Or, if you were my dad, burn the Spam to a freakin’ crisp.

This pedal has 139 five-star reviews on Etsy, and for a good reason: aside from the gimmick, it’s actually a really solid piece of gear. So, basically, don’t judge a pedal by its enclosure.

SMB 100% Drive

Last but never least is the SMB 100% Drive. SMB is a Russian company, and they didn’t hold back one iota of confidence when they named this thing. I can literally picture the board meeting, “What do we name the pedal?” “Well, what does it do?” “It’s a drive pedal.” “How do we communicate that this is the absolute best drive pedal around?” “Call it the 100% Drive?” “Da.”

The best part is, this isn’t just a slick marketing campaign. The 100% Drive really is an amazing drive pedal, and it actually sounds fantastic. It’s a bit of an enigma, because I don't know what it's a clone of, but I don't think it could be original. I'm shocked at how good it sounds, to the point that I kind of want to open it up and study it, but I'm not going to.

Honorable Mentions

Now, I’m a guitar pedal lover at heart, so I can’t wrap this up -- read: I can't sleep at night -- without mentioning a few of the runner-ups:

Caroline Guitar Vegetarian Pizza fuzz/drive. They already had a Hawaiian Pizza fuzz, but they ran this as a limited release, and it rocks. 9/10 on the name, plus the enclosure actually says “Eat Me.” You can’t beat this.
Ibanez PD7 Phat-Hed overdrive. This bass overdrive is called the Phat Hed in reference to Brian Philip Welch (also known by his stage name Head) a musician from Korn who absolutely loved this effect.
Ibanez Sound Tank SP5 Slam Punk. The pedal name is a play on the phrase “slam dunk,” which also happened to be the name of a super popular video game released around this time. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
The Charlie Stringer Mold Spore Psychoscumatic Wah. Not psychosomatic. Pyscoscumatic. Honestly, the name says it all, but it also has controls like shaft, voodoo, white room, plus there’s buttons all over it including my favorite: freak sweep.

I’m going to end with a quote by my good friend William Shakespeare. “What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” With all due respect to Bill, these pedals are 120% more fun to play because of their epic names. Do yourself a favor and play one.