Fulltone GT500 Dual Distortion/Booster PedalThe Fulltone GT500 Dual Distortion/Booster Pedal gives you discrete F.E.T Hi-Gain Distortion and Overdrive Booster IN ONE PEDAL. On the Hi-Gain side you get Volume, Distortion knobs, Bass, Mid, and Highs minipots. The Booster Side has Volume, Overdrive knobs, Bass and Highs minipots. These hi-Q sealed minipots don't break either!
Most pedals achieve distortion with
hard clipped distortion which can be cool, but stage after stage of FET (GT-500) is very real, very amplike, and has ridiculous amounts of sustain even at low volume. It does the great chunky low string rhythm stuff and cleans up incredibly well when you turn down the guitar's volume. The GT500 contains 9 x FET's, 2 Mosfets and 1 x Transistor with no opamps or clipping diodes used.
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What's special about the EQ?
The Hi-Gain side has a discrete Inductor-Driven Midrange circuit....never been done in a pedal before. Yes there's a wah wah inductor inside the pedal that gives the Midrange control its ability to drastically increase or decrease the entire Low Mid, Mid, and Hi-Mid frequencies, to comical proportions. All this is done without any opamps because all of the active 3 Band EQ's Fulltone's designers had tried were horrible, killing all harmonics, all excitement, and sounding as sterile as the
EQ in a Digital Recording Program. Nope, this has 100% discrete matched FET's.
This Mid control mixed with a strong Bass and Treble control help give the GT-500 the ability to dial in more variations than a simple tone control, which can only roll off the Highs.
What's the Series switch in the middle do?
The Series Select Switch allows you to choose which pedal comes first (allowing you to instantly change the order of the 2 circuits)
Booster to Distortion
or
Distortion to Booster
For example: A Clean Boost slamming into the front end of a Distortion sounds way different than a Distortion followed by the clean Boost...and when the EQ's of the respective sides come into play, it's a wide open canvas. Regardless of which side of the pedal is designated as
first in line you can still use each side by itself, completely independent of the other side.