Peavey Hotfoot Distortion

I bought this pedal sometime in late '87 or early '88 when I was looking for something to give a little more edge.

Like almost all Peavey products, this pedal is built like a tank. The case is a hard steel one that you could drive nails with if you wanted to and the bottom is a rubber non-skid pad.

It's a 9v battery driven effect and it's pretty easy on the batteries although it will drain one if you leave it on overnight. There is a rather inconveniently placed and non-standard shaped power input on the front of the unit between the in/out jacks. The only wall wart I found that would work with it was a multi-purpose one from Radio Shack.

The pedal isn't 'true bypass' and does have a little noticeable 'tone sucking' when switched off but it isn't too bad.

The pedal has 3 knobs, Level, Presence, and Distortion. Tonally, it's somewhat like the Boss DS-1 although it isn't as bad about cutting highs and upper mids like that pedal. The level knob controls the volume, as you would expect. It can put out a lot of gain. The Presence knob is sort of a tone knob, going from a dark low to a piercing high. I like keeping it turned under 5 myself because it gets too brittle sounding with single coils otherwise. The distortion knob controls the amount of fuzziness in the signal. While it's not as 'fuzzy' or 'buzzy' as a true fuzz pedal, it can get pretty hairy. I most often use this pedal in combination with my Sansamp GT2 and VeryTone to get anything ranging from a dark blues tone to a metal-ish distortion.

It's been a nice pedal to have and I'd recommend snagging one if you run across one in a second hand store or eBay at a good price.