G&L BUCKSHOT
Rating:
BY AL SANTANGELO
Buy If...
you want natural, clear overdrive that will
add some serious heat to your sound
without masking your guitar’s voice.
When it comes to overdrive, there’s a fine line between dirty and too
dirty. More often than not, you want an
overdrive to retain some aspect of your
guitar’s voice. So it’s little wonder that a
company like G&L, which has made so
many well balanced and versatile guitars
over its history, hit the mark in creating a
natural overdrive that goes from smooth to
sizzling, all while retaining the character of
both amp and guitar.
early ’60s amplifiers—has three knobs for
Volume, Tone, and Drive. The bottom
of the pedal has to be removed to change
batteries, so you’ll need a screwdriver or
enough forethought to toss in a fresh 9V
cell before heading off to a gig. But the
pedal comes with an AC adapter, which
acknowledges that most players will probably run the Buckshot from their pedalboard anyway. Construction quality is
excellent, and the controls and jacks are
all handwired with care.
Skip If...
you’re looking for an edgier, heavily
distorted overdrive.
G&L Guitars
Street $149
glguitars.com
CLICKHere… or scan this QR code with a mobile device to hear audio clips of this pedal at premierguitar.com/nov2011.
Back to Basics
Things don’t get much more straightforward than the Buckshot. The sturdy
metal body—which is painted in a brown
that might well be a nod to Leo Fender’s
Clean and Roomy
Out in front of a 100-watt Marshall and
with a Duncan Distortion-equipped Dean
V 79 or Schecter C- 1 Elite on the driv-
ing end, the
Buckshot
provides an
almost clean
boost with just
a hint of grit
at the lower
Drive settings.
Turning up the
Drive knob
adds heat to
the notes very
quickly, but
without any
booming vol-
ume changes.
Increasing
the drive also
tightens up the
sound with a
sort of natural
compression
that sacrifices
little in terms
of clarity.
Even with
the Buckshot’s
Drive control
pushed to the
max, note-to-note clarity remained excellent, and chords that would otherwise be
buried in overdriven mud were rich and
distinct. That said, experimenting with various drive and tone values enabled me to go
from smooth to quite crunchy—like moving from Skynrd to Deep Purple to Nugent
to Green Day—with a few twists and a
change in attack. Given that the pedal is an
overdrive, it’s no surprise that there’s not
enough edge for metal, but in front of a
raging amp it would do wonders there, too.
I also found that keeping the Tone control
around the midpoint or higher is essential
to retaining the high-end that makes this
pedal shine—going much lower comes at
the expense of clarity.
Responsiveness to picking nuance is
excellent—you get back what you put in,
and there’s a lot of room for a dynamic
approach. Decreasing the Volume doesn’t
cost you much in terms of tone either,
which makes it easy to dial in a sweet,
slightly overdriven tone at lower club levels.
The Verdict
The G&L Buckshot provides a great,
natural overdrive that’s diverse enough
to handle country to blues to hard rock,
while letting amps’ and pickups’ natural
voices shine through. If you have a guitar
and amplifier setup you love, but that
occasionally needs a touch more horsepower, the Buckshot is an overdrive that
won’t get in the way.
