New Limited Edition JAM Pedal! Some of the most iconic guitar tones ever recorded — from the Layla sessions to much of Jimmy Page’s early work — came from small amps pushed to their limits. Stu Mackenzie of the Aussie band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard took that idea to the extreme with a $30 pawn shop amp and two JAM Boomster pedals. That wonderfully strange rig unlocked something special, and JAM has captured the spirit of it — then widened the tonal range — with the new Tiny Amp Destroyer pedal.

The pedal itself follows Stu’s signal chain pretty closely (see the attached signal flow), with two gain stages bracketing the amp’s three-band EQ and the addition of a treble booster. There’s also a notch filter that re-voices the character of the amp from full-throated to mid-scooped, plus a Magic toggle that enhances the small-amplifier feel of the pedal.

Although both gain stages share the same EQ, they can be engaged independently, as can the Treble Booster. That circuit is based on JAM’s discontinued Rooster pedal, which itself was based on the ’60s Dallas Rangemaster.

The Tiny Amp Destroyer covers a wide range of ground: low-gain driver, stand-alone treble booster, ripping distortion pedal, and all kinds of stacked-distortion scenarios where it really earns its name. Don’t let the fabulous graphics fool you into thinking this pedal is only built for mayhem. There is plenty of mayhem on tap, but the Tiny Amp Destroyer thrives at many levels without being overly complicated. And like all JAM pedals, it’s all-analog and hand-assembled in Athens, Greece.

If you want to go big, think Tiny.

In the words of Stu of KGLW: 

What kind of absolute maniacs would decide to recreate a tiny $30 pawn shop amp in a guitar pedal? An amp that no one (except me) thinks is cool. One deliberately designed to be cheap and nasty. Crunchy. Boxy. Buzzy. But...there’s something about that amp. It can do things that nice big amps can’t do. And anyway, sh*tty is pretty! JAM pedals and I chatted a couple of years ago about some other cool ideas which never eventuated, but when they asked if I’d be up for a limited-edition King Gizz pedal to celebrate our 2025 residency in Athens I said: "Tiny Amp Destroyer"

From JAM:

Stu had been building around a very particular sound in recent KGLW records: two Boomsters pushing a tiny Cash Converters amp far beyond where it was meant to go.

We recreated that setup on our side and spent time with it until we understood where it starts to come apart. There’s a point where the amp stops smoothing itself out. The breakup shifts, the response changes, and the whole thing starts behaving in a way bigger amps simply don’t.

That’s the part we kept.

TAD is a way of getting into that same territory, but with enough control to shape it. The gain is split into two stages you can run on their own or stack, letting it move from driven tones through to much heavier ground.

It can lean into that blown-out, small-amp character, or sit as a full-range drive that holds its place in a mix, from low gain breakup through to dense, saturated distortion. There’s enough shaping there to move well beyond that boxed-in feel when you want it to.

It’s not a polished distortion. It comes from pushing something past where it’s meant to go and staying there.

The artwork by Jason Galea, the visual mind behind much of King Gizzard’s world, reflects that same idea. Something held in place and forcing its way out.

We took a prototype to Stu during KGLW’s residency in Athens to see how close we had got. He plugged in, played for a minute, and said, “You nailed it.” He used it for the rest of the tour, and from there the final shape of TAD came through real-world use.