“The crushing intensity, squalling lead tones, and chugging riffs of ’90s metal”: Jerry Cantrell’s Alice In Chains tone in a box for $110? Funny Little Boxes promises just that with the Dirt distortion

Funny Little Boxes Dirt Distortion
(Image credit: Funny Little Boxes)

Funny Little Boxes and Matt Webster of the Let's Play All YouTube channel have announced their third collaborative pedal, the Dirt distortion pedal – which promises to deliver the guitar tones of Alice In Chains' Dirt record and more for just shy of $110.

The pedal's brief was to nail Jerry Cantrell's sought-after guitar tones from the 1991 Alice In Chain's classic, with a particular emphasis on Them Bones – a gilt-edged metal anthem hinging on an angular riff that is known for its hairy yet defined tone.

The “target tone” of Them Bones can be found with the Dirt dial around noon, and the volume at two o'clock. The Bass, Treble and Mids should be pulled a little past the halfway mark.

Webster says the Dirt's development saw everything from “technical gremlins to hospitalizations”, and required help from Marc Dunberry of Soundlad Liverpool and Simon Andrews of JSA Effects in order to get over the line.

He also muses: “Perhaps it is fitting that a pedal that pays tribute to one of the darkest mainstream albums ever made had such a torturous development process.”

The pedal requires the standard 9V of power and does not come with a battery compartment, meaning daisy chaining and power bricks are needed to get these bad boys growling on your pedalboard.

Webster and Funny Little Boxes' previous collabs have bottled the sound of Pearl Jam's momentous LP, Ten, and Josh Homme's Queens of the Stone Age tones into similarly tiny and budget-friendly boxes.

Funny Little Boxes Dirt Distortion

(Image credit: Funny Little Boxes)

The Funny Little Boxes Dirt pedal is available to pre-order now for $109.29. No specific shipping date has been listed at the time of writing.

Check out Funny Little Boxes for the full lowdown.

A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.