Wave Cannon MKII Superdistorter? The long story short is that this thing is an unrepentant, unapologetic distortion pedal that is nasty and fun. This Cannon comes pre-loaded with balls (pun alert!) and is capable of going from cranked, lightly dirty amp tones to the sound of a furry Godzilla devouring a junkyard full of broken a/c window units.

It’s different from the original, which was based on the classic ’70s fuzz tones we grew up playing. It’s different from our Haymaker™, which is a wide-range drive pedal based around the rotation of a clipping network into different locations in the circuit, and which is intended to respond and feel like an extension of your amp. This pedal is really about rocking your socks off.

While it can do some extremely cool, mild-to-medium crunch tones, Wave Cannon II is capable of overwhelming your amp. The focus (mids) and tone controls are different from what we’ve done before and can give you a really broad range of textures and voicings. There is a LOT of gain and volume on tap, as we’d been infuriated in the past by great sounding classic distortion pedals we’ve owned that didn’t go far enough with clean amps or were quieter than unity gain or the bypass signal. The rumble switch allows more low end if you want it, or lets you tighten things up if you don’t need it.