AmpTweaker is a new company founded by James Brown, no not that one, this James Brown used to be an engineer at Peavey Electronics and was responsible for some classic Peavey Amp designs. For a start you may have heard of the Peavey 5150, well James was the lead engineer working with Eddie Van Halen for 13 years to make this historical classic amp. Aside from the 5150, James also designed the JSX series in collaboration with Joe Satriani, the XXX, the Classic 50, Classic 30 and DeltaBlues. James has since moved on to become chief engineer at Kustom amps.

So onto James’ new venture, AmpTweaker, the first pedal James has designed is called the TightDrive and you can hear it in action in the videos above. Here is some info from the AmpTweaker site:

The TightDrive TM overdrive pedal is the first Amptweaker product, a gain pedal that features the TIGHT control. This tweaks the amp’s attack, and when combined with the Gain, Tone, and Volume controls, a lot of different distortion sounds are possible. It has the ability to dial in varying amounts of crunch, from barely clean singing blues tones, to crunchy rhythm sounds, all the way up to seriously overdriving your tube amp for tight chunky lead solos. Whether you’re using it with a clean amp or to beat up your heavy amp, this pedal has the range to handle the job.

[There is an] …effects loop to the back so you can add whatever you want to this pedal. And there’s a Pre/Post button underneath the pedal so you can move that outboard effect to in front of or behind the TightDrive. When you bypass the TightDrive pedal, the other effect or effects will be bypassed as well. This feature is great if you want to further tweak the distortion tone with an EQ in front of or behind it, or to add compression, or a delay.

Check out AmpTweaker’s site for more info.