I have played through a lot of Distortion pedals and I was eager to see why there was so much buzz around the Suhr Riot pedal. I had to wait over 3 months for delivery of this pedal because Suhr have so many orders they simply cannot produce the Riot fast enough to meet demand. Each Suhr pedal is hand built so they can’t just churn these off a production line so if you are one of the people currently waiting please just be patient, they are worth the wait. In my quest for the ultimate distortion box so far my favourite distortion has been the Way Huge Fat Sandwich which is incredibly tweakable, the Riot has all the balls of the Fat Sandwich in a much more compact and simplified unit. But don’t be discouraged by the lack of presence, resonance and internal trim pots that you get with the Fat Sandwich, the distortion, tone and a level or volume knobs are capable of creating monster tone. There is also a 3 way switch to change the EQ voicing which actually makes quite a difference from mid boosted to slightly scooped. The on/off switch on the Suhr pedals are really nice, they have a nice smooth spring loaded operation without that clunky click that most pedals have. If you are a 9v battery fan this pedal has the bonus feature that it will indicate when the battery is about to die and switches to true bypass when it does so as not to interrupt the signal path.

This pedal is incredibly high gain is designed to be used in front of a clean amp to turn it into a raging 100 watt overdriven stack and it certainly succeeds, as you will hear in my demo.

If you would like to order a Suhr Riot pedal please contact me, check out http://gearfactory.guitarnoize.com for the latest pricing info.