EarthQuaker Devices Acapulco Gold V2 Distortion Pedal Reviews

In the immortal words of Dr. Peter Venkman from the classic movie Ghostbusters, "It'll tear your head off man." Just thick slabs of power distortion. LOUD distortion. Not too fizzy. You switch to the neck pick up and go up high on the neck and the notes are thick and the sustain is there. Through my Marshall DSL40C on the 20 watt mode it will unmake friends and alienate people. But then again depending on the person you may just make some friends. I have an Earthquaker Plumes overdrive and I turn the gain all the way down on that and run it in front of the Acapulco Gold. Oh lawd!

Using this pedal in my home studio is a breeze .
This Pedal does heavy sound in a most appreciable way.
When I want to doom/drone grindage, King Buzzo guitar style, this pedal brings home the bacon.
If this pedal was lost/stolen I would replace it a.s.a.p. without a doubt.
I'm waiting for a RAT2 to arrive (maybe today from Sweet Water) as I have red the two pedal make a great pairing.
The continuous high quality customer service that I received from Sweetwater Music has been very consistent over the years.
I bought two new Epiphone guitars, a Les Paul Modern and a Les Paul Jr. with a P-90 from Sweetwater music and Guitars that I received were perfect in everyway when they arrived.

I was doubtful of the amount of use I would get out of a one-knob distortion pedal, but the mad geniuses at EQD have made a great pedal. It couldn't be more simple: Set the overall volume level on the single, giant PONG-style knob, then use your guitar's volume and tone knobs to dial in any amount of killer overdrive-bleeding-into-fuzz tone you've been looking for. Is it wild and prone to feedback? Yer darn tootin' it is. Will it have a permanent spot on my rig? Well, nothing lasts forever, but this is quickly becoming one of my favorite pedals.

I combine this with an Orange Bax Bangeteer, and an orange pedal baby and it's and unreal doom sound. Wonderful for Electric Wizard, Monolord, etc. I absolutely love it.

This is the perfect unit for someone wanting a good middle ground between fuzz and distortion, I love it.

When I first heard and read about the Acapulco Gold a while ago I thought, meh, it sounds like a one trick pony.

But let me tell you, this little pedal taught me more about controlling my guitar than probably any other pedal I've used.

It's pretty much a straight distortion tone, that increases in volume, but the magic is in your guitar. You can change your distortion in many ways by using the tone and volume knobs on your guitar.

This is a revolution to me. I set the pedal level at unity or a little below, and then make the distortion how I want it without having to bend down and twiddle with stomp box knobs which takes away from playing pleasure as it takes longer, and you've got to kneel/crouch down.

Hats off to EQD for making something that's been a true eye opener and fun learning experience.

I bought this pedal hoping that the fact that it's modeled after a Sun amp would really help improve the tone on my board. I used it at first with my headphones because I live in a small apartment. Sounded great, was really impressed with how they were able to pack such power into a one knob pedal. Then, I decided to use it without the headphones. This thing almost blew the roof off my apartment building with the knob at 1 o'clock. This thing is LOUD. Really insane tone though. I have it after my compressor and TS9 and they take it to new heights. Really great bang for your buck.

It only does 1 thing but it's a great sound. Makes my 112 Orange cab sound massive. I use it on the clean channel of a Peavey 6505 MH. Great result.

I recently received my Acapulco Gold pedal and suddenly there was a rash of birds falling out of trees in the vicinity of my home. This isn't your everyday noise box.

So what is it?

Is it warm, like a tube amp? It's about as warm as a public transit operator. Get on and shut your face.

Is it fuzz? Well, if your boutique reissue fuzz pedal is a hipster's well-manicured beard, this pedal is your Uncle Joe's permanent man stubble. No matter how good it cleans up, it ain't going be pretty.

Is it heavy? No, it's drunk on it's own power and it stumbles about menacingly talking about the good ol' days when guitars were played LOUD.

You want it to shape your tone? Tough luck, kid. Your instrument's controls are going to have to do all the work and you're still going to be limited on what comes out of your speakers. This thing only belches one flavor of Angry.

And that's it. This thing is ANGRY. I feel like it thinks that I'm responsible for its wife leaving it whenever I plug in. It's never going to forgive me, and with this pedal I vow to make my neighbors never forgive me either.

I want to give it 10 stars, but since 5 is the max you can read this review twice.

I always leave this thing on at 12 o’clock and just use my guitars volume to control how dirty I want it.

Rat2 + Acapulco Gold = Life Pedal!

So much tonal possibility by just using your guitar"s volume knob. I love the cranked tube amp sound that this thing gives you without actually having to blow the windows out of your house

This one huge knob(that can controlled via your foot)
Pedal is amazing. Huge Tone. What I love most about this pedal is that you have to really use your volume and tone controls on your guitar. I love it. I can have huge thick lead tones or I can dial back my volume knob on my guitar and get really cool edge of breakup chords. It does not dissappoint. It sounds great with fuzz pedals also. I prefer it with my Earthquaker Terminal V2 pedal. Works well also with my walrus 385 overdrive pedal. It's just bitchin'. Of coarse my sales engineer Jordan is the man, nothing but nice and cool and an a easy guy to talk to. No one compares to Sweetwater. NO ONE!!!!
SO ADD SOME GOLD ON YOUR PEDAL BOARD!!

It does what exactly EQD says it does. It truly sounds like a cranked Sunn amplifier. I also stack it with a EQD Erupter fuzz pedal. Pure doom heaviness!

I have only turned the dial to 12 o'clock so far. I use linear volume pots on my guitars and basses and this can actually become a mild overdrive when the volume on the guitar is dialed back. Basically this shines at massive sound, not fuzz and definitely not scooped like a metal pedal, but more importantly dynamic. In other words it does not homogenize your sound like so many other distortions do. Imagine the guitar on Zeppelin II Whole Lotta Love but with more bottom, this does that.

You need a clean amp with high head room. This is a killer amp based Distortion Pedal. Using the guitar volume control, you can tame it down to a light crunch and then crank it up for hard driving chords and/or massive leads. Add a little delay and your choice of modulation and it's just plain awesome!!! using the one knob, from 9 o'clock to 3 o'clock the sound becomes fuller and more driven, which gives the feeling of a volume increase, but once you get this pedal and amp volume set to your liking------you won't stop playing!

It is in between a fuzz and a distortion, it can do both. Notes don't get lost with this pedal no matter how high you run it.

This thing is very versatile for a one knob pedal. The knob (output) hits unity just under 9 o'clock, so it's ideal for pushing your tube amp. It's also pretty low noise. I at first found the sound to be a bit sludgy (which is cool, but not always what I want), and I wanted a bit more note separation for palm muting. So I put a Fulltone 2B (buffered boost w/ limiter) in front of it. WORLD of difference. Even with the boost off with just the buffer the attack was much tighter. Gives it a bit of a 90's metal sound, very full high end with lots of bite. Anyway I'm definitely keeping this thing. EQD knocked it out of the park as per usual.

I tried this at a local guitar store wondering what the one pedal with just a big knob on the front and no info did. The part time guy had no idea so I gave it a shot, turned it up to the 9 o clock position and flooded the whole store with enough volume to kill grandma.

This thing puts the exponent on gain. It's so loud I realized my basic little no-amp setup where I feed my signal into my audio interface into my DAW is just not gonna cut it. This thing takes a signal and explodes it. Only reason I'm leaving little off on the star rating is just because the fact I realized I need a lot more wattage before I can really unlock this thing's potential.

With just a little tweak of the knob the signal hits the ceiling and cuts its own head off. I'm not sure if it was my DAW or interface's gain monitoring but as soon as I turned this pedal up it immediately cut the gain in half for protection. I dream of a setup where I can hear this thing cranked to full. The manufacturer does mention you're meant to use your guitar's volume knob to tame this thing and find different tones, but where's the love for noise maniacs that want to make everything shake?

Buy it if you love loudness.

Sweet and simple!