Fender Pugilist Distortion Pedal Reviews

Great pedal without sacrificing tone. Great price. Highly recommended. This is my 2nd Sweetwater transaction with support from my awesome Sweetwater tech Erik. Thank you for the follow-up Erik. You rock brother!

This is a extremely versatile distortion pedal.
The two engines combined with the ability to run separately or select series or blend modes opens up endless possibilities.
Many pedals are good at just one thing, but the Pugilist is capable of much more.
I have been running the Pugilist through my the effects loop through a GTX 100 amp and really takes my distorted/driven tones to a new level. Still experimenting, but enjoying what this pedal delivers so far.
If you pick up one of these you might be putting some of your other distortion pedals aside and reduce some of the clutter on your pedal board. Definitely worth checking out and it's reasonably priced.

Originally this pedal caught my eye and simply looked great. I started reading up and I watched a few videos about this pedal and decided to give it a go. I was blown away at the range of tones and sounds it can make! This pedal is essentially two pedals in one and the blend function is so awesome. You can adjust to get a dirty overdrive style pedal all the way to a sharp pure distortion pedal. With the blend/series option it's almost infinite. I have been playing with this pedal a lot and I'm still finding new ways to adjust it. Right out of the box I was impressed by the quality of this thing. The lights are super bright but you can turn them off if you prefer that. Wether you are new to distortion and want to try a lot of different things or are experienced this pedal is for you.

This is the best distortion pedal I've found for my tone taste. The two gates are the best feature. You can either stack them or blend them. You can also just use one of them. I've tried many different models and came across this one by Fender. Great service by Sweetwater and my sales genius Darius.

I've tried different distortion pedals and this has been the best. The two drives are what set this apart. You can set the gain and tone for each drive separately then blend them or stack them together. Or you can use one or the other. The battery compartment is on the end of the unit meaning I don't have to cover it with velcro for my pedalboard like some pedals. Great price on this too.

I've owned this pedal for about a year and a half. I can't lie. This puppy is actually super versatile. The blend is great. The tones out of Side A are warm and brown almost like a fuzz and overdrive in one. When you crank the gain it really does go into a nice aggressive but still warm tone. The B Side of the pedal is the true distortion to me. That side gives you that real 80's, 90's drive. It can even be overbearing for a non-metal head who just wants a nice lead tone.
The perfect balance between these two channels creates just about one of the best and most complete distortions I have ever heard. Everything to your own taste of course. I'm sure the metal-heads among us would still rather something more aggressive.
When I have tried for metal tones I must say this pedal in series mode followed by an amp sim with the drive up was preeeeetty convincing haha I felt like I was the Heir of Van Halen!!!

The blend feature is the best part about this pedal, so many tones and vibes to send out. I have a guitar collection so it's nice to blend the A and B channels depending on my pickups. Not quite metal distortion, but I was looking for a distortion pedal that really cut through in a heavy rock way.

I've been playing guitar for 45 years and have had dozens of OD and Distortion pedals and this one stands out. It is very touch sensitive and has a tuneful and versatile grit to it. This has replaced my Pantheon, MojoMojo and OCD on my board (I would get bored and cycle through them). I have a RYRA Klone as a clean boost before it and and I really love the sound and versatility of this thing.

Love this thing! The more I Tinker the more I love it. Very versatile!

I run an HSS Strat or a Les Paul Special (with P90s) into a Blues Jr. dialed up fully clean. I have tried so many distortion pedals and overdrives trying to get the sounds I wanted. I finally got them with the Pugilist. This pedal sounds incredible and is extremely versatile with two different-sounding distortion tone stacks to dial in. On is more of a mellow overdrive and the other is a hot distortion. You can stack them or dial in two different sounds and blend them. I use both depending on what I am doing. I've replaced every overdrive/distortion I had with this one box, and my tone-chasing attempts to replace it have all failed. It always conquers and remains at the center of my pedal board. One thing to note: I do think this pedal sounds best into a clean amp.

I retired my old overdrive pedal so I wanted a replacement that was comparable in sound. I reached out to the folks at Sweetwater and they gave several recommendations. I tried the Pugilist and it instantly became my new favorite. I get a smooth overdrive tone but I can push it even further if needed. Absolutely love this pedal.

Love it, made me love distortion pedals again. Really dynamic and the tones you can get from it are amazing.

I play through a Mesa Boogie 5:25 Express that has such a beautiful clean tone that I am very careful not to use anything that changes or detracts from the beautiful tone (no tone suckers). This pedal preserves the clean sparkle and richness when not being used (true bypass), and then when you turn it on, delivers silky smooth beautiful distortion to my tubes, even at low volume. I often find that overdrives sound great but fall short on the amount of gain available, and distortion pedals often have plenty of gain but often have bad or even obnoxious tones or suck the tone from my amplifier. I am happy to say that this pedal is absolute perfection for me. Plenty of gain if you want it, or back-off to beautiful overdrive. The pedal does not have much background noise, even at high gain levels (about as quiet as I have ever heard). I couldn't be happier with this pedal. I don't play any super heavy stuff so I'm not sure if it will do that well but easily does 80's hard rock, even with single coils. I play Les Paul, Strats, and Telecasters. All sound great and can get plenty of gain with all of them. And Chris Nunley, always gets things out the door quickly and well packed so it arrives in perfect condition. Thanks Chris!

Not a bad sound in this pedal... Gorgeous to look at. This pedal is dear to me because for the first time in years I hauled my amp and guitar to a music store to try out pedals. I'm a shy player but the courage paid off - would have never discovered this otherwise. I tried every distortion pedal they had and this sounded best with my Katana. Try one of these and you'll be a proud owner.

I'm always prepared for some disappointment with drive pedals. Like many 'tone chasers', I've been through a stack of them. From my MXR distortion +, that's seen active service on my board for almost 40 years, to a bunch of boutique OD and distortion pedals, I've got a love/hate relationship with them, and consequently, an ever-growing pile of the things. And most of them are great at certain things, so I tend to have maybe six or seven on my gig board at any time. That way, I can kick one into life, for song A, and boost that with another, for song B, and so forth. Plus, I have a tendency to use half a dozen guitars at a gig (trios can get a bit 'samey' over the course of a 3 hour show). But the pugilist does so much, and so well, I think that I'll be trimming that six or seven drives down to maybe a couple (ok, three or four). And I'm thinking that another drive might be either the Santa Ana, or a second Pugilist. This really is a very versatile pedal. Great work Fender, after some less-than-memorable earlier efforts, you've certainly redeemed yourself.

I was in a local music shop trying to trade my Fulltone OCD for a different kind of pedal. I've been super happy with my VOX Night Train 50W drive tones but I plugged this pedal in and was blown away immediately! Very rich and tight tones with a very wide variety of available tones. I've been through a lot of drive/distortion pedals but this one rocks!!!

Well my pugilst destortion pedal came today so i pluged up and well my boss sd 1 will be collecting a lot of dust . if your tired of those pedals that sound like a distorted fm radio then you need this fender pedal. It took about 2.5 minutes to find the sound i wanted and my strat has never sounded better . the best part its a clean type of distortion with highs that sing like angels and lows that are as grungy as you would want and lets not forget those sweet mids. Wether you play lead or not this pedal has what you need . Try it you'll never go back to what you were using before. Cant wait to get my Santa Ana overdrive and plug my Les Paul through it .

I was floored by the harmonic richness and detail. Every note seemed to explode with clarity and color. I"m really just shocked that fender could put out such a great pedal for $. I have been stacking drives for years but the ability to blend is such a great tool. If u are on the fence about this purchase let me tell u.... for $ u won"t find a better sounding driver.

This pedal does it all, I prefer the lower gain sounds, but the high gain is also fantastic. I'd highly recommend it and it's a steal at this price. It does take a while to get a good sound out of it, but once you do it's perfect.

The two distortion engines are great on their own, better blended. Stacked function is a little muddy, but if you drop the gain level down it cleans up nicely. You can create any tone you"re after and sounds great in a clean amp. I found it doesn"t really push a dirty channel as well it runs on the clean side. For something that others are charging $200+ for, Fender hit it out of the park, finally.

I did not like this pedal with my Fender Champion 50 amp. But with my Marshall DSL 100 I love it with my Strat HSH.

I'd give it 5 stars except I feel it comes up short on low gain settings. At low gain the distortion almost sounds like a clean tone clipping but not in a good way. I've tried several combinations of series and blend settings. Can't seem to get it right. As soon as you turn the gain up higher that goes away and it sounds awesome. The pedal is beautiful with the LEDs on.

Great sound affordable