The aptly named Stomp Under Foot is a start-up boutique pedal company out of Massachusetts helmed by Matt Pasquerella. The company currently is offering a pair of pedals – the Tubescreamer-inspired Mean Green Machine and the Screaming Panda. Intrigued, we hooked on to a tour box put together by Matt to take a test drive of the pedals. After a quick demo, we opted to share our thoughts on the Panda with you. The pedal was inspired by the vintage Dimarzio Very Metal stomp from the late 1980s, a pedal that was more Rat-like than metal. In his bid to recreate that sound, with a dash of Big Muff fuzz tossed in, Matt came up with the Screaming Panda.

No packaging or flash with the Screaming Panda tour box. The pedal was bubble wrapped securely and boxed up for shipping. The pedal itself is a no-frills affair – a creamy white enclosure with the words Screaming Panda and Stomp Under Foot written across it. The pedal features three knob controls – Level, Tone and Gain. Level adjusts the volume. Tone brightens up the sound. Gain increases the amount of fuzz/distortion. A top positioned LED tells you if the stomp is on and a standard metal footswitch engages the effect.

To the sound… first we wanted to hear the Screaming Panda with the Strat at mid-gain. Using the neck pickup, we dial the Level in at around 2 o’clock, the Gain at noon and the Tone turned up to around 3 o’clock for this take on an old Eleven riff. Check it out… first clean, then the Panda.

I fell for the low-end response of the Panda right away. It’s similar to the rounded thickness that I like in the Way Huge Swollen Pickle Mk II on certain settings. There is also a solid amount of volume on tap. Get the Level too much higher than 2 o’clock, and your crankin’!

Switching to the Les Paul, we let the Panda off its chain. With Level around the same setting as before, Gain is now dimed and the Tone is dialed back to noon. First clean, then the pedal.

The Panda really muscles up the humbuckers of the LP and still allow good articulation of the strings sing through the gain. At full Gain, the Panda remains crisp and doesn’t mud up like some fuzzes.

Lastly, we strap the Strat back on and switch down to the bridge pickup. Looking for a lower-gain crunch, we push the Level to around 3 o’clock, we pull back the Gain and Tone to around 9 o’clock. First clean… then the bamboo-eater.

Stomp Under Foot’s Screaming Panda is an excellent first offering from a promising new pedal maker. What it doesn’t have in design flash it more than makes up for in quality of tone, which is really all that matters. I enjoyed my time with the Panda and was impressed by the shear number of useable sounds I was able to dial into it, and pull out of it. Matt really has something cool going on with this one. And, at $120… the price is right too. That’s my opinion anyway… your mileage may vary.

Thanks to Matt for having my back and supplying the pics. Stupid delete key!

PLEASE NOTE: All YMMV Review clips are played through a Reverend Hellhound 40/60 combo amp with 1×12 extension cab. No reverb or other effects were added to the clips. Guitars used in this review include a 1979 Gibson Les Paul Custom and a 1998 Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster.