It dawned on us towards the end of last year that we needed to shake things up a bit on the pedal and amp review front. Firstly, we felt the need to change our amp platform from a great, but out-of-production combo – the Reverend Hellhound – to a more traditional, readily available model – the Fender Princeton Reverb RI. We also wanted to bring in more tonal standardization by using one set of high quality cables for pedal reviews and another for amp reviews. We now use Lava Clear Connect cables for all the pedal reviews and Analysis Plus cables for amp test drives. Cool? Yeah… we thought so too!

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.