Fiery and Flexible: What's Behind Fender's Pugilist Distortion Pedal?

It's not uncommon for guitar players and stompbox aficionados to layer one distortion pedal over another in their signal chain.

But with the Fender Pugilist Distortion, you can do that in one pedal with the flip of a switch.

Designed by Fender Vice President of Product Innovation Stany Cotey in Southern California, the Pugilist Distortion features dual gain engines, each with independent tone controls that allow to access various levels of distortion.

That, coupled with a blend control that allows you to lean into higher or lower gain depending on taste, ensures that you can use the Pugilist with any rig.

When the blend switch is flipped to series, however, things take a turn for the dirty, as it stacks both engines on top of each other, giving you brutal tone.

"The Pugilist, for me, was an attempt to make a distortion pedal that is a little richer than a typical distortion pedal might be," said Cotey. "I wanted to blend differenct characteristic of distotion together.

"I was thinking about the idea of players that live on their volume knob or are are turning down to try to get different textures while they're playing. So if there were two distortion circuits that could run in parallel and one could be better at high-gain stuff or another might provide some clarity. We ended up in, I think, a pretty cool place."

One thing that players who have a multitude of amplifiers may appreciate is the bass boost control that fattens up the tone when you need it.

"When you're using an amp that's already distorted and you're using it for more of a push, you don't want the pedal to havea tremendous amount of low-end, because it can get really muddy," Cotey said. "On the other hand, if you're playing on a totally clean amp and want a little low-end authority, the bass boost switch fills in some low-frequency areas."

Fender's Amplifier Product Manager Rick Heins agrees.

As someone with a hand in creating all of Fender's amps from clean to dirty, he thinks the Pugilist adapts well across the board.

"The one thing I notice about the Pugilist is the vast array of tonal things that you can do," said HaviFender Amplifiers ProductnManager Rick Heins. "Having the ability to blend the tone and blend both channels gives you the ability to find the sweet spot with any amp."

The Pugilist also features stage-ready functionality, like a magnetic flip-down battery housing that makes it simple to change the battery on the fly, an LED-illuminated jewel to cut through dark conditions and durable anodized aluminium casing.

Shop all Fender effects pedals here.