Catalinbread | Dirty Little Secret Foundation Overdrive

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Model Number or Name:

Dirty Little Secret

Overdrive
Speaker/Amp Emulator

Sugaree Licks Rating: Love

Circuit Type: Digital

Original Price: $179

Excellent Used Price: $139

Year Released: 2013

Alternate Version(s)

Dirty Little Secret MKI

Marshall amps helped supercharge the performance, and shape the sound of rock and roll. When the house lights dimmed, all you could see through the hazy darkness was the array of red pilot lights shining from a backline wall of Marshall stacks. In the absence of your own personal wall of Marshalls and the necessary road crew required to lug them around, the Dirty Little Secret (DLS) is the perfect secret weapon in your tone arsenal.

This is your “always on” pedal, designed to be the “foundation” of your pedalboard, transforming any amplifier into those raging British stacks. It forms the core of your guitar sound which you can enhance and embellish by adding boosters, fuzzes, filters, and other overdrives in front of it.

Two distinct voicings - "Super Lead" and "Super Bass" switchable via an internal slider switch.
A full three-knob treble-middle-bass tone control complement that reproduces exactly the tone circuits of the Super Lead and Super Bass amps.

Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret MK III Demo

The Dirty Little Secret MKIII is what Catalinbread call a foundation overdrive. Since the second version, this vintage Marshall based pedal has been redesigned for greater flexibility with 2 unique voices, Super Lead and Super Bass. A new JFET circuit achieves amp tones without the use of diodes or opamps, like common overdrives. The EQ and gain structure are also closely related to a Marshall's preamp section, even more so with new middle control. Super lead mode has more gain on tap so you can achieve JCM800 style gain or switch to the Super Bass for JTM style smoothness. The Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret MKIII can also run on 18v for '100 watt' headroom, ideal for increased clarity or stacking with other pedals.