MeteorVintage Distortion

From the vendor

A hard-edged distortion pedal from the early 1980s, notably used by Scott Henderson and John Shanks.

The Meteor Vintage Distortion project is a clone of the Maxon/Ibanez SD-9 Sonic Distortion, which first hit stores around 1983. Advertised as a heavier Tube Screamer, in reality it shares nothing at all in common with the classic TS-9 circuit. It has more similarities to hard-clipping circuits such as the BOSS DS-1 or MXR Distortion+.

In 2012, Ibanez released an updated reissue of the SD-9 called the SD-9M, which was one of the first traces we ever did back in 2014. It includes two modifications: a switchable +10x gain stage and a midrange toggle switch that changes the EQ of the tone control.

The Meteor is based on the original SD-9, but with the midrange mod from the SD-9M. Since the SD-9M’s gain stage mod is not original to the circuit and is always partially in the audio path even when it’s switched off, we have not included this modification in the Meteor project, opting to keep it 100% the same as the vintage unit. However, since the midrange switch has one position identical to the original circuit, we included this switch along with a third position not found in the SD-9M for even more tonal flexibility. There is also a toggle switch to select between three different sets of clipping diodes, two of which will significantly increase the available output volume.

The updated version of the Meteor is the same as the original legacy project, with no new or changed features aside from being redesigned for the 125B enclosure.