Strymon La Brea Overdrive

Analog tape saturation, from subtle warmth to full-on fuzz

The Strymon La Brea is an all-analog tape saturation drive designed to capture the compression, harmonic richness and progressively driven character of analog tape in a compact pedal. Inspired by the Saturation section of Strymon's own Deco, La Brea takes that concept considerably further, offering a wide range of drive tones that extends from subtle warmth and mild breakup all the way to aggressive distortion and fuzz.

Rather than digitally modeling tape behavior, La Brea uses a completely analog signal path built around multiple stages of tape-style saturation. At lower settings, it can add warmth, harmonic character and gentle compression to your existing tone. Push the Tape Saturation control further and the response becomes increasingly driven and aggressive, eventually reaching heavily saturated, fuzz-like textures.

A dedicated Gain switch changes the operating range of the Tape Saturation control, allowing La Brea to cover dramatically different levels of saturation while retaining useful control throughout the sweep. This makes the pedal equally comfortable as an always-on tone enhancer, a characterful drive or a much more aggressive source of saturation.

The Shift switch provides additional control over the pedal's frequency response. It can introduce a dedicated high-frequency boost or combine that boost with additional midrange content, helping saturated sounds retain clarity and presence or adding extra body when a fuller response is desired.

One of La Brea's most useful features is its fully variable Dry control. The clean signal remains in phase with the saturated output, allowing you to blend your original tone back into even heavily driven settings without the phase cancellation problems that can occur when combining parallel signal paths. Adding dry signal can restore definition, attack and low-end solidity while preserving the texture and compression of the saturated sound.

La Brea operates internally at 24V from a standard 9V DC power supply. The increased internal voltage provides the headroom required for its wide gain range while helping maintain low-noise operation and allowing the pedal to move naturally from clean and lightly compressed sounds into much heavier saturation.

Whether used to add a subtle layer of tape-like warmth, create a responsive analog drive sound or push into unapologetically saturated fuzz territory, the Strymon La Brea offers a different approach to gain, bringing the character and behavior of tape saturation into a flexible all-analog drive pedal.

Strymon La Brea Features

• All-analog tape saturation drive inspired by the Saturation character of Strymon's Deco

• Multi-stage analog saturation design inspired by the behavior of analog tape

• Wide gain range from subtle warmth and mild breakup to aggressive fuzz-like saturation

• Tape Saturation control adjusts the amount of drive and saturation

• Gain switch changes the operating range of the Tape Saturation control

• Shift switch provides high-frequency boost or high-frequency and midrange emphasis

• Fully variable Dry control blends the original signal with the saturated signal

• Dry path remains in phase with the pedal's output for improved clarity and definition at higher saturation settings

• Fully analog signal path with no digital processing

• Operates internally at 24V for high headroom, wide gain range and quiet operation

• Power: 9V DC, center negative

• Current draw: 500mA

• Dimensions: 4.38" × 2.83" × 1.57"