Mad Mule Vertical - Neil Young's Weld and Rust tones in a box

Also available in horizontal format if you like that kind of thing.

Boutique pedal designed to capture Neil Young's live tone in a small metal box. Ok, you'll also need a lot of tube amp wattage, and big stage and some fat riffs, but this pedal will take you a step in the right direction.

This ingenious circuit combines both fuzz and overdrive to offer up a whole stack of different tone. The voltage starve control mixes things up a whole lot more. Hours of experimentation fun.

The kit is supplied with vertical-mount pots which have round shafts, so you'll need set-screw fitting knobs.

If you want the PCB without parts there's a link for that at the bottom of the page.

Partial kit: PCB, all board-mounted components, pots.

Full kit: As above, plus footswitch and appropriate daughterboard/components for your selected bypass type (see Downloads section for details of those), jack sockets, DC socket, battery snap, hook-up wire, LED.

Enclosure (pre-drilled) is available as an option with full kits, and will not take a battery. Knobs are not included.

Builds are only available with full kits including enclosure and vertical-mount pots. Please choose appropriate knobs.

Inspired by: Crazy Horse

Difficulty: Medium

PCB size: 50 x 36mm

Knobs required: 5

Enclosure: 1590B

Download the INSTRUCTION PDF

Product Code: MadMuleVert

Brand: Pedal Parts

Weight: 130.0g

Product Condition: New

Kit type* Ribbon connector?* Pre-built? (UK only.)*

£36.00 inc. tax

£30.00 ex. tax

? Tax based on United Kingdom.

Updating Order Details

Please do not refresh or navigate away from the page!

Customer Reviews

3 review(s) posted (write review)

Harshest drive pedal on the board (I like it)
"This pedal really lets you push the breakup to the limit, and gives you a fair bit of adjustment along the way. It is not going to give you the full spectrum of clean to full-on crumbly crackle, but I sit it beside an OD820 which gives me 0-5 on the clean-dirty scale and this pedal gives me the remaining 6-10 (0r 12)" RMG - 04 October 2021

Can't beat this for Dead Man and Weld sounds
"I've been on a hunt for Neil Young's distorted tone at lower volume levels for many years, and this is the best I could find yet. All I need is a delay and reverb with it, and I can get instant Dead Man, Weld and Rust Never Sleeps tones. I've tried a Greedtone Overdrive, Rockbox Red Dog (both of these are Red Llama-based), Les Lius and various Fuzz Face / overdrive combinations that have gotten me close in the past, but never as dead-on as this pedal does. I'd say if you're a Neil Young fan you must try this circuit, and I say this as someone who's been skeptical at first. The pedal does take a bit of getting used to though, with the 5 knobs that need to be aligned just so. I actually like it so much, I'm now considering buying the pedal it's based on (the original) as well." Razvan Cojocaru - 18 April 2021

Niel Young is a box!
"Quite and easy build, but fiddly to get in the box due to 5 nobs! The starve nob is a nifty feature, I prefer to call it rust as it perfectly mimics those live rust tones." Ozzie Tamperer - 29 March 2018