JHS Crayon

JHS Crayon is based on the piercing guitar tone that came through the speakers on the Beatles “Revolution 1”. This is one of the most famous uses of plugging a guitar straight into a mixing console and creating the now referred to as “Direct-In Distortion. That tone is one of the most recognizable and unique guitar tones of the last 60 years and was one of the inspirations for the JHS Colour Box that we released in May of 2014.

Many players over the last few years have expressed their interest in a unit that is like the Colour Box but more streamlined for the one basic application of a dirt box. No XLR function, no 3 band EQ – Just the dirt in an easy to use format for guitarists – So JHS decided to pull the Crayon out of the Colour Box.

The Crayon has controls for Master, Pre-Vol, Tilt, and a Hi-Pass toggle. The Master volume controls the overall volume of the unit, while the Pre-Vol acts as a gain control to go from a gritty preamp drive to over-the-top gated fuzz. These controls work together to create a ton of colorful tones that are extremely useful. The Tilt control is an active EQ where when set at 12 o’clock you have a flat EQ, while turning clockwise boosts highs and cuts bass, and turning counterclockwise boosts bass and cuts highs. This gives the Crayon the ability to be tailored to any rig for bass or guitar. The Hi-Pass toggle cuts your low end with a flick of the switch for the ability to cut through the mix or get lo-fi sounds. There is a dip switch on the right side of the pedal to choose either 200Hz or 750Hz cut for the Hi-Pass.

JHS Crayon demo video