Call me old fashioned but I really don’t think a distortion or boost pedal should cost over $50.

Consider the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face who’s circuit is below. I will tell you right now I would be surprised if there were $1.00 worth of parts in this pedal. The circuit is about as basic as it gets. Your grandfather will learn how to design this type of circuit within the first week of the electronic classes at the town senior center.

It’s kind of funny that they charge $100 for this pedal. There was a time when many guitarists didn’t like this pedal. The cork sniffers of the day hated all things transistor claiming it was full of odd order harmonics.

There are lots of great pedals near or under the $50 mark. The Boss DS-1 distortion, the SD1 super overdrive, the Digitech Bad Monkey etc… I think this is a fair price for a dirt box.

There are many stomp boxes with fairly complex circuits like the EHX Metal Muff and the Boss MT-2 Metal Zone. The circuits in these pedals typically have op amp based circuits and fairly complex tone circuitry. I can justify a little more $ for these distortion pedals as well.