Bassists can sometimes be neglected when it comes to the weird and wacky side of effects. Holding down the low end is of utmost importance in an ensemble, so for many players, anything more than compression, chorus, and dirt can get in the way. But that’s not the case with Juan Alderete and Jonathan Hischke. Both bassists are top-notch sidemen who aren’t afraid to dive head first into sounds that are peculiar, if not downright obscene.
Alderete’s resume ranges from the hip-hop of Deltron 3030 to the twisted prog jams of Mars Volta. Hischke’s main gig these days is with experimental shoegazers Dot Hacker (though Hischke wasn’t allowed to borrow anything from bandmate Josh Klinghoffer’s seemingly endless pedal stash).
Premier Guitar had a challenge for Alderete and Hischke: Can you come up a more interesting, useful, and versatile set of 10 bass stompboxes than your fellow four-stringer? Both guys were up to the challenge, but first we set two ground rules: Once a pedal was picked, it was off-limits—no repeats between boards. Also, you must actually own each pedal you choose.
The following 20 pedals run the gamut from boring but essential to outlandishly geeky and specific. Alderete and Hischke recorded a short audio example for each device to give a hint of what it does. Be sure to tell us in comments section which player you feel emerged victorious.
Round 1
DOD FX32 Meatbox
Jonathan Hischke: I have to kick things off with the DOD FX32 Meatbox. I’ve had one since 1999, when I heard that it was obnoxious and awful. All the people who bought DOD pedals and played them through Gorilla amps in their bedroom didn’t understand what the Meatbox was about. They just thought it sounded like crap. I thought it probably had something interesting in it, and it turns out it’s this gigantic, enormous, earth-shattering, bowel-quaking harmonic synthesizer pedal. It’s very useful in a lot of contexts, especially ones that involve big PAs. It’s a really great dynamic tool because if you just want to make everything bigger than you can even imagine, you hit that one little pedal and it just brings the whole room down. I think I do damage to every piece of equipment when I use the Meatbox. [Laughs.]
DigiTech PDS 20/20
Juan Alderete: This next choice is purely strategic. In addition to the Meatbox, the DigiTech PDS 20/20 is the other pedal I have to credit Jonathan for turning me on to. Actually, in the Premier GuitarRig Rundown, I think that pedal got more comments than anything else. It’s a sampler that regenerates in the delay, so you can do some wild stuff. I used it a ton in Mars Volta, especially anyplace I get to sustain a note. I hit the multiplay, and it modulates it down or does weird skipping stuff. I also use it at the end of songs. There are a lot of Mars Volta bootlegs where between songs you hear this rotating [sings stuttering sound], and that’s it.Hischke: Damn. This is getting competitive.
Round 2
Sovtek Big Muff Fuzz
Alderete: I have to go with my Sovtek Big Muff fuzz. Tyler Bates, a really great film composer, gave it to me. I went to record with him and he said, “Use this.” I thought it was awesome, so he told me I should keep it. He loved it, but he could see how lit up I was about it. That was in the early ’90s, and I’ve used it a lot since then. It’s the best-sounding fuzz. We do all these fuzz pedal shootouts on my website, pedalsandeffects.com, and it’s still the number one fuzz pedal. I have several other Sovteks, but that is the one.
DOD FX10 Bi-FET Preamp
Hischke: I’m going with the DOD FX10 Bi-FET Preamp. I think it was made in the late ’80s or early ’90s. I don’t know its secret, but psychologically speaking, it does the thing that a lot of guitar players get out of a Klon preamp pedal. It’s a subtle boost with a tone knob. You can turn the tone down for a really deep but focused and dense tone. It cuts through, but under the mix. How would you describe it, Juan?Alderete: It was designed for acoustic guitars. It has such clarity, but it also has that sweet spot for the sound of fingers hitting the strings like on an acoustic guitar. That pick was very strategic.
Hischke: I also like it because it’s simple. It’s one of those pedals that you don’t have to think about. I have it on every board now in case I need it for a boost, or a lead where you put the treble up for more presence.
Alderete: And thank you for just driving the price up! [Laughs.]
Hischke: I know, I know. Maybe someone will make a clone. They’re really cheap now, so we better get on it. When is this going online? [Laughs.]
Round 3
Mantic Conceptual Vitriol
Hischke: This is a new discovery for me. It’s by a newer company out of Denver that’s doing some really interesting things. They told me the Mantic Conceptual Vitriol is a distortion based on an old DOD pedal, but souped up. It’s really beefy but clear, and very present and articulate. It can be as bassy as you want without getting muddy, with this layer of distortion that doesn’t get lost in the mix. I’ve used it a little bit live and for recording, and it sounds great in both circumstances, which isn’t always the case. It doesn’t have a blend because it doesn’t need it—the bass goes straight through it. I love it. I got it a few months ago, and it has already become an essential piece.
Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer
Alderete: My pick is the Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer—but it has to be an old one. I use them a ton. It’s on half of the Vato Negro Bumpers record. Anytime you hear those swooping synthesizer envelopes, it’s that. It has a huge sub octave. It’s a little noisy, but you can deal with it. The biggest sound I ever make with my bass is the combination of the Sovtek fuzz with the Micro Synth. When I use those two together, it’s just huge. Nothing else fits in the mix. [Laughs.] I take up the entire spectrum.Round 4
Boss CS-2
Alderete: I’m surprised it took me this long to get to it, but I’m picking the Boss CS-2 Compressor Sustainer.Hischke: Yeah, that’s your bread-and-butter pedal.
Alderete: I used it in Racer X, and it came from watching Billy Sheehan play. When you’re a kid and don’t really know how pedals work, you wonder why the harmonics just pop out of his bass. I could never get those harmonics to pop on my bass rig. Part of it is because his tone was so distorted. Somebody told me it was a compressor, so I tried a bunch of different ones, and I found the CS-2 just brought everything to life. I’d hit harmonics, and it would sound like Jaco. I didn’t want to distort my sound, but I wanted giant low end, so I always use it with my fretless. It really kicks every other effect up a notch. It’s like it grabs all the best frequencies and stuffs them into the next pedal. The Sovtek sounds better. The Micro Synth sounds better. Everything I use sounds better when this is on.
Tech 21 VT Bass
Hischke: My next pick is the Tech 21 VT Bass because I don’t want to carry around a gigantic 8x10 cabinet. I can have it on the board and dial in something I like so my clean DI sound is already warmed up by the time the sound guy gets it. If you don’t really like your rented or borrowed backline, this pedal can help quite a bit. I never feel good not having it around, like that blanket that the kid in Mr. Mom carries around. It’s my wooby.Round 5
EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
Hischke: I’m in love with a few products from EarthQuaker Devices, but the Dispatch Master is the one I use the most. It sounds great in a lot of contexts. I don’t use a whole lot of delay or reverb. I mean, I use them, but I don’t build an entire sound around them. The Dispatch Master doesn’t crap out or sound digital. Plus, it’s small and relatively cheap.
Endangered Audio Research Analog Delay AD4096
Alderete: The Endangered Audio Research Analog Delay AD4096 is probably my favorite delay. It doesn’t have the modeling functionality of a lot of the newer delays, but it’s just the best analog delay. The expand button that brings out the feedback is just indispensible. Every time it’s at my feet, I’m inspired to do something with it. A lot of other delays suck up the low end somehow, but this one doesn’t. I just wish he had given it a name [laughs]. I don’t think some of these pedal builders realize how important a name is.Round 6
EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Reaper
Alderete: There are so many reasons why the EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Reaper is a great pedal. First, you have two fuzzes in one box, which is always awesome. It also has this magic octave button in the middle. I use that octave alone quite a bit too—it was smart of them to allow it to be used separately from the fuzzes. I like running both fuzzes at the same time and then hitting that octave. There’s nothing that sounds like it. It’s essential to today’s small-pedalboard world, since real estate is so priceless and it costs so much to ship gear.
TC Electronic PolyTune Mini
Hischke: Speaking of usefulness in a tiny package, my next pick is the TC Electronic PolyTune Mini. This is the most useful pedal of them all. You need a tuner, but why have a big one? This frees up more space for other pedals. Plus, it’s a great tuner with a nice, bright readout.Round 7
Electro-Harmonix Superego Synth Engine
Hischke: The Electro-Harmonix Superego Synth Engine is relatively new. It’s a takeoff on the Freeze pedal, which was a very useful idea. The glissando and portamento functions are the most interesting to me. I used it a lot on the new Dot Hacker record. It’s another one I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of. I love it when a piece of equipment gives you the ability to do something that was previously impossible. I wish more people were doing that.
Red Panda Particle Granular Delay/Pitch Shifter Pedal
Alderete: Damn. That was a good one. My next pick is the Red Panda Particle. I wouldn’t have heard about it as soon as I did if it wasn’t for Josh [Klinghoffer], who plays with Jonathan in Dot Hacker. I always have a hard time explaining it because I don’t know if I’ve fully wrapped my head around how I’m going to use it. I just know that I always try to have it on my board. I like having the bass line going, and then hitting something that takes you out of that world and puts you into some weird computer-generated world. It’s noisy and wild. Basically, it grabs a particle of your sound and flips it inside the pedal. You can control it, but it can also do its random thing. If The Edge gets a hold of this and puts a riff to it, everyone in the world will own one.Hischke: I think the only way you can do some of what that pedal does is through a computer program. I think they call it granular sampling. They’ve probably had that for a long time in the computer world, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in a pedal.
Round 8
Boss VB-2 Vibrato
Alderete: I do like the Chase Bliss Audio Warped Vinyl, but the Boss VB-2 Vibrato is just home for me. Unfortunately, it’s pretty expensive. It’s just the best vibrato ever made. I guess you can emulate that sound, but I don’t think that chip exists anymore. Maybe in the modeling world they will get close.
DigiTech TimeBender
Hischke: I think of digital delays as samplers with parameters you can mess with. That’s more interesting to me than an echo pedal. I use them for modern, glitched-out stuff. The DigiTech TimeBender came out maybe five years ago. There are some things that make it short of perfect. I’d like to talk to DigiTech to see if they can do another version of it. It does all of the things normal delays do, plus all this wild shit. It’s more of studio tool for me, but there are things I’ve done in Broken Bells and Dot Hacker that would be impossible without that pedal. Unfortunately, mine is broken right now, and I need to get another one.Round 9
DigiTech XP300 Space Station
Hischke: I’m going to pick the DigiTech XP300 Space Station for pure weirdness. There’s nothing normal about it. It does things that have yet to be replicated. I’ll hear things on records and immediately think “That has to be the Space Station.” It has 40 sounds in it, and 15 to 20 of them are solid gold. I’ll always have that around for weird stuff.
Dunlop 105Q Bass Wah
Alderete: I have to pick the Dunlop 105Q Bass Wah. It’s just the best filtering wah for bass. It’s all over the Vato Negro record and a lot of Mars Volta stuff.Round 10
Line 6 DL4
Alderete: I use the Line 6 DL4 so much. My favorite features are the reverse function and the ability to drop the sound an octave. When Mars Volta would end a song, I’d kick on the octave drop just to make the speakers rattle. Hit something with the Meatbox, and then sample it and drop it an octave on the DL4—there’s nothing more low-end and subby.
Aguilar Octamizer
Hischke: I love the Aguilar Octamizer. I feel it’s more versatile than the Boss OC-2, since you have tone control over both the dry and effected signal, plus it tracks really well. I know a lot of people are attracted to the glitchyness and the warmth of the Boss, and that’s cool. But this one is so clear, dense, and perfect. It almost sounds like a different instrument.
Effects Bakery MECHA-PAN BAKERY Series MECHA-BAGEL OVERDRIVE
Konnichiwa, guitar lovers! 🎸✨
Are you ready to add some sweetness to your pedalboard? Let’s dive into the adorable world of the Effects Bakery Mecha-Pan Overdrive, part of the super kawaii Mecha-Pan Bakery Series!
🍩 Sweet Treats for Your Ears! 🍩
The Mecha-Pan Overdrive is like a delicious bagel for your guitar tone, but it’s been upgraded to a new level of cuteness and functionality!
Effects Bakery has taken their popular Bagel OverDrive and given it a magical makeover. Imagine your favorite overdrive sound but with more elegance and warmth – it’s like hugging a fluffy cat while playing your guitar!
It would have been easy for Wampler to simply make a Mostortion clone and call it a day, but they added some unique twists to the Mofetta pedal. While the original Mostortion had a MOSFET-based op amp, it actually used clipping diodes to create its overdrive. The Mofetta is a fairly accurate replica and includes that circuitry, but also has a toggle switch for texture, which lets you choose between the original-style diode-based clipping in the down position and multi-cascaded MOSFET gain stages in the up position.
Luscious Low Gain and Meaty Mid-Gain
The Mofetta’s control panel is very straightforward and conventional with knobs for bass, mids, treble, level, and gain. The original Mostortion was revered for its low-gain tone and is now popular among Nashville session guitarists. Wampler’s tribute captures that edge-of-breakup vibe perfectly. I enjoyed using the pedal with the gain on the lower side, around 9 o’clock, where I heard and felt slight compression that gave single notes a smooth and silky feel. I particularly enjoyed the tone-thickening the Mofetta lent to my Ernie Ball Music Man Axis Sport’s split-coil sound as I played pop melodies and rootsy, triadic rhythm guitar figures. The Mofetta has expansive headroom, and as a result there’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much. Even turning the gain all the way off yields a pleasing volume bump that would work well in a clean boost setting.
There’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much.
Switching the texture switch up engages the MOSFET section, introducing cascading gain stages that elevate the heat and add flavor the original Mostortion didn’t really offer. Classic rock and early metal are readily available via the MOSFET setting. If you need to stretch out to modern metal sounds, the Mofetta probably isn’t the pedal for you. Again, the original Mostortion was, first and foremost, a low-to-mid-gain affair, so unless you’re using it as a boost with a high-gain amp, the Mofetta is not really a vehicle for extreme sounds.
One of the Mofetta’s real treats is its responsiveness. Even at higher gain settings the Mofetta is very touch sensitive. You can tap into a wide range of dynamic shading just by varying the strength of your pick attack. I enjoyed playing fast, ascending scalar passages, picking with a medium attack then really slamming it hard when I hit a high climactic note, to get the guitar to really scream.
The Verdict
Wampler is a reliably great builder who creates pedals with a purpose. I own two of his pedals, the Dual Fusion and the Pinnacle, and both are really exceptional units. The Mofetta captures the essence of the Mostortion and makes it available at an accessible price. But even if you’ve never heard or played an original Mostortion, you’ll appreciate the truly versatile EQ, touch sensitivity, and the bonus texture switch, which expands the Mofetta’s range into more aggressive spaces. The wealth of dirt boxes on the market today can make a player jaded. But Wampler pushed into a relatively unique, satisfying, and interesting place with the Mofetta.
Filthy, saturated fuzz is a glorious thing, whether it’s the writ-large solos of Big Brother and the Holding Company’s live “Ball and Chain,” the soaring feedback and pure crush of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” or the sandblasted rhythm textures of Queens of the Stone Age’s “Paper Machete.” It’s also a Wayback Machine. Step on a fuzz pedal and your tone is transported to the ’60s or early ’70s, which, when it comes to classic guitar sounds, is not a bad place to be.
Catalinbread’s StarCrash is from their new ’70s collection, so the company is laying its Six Million Dollar Man trading cards on the table—upping the ante on traditional fuzz with more controls and, according to the company’s website, a little more volume than the average fuzz pedal, while still staying in the traditional Fuzz Face lane.
The Howler’s Viscera
Arbiter Electronics made the first Fuzz Face in 1966. The StarCrash is inspired by that 2-transistor pedal, but benefits from evolution, as did almost all fuzz pedals in the ’70s, when the standard shifted from germanium to silicon circuitry to improve the consistency of the effect’s performance. The downside is that germanium is gnarlier to some ears, and silicon transistors don’t respond as well to adjustments made via a guitar’s volume control.
While Fuzz Faces have only two knobs, volume and fuzz, the silicon StarCrash has three: volume, bias, and low-cut. Catalinbread’s website explains: “We got rid of that goofy fuzz knob. We know that 95 percent of all players run it dimed, and the remaining 5 percent use their guitar’s volume knob to rein it in.”
I suspect there are plenty of players who, like me, do adjust the fuzz control on their pedals, but the most important thing is that the core fuzz sound here is excellent—bristly and snarling, with a far girthier tone than my reissue Fuzz Face. It’s also, with the bias and low-cut controls, far more flexible. The low-cut control allows you to range from a traditional, comparatively thinner Fuzz Face sound (past noon and further) to the StarCrash’s authentic, beefier voice (noon and lower). Essentially, it cuts bass frequencies from 40 Hz to 500 Hz, resulting in an aural menu that runs from lush and lowdown to buzzy and slicing. And the bias control is a direct route to the spitty, fragmented, so-called Velcro-sound that’s become a staple of the stoner-rock/Jack White school of tone. The company calls this dial a “dying battery simulator,” and it starves the second transistor to achieve that effect.
Sweet Song of the Tribbles
Playing with the StarCrash is a lot of fun. I ran it through a pair of Carr amps in stereo, adding some delay and reverb to mood, and used a variety of single-coil- and humbucker-outfitted guitars. While both pickup types interacted well with the pedal, the humbuckers were most pleasing to my ears with the bias cranked to about 2 o’clock or higher, since the ’buckers higher output allowed me to let notes sustain longer before sputtering out. Keeping the low-cut filter at 9 o’clock or lower also helped sustain and depth in the Velcro-fuzz zone, while letting more of the instruments’ natural voices come through, of course.
With the low-cut filter turned up full and the bias at 10 o’clock, I got the StarCrash to be the perfect doppelganger of my Hendrix reissue Fuzz Face. But that’s such a small part of the pedal’s overall tone profile. It was more fun to roll off just a bit of bass and set the bias knob to about 2 or 3 o’clock. Around these settings, the sound is huge and grinding, and yet barre chords hold their character while playing rhythm, and single-note runs, especially on the low strings, are a filthy delight, with just the right schmear of buttery sustain plus a hint of decay lurking behind every note. It’s such a ripe tone—the sonic equivalent of a delicious, stinky cheese—that I could hang with it all day.
Regarding Catalinbread’s claims about the volume control? Yes, it gets very loud without losing the essence of the notes or chords you’re playing, or the character of the fuzz, which is a distinct advantage when you’re in a band and need to stand out. And it’s a tad louder than my Fuzz Face but doesn’t really bark up to the level of most Tone Bender or Buzzaround clones I’ve heard. In my experience, these germanium-chipped critters of similar vintage can practically slam you through the wall when their volume levels are cranked.
The Verdict
Catalinbread’s StarCrash—with its sturdy enclosure, smooth on/off switch and easy-to-manipulate dials—can compete with any Fuzz Face variant in both price and performance, scoring high points on the latter count. The bias and low-cut dials provide access to a wider-than-usual variety of fuzz tones, and are especially delightful for long, playful solos dappled with gristle, flutter, and sustain. Kudos to Catalinbread for making this pedal not just a reflection of the past, but an improvement on it.
Catalinbread Starcrash 70 Fuzz Pedal - Starcrash 70 Collection
The release of a newRed Panda pedal is something to be celebrated. Each of the company’s devices lets us crack into our signal chains and tweak its inner properties in unique, forward-thinking ways, encouraging us to be daring, create something new, and think about sound differently. In essence, they take us to the sonic frontier, where the most intrepid among us seek thrills.
Last January, I got my first glimpse of the Radius at NAMM and knew that Red Panda mastermind Curt Malouin had, once again, concocted something fresh. The pedal offers ring modulation and frequency shifting with pitch tracking and an LFO, and I heard classic ring-mod tones as the jumping off point for oodles of bold sounds generated by envelope and waveform-controlled modulation and interaction. I had to get my hands on one.
Enjoy the Process
I’ve heard some musicians talk about how the functionality of Red Panda’s pedals are deep to a point that they can be hard to follow. If that’s the case, it’s by design, simply because each Red Panda device opens access to an untrodden path. As such, it can feel heady to get into the details of the Radius, which blends between ring modulation and frequency shifting, offering control of the balance and shift ratios of the upper and lower sidebands to create effects including phasing, tremolo, and far less-natural sounds.
As complex as that all might seem, Red Panda’s pedals always make it easy to strip the controls down to their most essential form. The firmest ground for a guitarist to stand with the Radius is a simple ring-mod sound. To get that, I selected the ring mod function, turned off the modulation section by zeroing the rate and amount knobs, kept the shift switch off and the range switch on its lowest setting. With the mix at noon and the frequency knob cranked, I found my sound.
From there, by lowering the frequency range, the Radius will yield percussive tremolo tones, and the track knob helped me dial that in before opening up a host of phaser sounds below noon. By going the other direction and kicking the rate switch into its higher setting, a world of ring-mod tweaking opens up. There are some uniquely warped effects in these higher settings that include dial-up modem sounds and lo-fi dial tones. Exploring the ring mod/frequency shift knob widens the possibilities further to high-pitched, filtered white noise and glitchy digital artifacts at its extremes.
There are wild, active sounds within each knob movement on the Radius, and the modulation section naturally brings those to life in more ways than a simple knob tweak ever could, delivering four LFO waveforms, a step modulator, two x-mod waveforms, and an envelope follower. It’s within these settings that I found rayguns, sirens, Shepard tones, and futuristic sounds that were even harder to describe.
It’s easy to imagine the Radius at the forefront of sonic experiments, where it would be right at home. But this pedal could easily be a studio device when applied in low doses to give a track something special that pops. The possible applications go way beyond guitars.
The Verdict
The Radius isn’t easy to plug and play, but it’s also not hard to use if you keep an open mind. That’s necessary, too: The Radius is not for guitar players who prefer to stay grounded; this pedal is for sonic-stargazers and producers.
I enjoyed pairing the Radius with various guitar instruments—12-string, baritone, bass—and it kept getting me more and more excited about sonic experimentation. That feeling is a big part of what’s special about this pedal. It’s so open-ended and controllable, continuing to reveal more of its capabilities with use. Once you feel like you’ve gotten something down, there are often more sounds to explore, whether that’s putting a new instrument or pedal next to it or exploring the Radius’ stereo, MIDI, or expression-pedal functionality. Like many great instruments, it only takes a few minutes to get started, but it could keep you exploring for years.
Red Panda Radius Ring Modulator/Frequency Shifter Pedal
