How the devil’s rejects of krautrock, featuring bassist Holger Czukay and guitarist Michael Karoli, fueled the future with their rhythmic, improvisational, textural sound and paved the way for punk, new wave, psych, and ambient music.
Following World War II, Germany was a broken nation: divided and conquered and, understandably, something of a cultural desert. By the mid 1960s, while most of the world was swept up in a wave of liberation and rock 'n' roll, Germans were tapping their toes to schlager—a type of music that was über-square, inoffensive, sentimental, and the embodiment of everything un-hip. German youth—born during the war, coming of age, ashamed of their country's past, and aware they were missing out—were pining for something more.
And more was about to come.
Dubbed “krautrock" by a smitten but condescending British press, the new German sound fused electronic music and avant-garde sensibilities with psychedelic pop and ambient textures and soundscapes. Bands like Neu!, Faust, Kraftwerk, Harmonia, and Amon Düül II were prolific and influential. Their innovations were eventually adopted by A-list tastemakers like David Bowie, Brian Eno, and many others.
But every scene has its outliers, and krautrock's was Can.
Can was not like other German bands. For starters, their music grooved. It was danceable, funky, and hypnotic. But more importantly, Can's music was guitar-centric. True, they experimented with ring modulators, oscillators, tape editing, filters, minimalism, and weirdness—as was de rigueur for a German band of their era—but guitar was central to their sound. Guitar gave them their edge. It planted their flag firmly in the rock camp, although Irmin Schmidt, Can's keyboardist, isn't so certain. “Sometimes we weren't sure we made rock," he says. “We made contemporary classical music, in a way."
Can were based in Cologne (in what was then West Germany) and operated in something of a vacuum. They had their own studio—which changed locations a few times—and spent countless hours jamming, rehearsing, defining, and refining their sound. Their music was flexible, improvisatory, and open-ended, but their approach was disciplined and focused. Their golden period—at least according to many critics and fans—was in the early '70s, when Damo Suzuki was their lead singer. (Suzuki left Can in 1973.)
In addition to Schmidt, Can's core members were guitarist Michael Karoli, drummer Jaki Liebezeit, and bassist/technical expert Holger Czukay. That lineup also included, at various times, Suzuki, Malcolm Mooney (vocals), Rosko Gee (bass), and Rebop Kwaku Baah (percussion), among others.
Can didn't sell millions of albums or even tour the U.S.—at least not in their original incarnation, which broke up in 1979. But their influence is massive. For example, John Lydon (PiL) and Mark E. Smith (the Fall) cite them as an inspiration. Radiohead and Unknown Mortal Orchestra covered their songs. The band Spoon took its name from one of Can's singles. Kanye West sampled them. And Flea and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers) flew to Germany to present them with an ECHO award (the German equivalent of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award).
Our focus here is the guitars of Can. We spoke with Irmin Schmidt, Damo Suzuki, Rosko Gee (Czukay's replacement on bass in 1977), and a few others to paint a picture of this legendary and important band, and its approach to the instrument.
The 1971 double album Tago Mago is Can's studio pinnacle. It's a showcase for both Holger Czukay—on bass and performing studio tape manipulations—and guitarist Michael Karoli, and includes the 18-minute trance-funk marvel “Halleluwah."
Castle of Sound
Can started in 1968 as a loose band of acquaintances. Czukay and Schmidt met in Cologne, where both were students of electronic music pioneer, composer, and influential maverick Karlheinz Stockhausen. “We studied with Stockhausen and later we worked with him in the electronic studio, which was part of our studies," Schmidt says. “A lot of important composers and figures of the new music came along and gave lessons, but the main thing was Stockhausen—that was highly interesting and, of course, we learned a lot—although neither Holger nor me had the intention to make music like Stockhausen."
Karoli knew Czukay from Switzerland. Karoli was a student at an exclusive private high school and Czukay was his teacher—although those roles were reversed when it came to learning about rock 'n' roll. Both returned to Germany following Karoli's graduation and Czukay's dismissal. “[I was fired] for being too, er, intriguing," he told the U.K.'s Fact magazine in 2009. “But it was no problem."
Liebezeit was a local jazz head. He knew Schmidt, but was looking to do something different, which was what Can was about. “Jaki was a jazz musician," Schmidt says. “He was drumming through the whole jazz history—from the beginning to free jazz—but Can didn't have a one-dimensional aesthetic basis. It brought together classical and modern contemporary classics, electronics, jazz, and the influences from America."
Can's first gig was at an art exhibit in Schloss Nörvenich, a small castle in a town not far from Cologne. It was also the members' initial introduction. “We had never all met and had never practiced, but we played there for the first time," Czukay told Jason Gross, the editor of Perfect Sound Forever, in a 1997 interview. “That became somehow very exciting. Wild and sometimes unorganized, but at least exciting."
That excitement bore weird, wonderful fruit. From the beginning, Can's music was a groove-centric synthesis of everything 20th century. Stockhausen, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, cutting-edge tape manipulation, various kinds of world music—anything and everything worked. Those disparate influences formed the band's collective musical subconscious.
“We didn't try to incorporate anything into anything," Schmidt says. “Holger and I were students of Stockhausen. We were fascinated by what, at that time, were totally new possibilities to create sounds electronically. But we did not try to transpose, say, the aesthetics of Stockhausen into rock music. We tried to invent our own. Each of us had different musical backgrounds. The aesthetics of Can were that we brought these influences from everything that was new in the 20th century and tried to make something our very own out of it."
During their early days, Can exclusively used amps made by the Farfisa company of Italy. Later, they built a wall of amplifiers—partially visible here—that they transported to concerts, although guitarist Michael Karoli also
played a Fender Twin. Photo courtesy of Spoon Records
After that first performance, Can took up residence at Schloss Nörvenich. There, they recorded their debut album, 1969's Monster Movie, which featured American vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and established the hallmarks that defined their sound. (Monster Movie also featured one of the band's best-known tunes, “You Doo Right," which was the result of a six-hour jam, edited down to 20 minutes for the album. Thin White Rope, the Geraldine Fibbers, and other edgy rock outfits have covered the song.)
The first of Can's hallmarks is what the band called “instant composition," which didn't mean jamming—although they did jam for hours at a time. It meant using disciplined jam sessions to discover ideas for future improvisations. They reworked those ideas with every performance, so their music was always evolving.
“We started from nothing and tried to find something," Schmidt says. “If there was something coming up, you felt it. If there was something really nice, we repeated it, maybe, but every time we repeated it, it became quite different. It was never like a written piece that we rehearsed."
That concept applied to concerts, too. “We never played the pieces live as they were on the records," Schmidt continues. “We totally invented the music on the spot. We used themes and melodies, but it might have happened that the singer was singing one song while Holger was playing a bass part from another piece and I was making sounds. Sometimes three or four pieces appeared in a new improvisation and disappeared."
“There was a structure or a basement for the pieces, but other stuff was improvised," says Damo Suzuki, the band's second and best-known lead singer. “I was stoned enough and I did some different things. We didn't talk about which songs we played. We never spoke about that stuff. Before the concerts, there was no meeting about the music. Every concert was like that—we didn't run over anything ahead of time."
Instant composition was still a defining principle 10 years on. “Spontaneity was the hallmark of this unique band," says Rosko Gee, who worked with Traffic, Johnny Nash, and many others. Gee played bass on three Can albums in the late '70s, after Czukay switched from bass to what could best be described as “samples." “Each individual had more than enough character to lead. There were no constraints on me and, of course, with such a drummer, it was easy to groove. If you could imagine taking a whole year to decide on the material for an album, then the process was indeed thorough."
In the studio, instant compositions morphed into edited pieces. Can had the luxury of a home studio, which was a rarity for the times. Although it was primitive, they had enough recording gear to cut all their early albums at Schloss Nörvenich. Czukay doubled as the band's sound engineer and editing was his responsibility.
“It was done with a razor blade, tape, and paste," Perfect Sound Forever's Gross says. “Compared to what you can do digitally, it was painstaking insane stuff that took a long time, but these guys were dedicated. It was the same thing that some of the early tape composers, like Stockhausen, did."
Can's setup was minimal, even by the standards of the late '60s and early '70s. “The first five records were recorded with two Revox stereo [reel-to-reel] machines," Schmidt says. “You could only do one overdub and then the quality would suffer too much. We recorded on one Revox, and then, if we wanted to do some overdubs, we overdubbed from one machine to the other. And that was it. There was no mixing. When we played, the mix had to be perfect. Everybody was responsible for the balance. What he heard in his earphones would have been already the final mix. It was a good education to listen to each other."
“It was quite primitive at the castle," Suzuki confirms. “We only had two tape recorders and not many channels. It was almost like one or two microphones for recording the whole thing. My vocals went straight to machine. Holger was playing and doing the technical things as well."
comfortable with the chicken-scratch rhythm of James Brown's Jimmy Nolen as he was with atonality and dissonance. His guitar of choice was a Fender Stratocaster. Some of his instruments were customized with an onboard ring modulator. Photo courtesy of Spoon Records
Can recorded the tracks that became the 1970 album Soundtracks at Schloss Nörvenich. Most of the music was taken from work they had done for films, which, Czukay is quoted saying in interviews, was how they paid their bills in the early years. Soundtracks was the first album to feature Suzuki. Then, in 1971, Can recorded what many consider their magnum opus, Tago Mago.
Can, Squeezed into One Can
Tago Mago captures everything great about Can. It's a double LP chock-full of lengthy, sprawling grooves, instant compositions, radical tape edits, moody soundscapes, and tongue-in-cheek weirdness. The first disc is especially groove-centric and features, as all of side two, the 18-minute-plus “Halleluwah." Disc two is more spacial and avant-garde—a testament to Czukay's early experiments with tape editing and using radio sounds.
Tago Mago is also a stellar example of Czukay's bass playing. He usually favored a short-scale Fender Mustang, although you sometimes see him pictured with a Fender Jazz, and he often performed minimal, repetitive, ostinato figures in the instrument's middle and upper registers. His style had evolved from his note-ier playing on Can's earlier records, and complimented drummer Liebezeit's busier, although similarly repetitive, style.
“It went together with Jaki's drumming," Schmidt says about Czukay's band-centered approach to bass. “Sometimes the bass drum had more of the function of the bass than the bass itself. Sometimes his bass playing was symphonic, like a huge bass figure in a classical piece. But sometimes he played it very sparse, very few notes, which he repeated throughout the piece. Sometimes Holger played a riff of three tones—it had no harmonic changes, nothing—and that was very important for Can, this kind of minimalism. It was the influence of James Brown."
Czukay also sometimes wore gloves when he played bass. “When we made film music, I once took him with me into the editing room," Schmidt says. “At the time, there was no computer, there was still tape, and they were working with these white gloves because this tape was very poisonous. He got fascinated. But it was more of a joke. It was just show, because it looked strange." Suzuki adds, “I don't know, maybe he didn't want to damage his fingers or something. Or maybe he wanted to eat sweets and have a coffee in the other hand. I don't know why he had white gloves on."
Can co-founder Irmin Schmidt questions whether the group even played rock, rather than contemporary classical music. Schmidt was a student of visionary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Photo by Tim Bugbee/Tinnitus Photography
Tago Mago is also a showcase for Karoli's guitar playing. Karoli gave Can their “rock" edge—at least according to most critics, which usually meant he used distortion and played minor pentatonics. But his playing was much more than that.
“Michael's sense of melody is totally different because, I think, it has to do with that his family comes from Romania," Suzuki says. “They were Gypsies—bohemians. They had their own music and their own life and things like that. He maybe got things from that area and that's why he had different melodies. Also, Can was a German band. The movement at that time, in the '60s and at the beginning of the '70s … most of the bands you categorize as krautrock music, they were provokating against the western culture. Everybody liked to make something different."
Similar to Czukay, Karoli was a minimalist and played repetitive figures with only minor variations, and he was fascinated with non-Western rhythms. “Michael's guitar playing was unique in its deliberate simplicity and directness," Gee says. “You can hear the strong Caribbean and Afro preferences in his strumming. He was a master of abstraction and his simple approach gave the band an effective width for divisive encounters."
He was also a master at harnessing feedback, which, according to Schmidt, was the natural bridge between Stockhausen and rock. “Jimi Hendrix had a big influence," he says. “That's why we used our instruments in an unconventional way. A lot of Michael's sounds are feedback. Sometimes onstage he was just in front of his loudspeakers and let the guitar sing by feedback, just by moving the guitar. Of course, that whole aesthetic has a lot to do with contemporary classical music."
Karoli played a Fender Strat through a Fender Twin—although he used a Farfisa amp in the band's early years—and had a Schaller fuzz pedal (a silicon Fuzz Face derivative) and a wah. “He had a ring modulator built into the guitar," Schmidt says. “I had an Alpha 77 synthesizer, which was custom-made for me. I could ring modulate the oscillator with the organ or the electric piano. Ring modulating was actually one of the basic tools of the early electronic Stockhausen music. We decided that it would be nice if the guitar could also be ring modulated."
Crescendo and Diminuendo
After Tago Mago, Can left Schloss Nörvenich and moved to an old cinema in Weilerswist, Germany, also near Cologne, where they set up Inner Space Studio. They recorded the albums Ege Bamyasi and Future Days. “Spoon," which was originally released as a single and also appeared as the final track on Ege Bamyasi, peaked at No. 6 on the German charts in early 1972. It became their closest thing to a hit, with the exception of “I Want More," which charted in the U.K. and landed them an appearance on the Top of the Pops in 1976.
At some point, they also abandoned their massive collection of Italian-made Farfisa amps and replaced them with a giant homemade wall of speakers. “That was our own construction," Schmidt says. “It was a huge wall behind us and was small speakers and big speakers that were randomly distributed on this wall. That was absolutely fantastic for Michael to create feedback, and it made a good sound. The only disadvantage was it was behind us and was sort of replacing the PA, so we had an enormous noise behind us. It was so beautifully made and made a very peculiar, beautiful sound for feedback and electronic sounds. But then the whole thing changed and we didn't use that wall anymore because it was very hard to transport. Later we had a very nice JBL PA, but for very big gigs we used the wall as a monitor."
Suzuki left Can in 1973, after recording Future Days, and the group carried on with different members providing vocals. They mimed their 1976 performance on Top of the Pops with Czukay on upright bass and a “fake" Karoli on guitar. “'I Want More' got into the charts," Schmidt says. “We were all on holiday. Holger and me were in Yugoslavia—in Croatia—with a whole bunch of others. Jaki was in Cologne. Virgin Records called and said, 'You got into the charts and you were asked to be on Top of the Pops. You have to come immediately.' Michael was in Kenya and we couldn't get hold of him. Virgin insisted that we play, so we did it without Michael. He was replaced by somebody who definitely looked different so that everybody realized that this guitar player wasn't him."
In 1977, Rosko Gee and Rebop Kwaku Baah from Traffic joined Can on bass and percussion. Czukay focused on making sounds using shortwave radios, tape recorders, and other devices. “Holger decided to do some more experimental electronic stuff and asked Rosko to join the band," Schmidt says. “Rosko played bass and Holger did weird sounds." It was something he had experimented with since the '60s and, in many ways, his pioneering work is considered a precursor to modern sampling.
“He was doing it even before Can," Gross says. “The first real solo album he did, [1969's] Canaxis 5, sampled a Vietnamese woman singing as part of the music. He told me that a huge influence on him was 'I Am the Walrus' by the Beatles. He was really entranced by the voices at the end of the song."
But Czukay's move from bass was the beginning of the end of the band. He left in late '77 and Can broke up two years later. They continued to work together on various projects and even reunited on occasion. Czukay worked on different things as well, collaborating with Jah Wobble (PiL), the Edge, and many others, and continued to explore. “He really dived into techno," Gross says. “I think that was something that was made for him, and in a lot of ways he predated it. He saw how it fit into what he had been doing for years and he just embraced the hell out of it. That just shows you he had this adventurous spirit, even in his later years."
Karoli died in 2001 at the age of 53. Liebezeit and Czukay both died in 2017 (at ages 78 and 79, respectively). But Can's legacy lives on and their influence only seems to increase with time.
“Every 10 years, young bands say, 'Our influence comes from Can,'" says Suzuki. “When punk began, some punk bands mentioned our influence, and then new wave comes and they mention us, and then trance comes, and now some hip-hop people are using our songs as well. It is strange, because we are already more than 45 years on and people still listen. It is something. But it is crazy, because it is a half century, man."
Essential Can
Get an earful of Can with these tunes that showcase guitarist Michael Karoli and bassist Holger Czukay.Bassist Holger Czukay applies the white-glove test to the The Old Grey Whistle Test in this 1975 live BBC-TV performance. Dig the intensity—and Michael Karoli's off-axis blues-rock soloing on his trusty Stratocaster.
The psychedelic side of Can leaps out in this tune from Tago Mago, the band's first album with Damo Suzuki. Michael Karoli drives the performance with his era-perfect fuzz solos and funky chording, and the band is framed by their Italian Farfisa amps.
“Hey you! You're losing your vitamin C," Damo Suzuki cries over the airy arrangement of, naturally, the song “Vitamin C," from Ege Bamyasi. Michael Karoli keeps it minimal on guitar while Holger Czukay exercises one of his trademark bass strategies: repeating a handful of notes.
At this point, Rosko Gee had replaced Holger Czukay on bass, allowing Czukay to create the tape manipulations in this live version of “Moonshake" from Future Days. The beauty and surprising accessibility of Can results from the band's belief in the power of the groove.
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The Gibson EH-185, introduced in 1939, was one of the company’s first electric guitars.
Before the Les Pauls and SGs, this aluminum-reinforced instrument was one of the famous brand’s first electric guitars.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of electric guitar in shaping American popular music over the last half-century. Its introduction was a revolution, changing the course of modern musical styles. Today, when we think of the guitars that started the revolution, we think of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul, guitars held against the body and fretted with the fingertips. But the real spark of this musical mutiny was the lap-steel guitar.
In the early 20th century, guitar music was moving out of the parlors of homes and into public spaces where folks could gather together and dance. Guitarists needed to project their sound far beyond where their wimpy little acoustic instruments could reach. Instrument manufacturers began experimenting with larger body sizes, metal construction, and resonators to increase volume.
Around this time, George Beauchamp began experimenting with electric guitar amplification. He settled on a design using two U-shaped magnets and a single coil of wire. Beauchamp was in business with Adolph Rickenbacker, and they decided to stick this new invention into a lap steel.
If we put on our 1930s glasses, this decision makes perfect sense. The most popular music at the time was a blend of Hawaiian and jazz styles made famous by virtuosos like Solomon “Sol” Hoʻopiʻi. Photos of Hoʻopiʻi with a metal-body resonator abound—one can imagine his relief at being handed an instrument that projected sound toward the audience via an amplifier, rather than back at his own head via resonator cones. Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were simply following the market.
As it turned out, the popularity of Hawaiian music gave way to swing, and electric lap steels didn’t exactly take the world by storm. But Beauchamp and Rickenbacker had proven the viability of this new technology, and other manufacturers followed suit. In 1937, Gibson created a pickup with magnets under the strings, rather than above like Beauchamp’s.
“When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y.”
The first page of Gibson’s “Electrical Instruments” section in the 1939 catalog features a glowing, full-page write-up of their top-of-the-line lap steel: the EH-185. “Everything about this new electric Hawaiian Guitar smacks of good showmanship,” effuses the copy. “It has smoothness, great sustaining power, and an easy flow of tone that builds up strongly and does not die out.”
Picking up the 1940 EH-185 at Fanny’s House of Music is about as close as one can get to traveling back in time to try a new one. It is just so clean, with barely any dings or even finish checking. Overall, this is a 9/10 piece, and it’s a joy to behold. Speaking of picking it up, the first thing you notice when you lift the EH-185 out of the case is its weight. This is a much heavier instrument than other similar-sized lap steels, owing to a length of thick metal between the body and the fretboard. The catalog calls it “Hyblum metal,” which may be a flowery trade name for an early aluminum alloy.
This 1940 EH-185 is heavier than other lap steels in its class, thanks to a length of metal between its fretboard and body.
Photo by Madison Thorn
There are numerous other fancy appointments on the EH-185 that Gibson didn’t offer on their lesser models. It’s made of highly figured maple, with diamond-shaped decorations on the back of the body and neck. The double binding is nearly a centimeter thick and gives the instrument a luxurious, expensive look.
Behind all these high-end attributes is a great-sounding guitar, thanks to that old pickup. It’s got three blades protruding through the bobbin for the unwound strings and one longer blade for the wound strings. When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y. It was just crying out for a little crunch and a bluesy touch. It’s kind of cool how such a pristine, high-end vintage instrument can be so well-suited for a sound that’s rough around the edges.
As far as electric guitars go, it doesn’t get much more vintage than this 1940 Gibson EH-185 Lap Steel. It reminds us of where the story of the electric guitar truly began. This EH-185 isn’t just a relic—it’s a testament to when the future of music was unfolding in real time. Plug it in, and you become part of the revolution.
Sources: Smithsonian, Vintage Guitar, Mozart Project, Gibson Pre-War, WIRED, Steel Guitar Forum, Vintaxe
J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume.
J Mascis is well known for his legendary feats of volume. Just check out a photo of his rig to see an intimidating wall of amps pointed directly at the Dinosaur Jr. leader’s head. And though his loudness permeates all that he does and has helped cement his reputation, there’s a lot more to his playing.
On this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re looking at each phase of the trio’s long career. How many pedals does J use to get his sound? What’s his best documented use of a flanger? How does his version of “Maggot Brain” (recorded with bassist Mike Watt) compare to Eddie Hazel’s? And were you as surprised as we were when Fender released a J Mascis signature Tele?
Editorial Director Ted Drozdowski’s current favorite noisemakers.
Premier Guitar’s edit staff shares their favorite fuzz units and how and when they use them.
Premier Guitar’s editors use their favorite fuzz pedals in countless ways. At any point during our waking hours, one of us could be turned on, plugged in, and fuzzed out—chasing a Sabbath riff, tracking menacing drone ambience, fire-branding a solo break with a psychedelic blast, or something else altogether more deranged. As any PGreader knows, there are nearly infinite paths to these destinations and almost as many fuzz boxes to travel with. Germanium, silicon, 2-transistor, 4-transistor, 6-transistor, octave, multimode, modern, and caveman-stupid: Almost all of these fuzz types are represented among our own faves, which are presented here as inspiration, and launch pads for your own rocket rides to the Fuzz-o-sphere.
Ted Drozdowski - Editorial Director
My favorite is my Burns Buzz, a stomp custom-made for me by Gary Kibler of Big Knob Pedals. Gary specializes in recreations of old circuits, and this Burns Buzzaround-inspired box has four germanium NOS transistors and sounds beautifully gnarly. It improves on the original, which Robert Fripp favored in early King Crimson, by adding a volume control. I went a little stir-crazy acquiring fuzzes during Covid lockdown and now have an embarrassing amount. My other current darlings are a SoloDallas Orbiter (which balances fuzz with core-signal clarity), a Joe Gore Duh (a no-nonsense, 1-knob dirt shoveler), and my Big Knob Tone Blender MkII 66, which taught me how smooth and creamy fuzz can be with carefully calibrated settings. These pedals allow me to cover all of my favorite fuzz sounds from the past 60 years. I do have one more secret weapon fuzz that only travels to the studio: an original Maestro FZ-1 that I picked up used for about $20 in the early ’90s. It’s banged up but functional, takes two 9V batteries, and is righteously juicy.
Nick Millevoi - Senior Editor
The two greatest fuzzes I’ve ever played are a Pigdog Tone Bender build and a Paul Trombetta Bone Machine. Both experiences will stick with me for decades to come. But creations by those two masters of fuzz come with a price tag high enough to keep my time with those pedals fleeting.
Instead, my favorite fuzz is an inexpensive, mass-produced pedal that hasn’t left my board since I reviewed and subsequently purchased it in 2021: the Electro-Harmonix Ripped Speaker, designed to emulate the distorted tones on ’50s and ’60s records that were created with broken or misused gear.
Retro inspiration is not all it has to offer though. The rip knob, which controls transistor bias, is the star of the show, interacting with the fuzz level to deliver everything from a smooth, mild fuzz to sputtery mayhem that can evoke a faulty channel strip or old tube combo that’s been set ablaze. I prefer to crank the rip knob and feed it to a phaser and slapback analog delay, which gives me a bit-crushed-like gnarliness. Pull back on the rip or add a boost in front of the pedal, and it has a more organic but still gated sound, which, for me, can be just the thing to set my sound apart in a more traditional setting.
For a cool $116, the Ripped Speaker, which seems to fly under most fuzz freaks’ radars, might be the special something that complements the rest of your board or just a tone you turn to on occasion. Either way, it’s a great deal.
Luke Ottenhof - Assistant Editor
You could give me the most powerful-sounding fuzz in the world, but if it was in a stupid-looking enclosure, I don’t know if I’d give it a second look. This is just how we operate: Vision is the sense we privilege most, even in matters of audio.
Luckily, the most seismic, monstrous fuzz I’ve ever heard also happens to come in a beautiful package. The Mile End Effects Kollaps, built by Justin Cober in Montreal, measures an elephantine 7 3/8" x 4 5/8" x 1 1/2", and its MuTron-meets-’60s-Soviet aesthetic matches the sounds its guts produce. The Kollaps is modeled after the nasty Univox Super-Fuzz circuit, and carries a few of that pedal’s hallmarks, including its use of germanium diodes and midrange boost control. Cober added a switchable Baxandall active EQ circuit, with up to 12 dB of boost and cut to both low and high frequencies. Coupled with the mid-boost toggle, this gives the Kollaps a shockingly broad range of tonality to play with.With the mids off, the Kollaps is jagged and ruthless, a deafening turbojet of upper mids and chest-vibrating lows that yanks me toward the darker, less commercially successful corners of ’90s doom and noise rock. Kicking on the EQ circuit and boosting the lows turns it titanic. With the balance (volume) and expand (gain) controls maxed, the Kollaps starts to live up to its name, crumbling into a thick, overextended chaos in a way more polite fuzz circuits rarely do.
My favorite Kollaps sounds occur when the mids are engaged, for an articulate, deeply textured fuzz sound that retains your attack. Playing with your guitar’s volume knob, you can coax a range of EQ profiles and take advantage of the upper- and lower-octave content in the fuzz. With guitar volume lower, you can access some unbelievably emotive and sensitive sounds that still teeter on the edge of chaos and violence. It’s a rich, volatile circuit that gets as close as I’ve heard to a sound and physical feeling I’d call “planet-destroying.”
Charles Saufley - Gear Editor
My first fuzz, A Sovtek Big Muff, remains tied for first place among many favorites. The pedal’s most famous virtues—corpulence and sustain—are among the reasons I treasure it. But the way the Sovtek pairs with a Rickenbacker 330 and Fender Jaguar, which were once my two primary guitars for performance and recording, made it invaluable in various projects for a long time. Neither the Ricky nor the Jag are sustain machines, but the wailing mass of theBig Muff makes their focused voices an asset—inspiring tight, concise fuzz phrases, hooks, and riffs as well as articulate chords.
A silicon Fuzzrite clone built by good pal Jesse Trbovich (long-time member ofKurt Vile’s Violators) runs second place to the Sovtek in terms of tenure, and is a very different fuzz. It’s a piercing, hyper-buzzy thing, but a perfect match for a squishy 1960s Fender Bassman head and 2x12 I adore. Perversely, I sometimes couple it with a Death By Audio Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload or Wattson FY-6 Shin-Ei Super-Fuzz clone. These tandems create chaos and chance, but sing loud and melodiously too—at least when I’m not intentionally bathing in feedback. The Jext Telez Buzz Tone, a clone of the mid-’60s Selmer circuit, is often my go-to now. It’s a low-gain affair compared to the other fuzzes here, and I use it in its even-lower-gain (and vintage-correct) 3-volt setting. It’s pretty noisy, but it is thick, dynamic, detailed, raunchy, and plenty trashy when the occasion demands it. It’s also a very cool overdrive when you back off the gas.Jason Shadrick - Managing Editor
I rarely need fuzz in my everyday gigs, but it's one of the most fun effects to explore when I'm noodling around. At a NAMM show a few years ago I plugged into Mythos' Argo and as soon as I hit a note my eyes lit up. The sound of the fuzz wasn't unwieldy or hard to manage. It gave me the illusion of control while the octave was the magic dust on top. I knew right then I wasn't leaving the show without one. After I spent some time with it, I became enamored by how much more the Argo can do.
It's inspired by the Prescription Electronics C.O.B. (Clean Octave Blend), so the control set is similar. The octave is always present in the signal path, but you can dial it out with the blend knob. The fuzz and volume knobs are self explanatory, but dialing the fuzz and octave knobs all the way down gives you a killer boost pedal. I find my favorite settings are at the extremes of the fuzz and blend ranges. Typically, both are either all the way up or all the way down. Another great experiment is to turn the fuzz down and then pair it with a separate drive pedal. And in octave mode, Argo is one of those pedals that inspires you to head directly for the neck pickup and stay above the 12th fret.