It’s pleasing when a device with a little braggadocio in its name lives up to its claim. EarthQuaker’s new Special Cranker is, indeed, special. It’s a warm, ultra-touch-responsive medium-gain overdrive that EQD designed to sound and respond like you’ve added another tube to your amp’s preamp section. The result: The character of your core tone remains vital and intact, but bristles with articulate, controlled snarl and sustain. And if that’s not special enough, there’s also a toggle that lets you switch between germanium and silicon diodes, for two classic flavors of fur.
Recognizing the Speaker
The Special Cranker is an update on the Akron-based company’s out-of-production Speaker Cranker, which had just one knob, labeled “more.” The Special Cranker literally offers more—control, that is, with the addition of an output level control and tone dial that helps shape some of the extra gain on tap, among other things.
The more dial cranks the gain by adjusting the bias of the transistor, and it can be a little noisy when you twist it, but EarthQuaker says that’s normal for this circuit. The level adjusts the output signal and can get pretty outrageous—it seems to double the volume when fully cranked in silicon mode. Unity, for my Zuzu 6-string with coil-splitting, was between 9 and 10 o’clock, so there’s lots of headroom. The tone wrangles treble: more to the right and less to the left, naturally. I found flat response at about 2 o’clock with the Zuzu, which produces Les Paul-like tones in humbucking mode and sounds like a Stratocaster in single-coil settings.
Your core tone remains vital and intact, but bristles with articulate, controlled snarl and sustain.
The circuit board inside is clean, elegantly executed, and home to the pedal’s two flavors of diode. The original Speaker Cranker utilized a single asymmetrical clipping silicon diode. Typically, asymmetrical diode clipping sounds less compressed and clearer than symmetrical clipping. Special Cranker’s switchable silicon and germanium clipping sections, however, enable you to experience two very different flavors of asymmetrical clipping. Germanium clipping, of course, harkens back to the earliest days of fuzz. It is, typically, warmer, darker, and produces less gain than silicon.
Cranking the Cranker
Plugged into a Carr Telstar amp, the Special Cranker is a little demon—especially in silicon mode. With level at noon, more at 2 to 3 o’clock, and tone also at 2 to 3 o’clock, humbuckers produce warm sounds that sustained elegantly, living up to EarthQuaker’s promise of lucid tones. That clarity helps chords flower, while single notes took on a sinuous character and hung in the air—ripe, full, and singing. It was much the same with single-coils, albeit brattier and more snarling. And while the output is aggressive and quite loud, it’s still warmly sculpted and manageable—even with the gain and level turned to maximum.
I’m a germanium fan, but to my surprise I fell hard for Special Cranker’s silicon side. I love gnarly, high-gain germanium tones, but with its medium-gain ambitions, the Special Cranker sounds grittily sophisticated rather than head-rattling. And where the germanium-driven tone had less low-mid content than I’m used to, which was a tad disappointing, the silicon side filled in and fattened the low mids—which I hadn’t expected—creating a robust, blooming sound I adored. The silicon side also made my guitar brighter, bolder, and well-defined, even with extended chords. The rangy tone control is valuable for fine tuning the extra gain and high end (though I was also very happy simply setting it flat). It’s also very helpful when searching for more brightness on the darker, quieter germanium diode.
The Verdict
The Special Cranker is an exceptional medium-gain overdrive with tube-like character, offering plenty of easy-to-control, warm distortion and boost. The germanium side may be too tame for some players. But the silicon side has a full, fat voice that is perfectly responsive to picking technique and preserves the integrity of complex chords. That alone makes the $99 price a bargain. I’d love to see a setting for blending the silicon and germanium diodes, even though that would bump the price. But players looking for a more articulate and colorful alternative to TS and Klon tones should crank up the Special Cranker and tilt an ear.
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Over the decades with Hüsker Dü, Sugar, and solo, Bob Mould has earned a reputation for visceral performances.
Mould’s album landed in a world of cloistered listeners, so he never knew how it impacted people. For a musician from punk and hardcore scenes, it was a disquieting experience. So when he got back out on the road in 2023 and 2024, playing solo electric sets, the former Hüsker Dü and Sugar frontman was determined to reconnect with his listeners. After each show, he’d hang out at the merch table and talk. Some people wanted their records or shirts signed, some wanted a picture. Others shared dark stories and secret experiences connected to Mould’s work. It humbled and moved him. “I’m grateful for all of it,” he says.
These are the in-person viscera of a group of people connecting on shared interests, versus, says Mould, “‘I gotta clean the house today, so I’m going to put on my clean the house playlist that a computer designed for me.” “Everything has become so digitized,” he laments. “I grew up where music was religion, it was life, it was essential. When people come to shows, and there’s an atmosphere, there’s volume, there’s spilled drinks and sweat–that’s what music ritual is supposed to be.”
His experiences on tour after the pandemic heartened Mould, but they also gave him traction on new ideas and direction for a new record. He returned to the simple, dirty guitar-pop music that spiked his heart rate when he was young: the Ramones’ stupid-simple pop-punk ecstasy, New York Dolls’ sharp-edged playfulness, Pete Townshend’s epic, chest-rattling guitar theatrics. In other words, the sort of snotty, poppy, wide-open rock we heard and loved on Hüsker Dü’s Flip Your Wig and Candy Apple Grey.
Mould’s time on the road playing solo in 2023 sparked the idea for Here We Go Crazy.
Photo by Ryan Bakerink
Mould started writing new songs in the vein of his original childhood heroes, working them into those electric solo sets in 2023 and 2024. Working with those restraints—guitar chords and vocal melodies—put Mould on track to make Here We Go Crazy, his new, 15th solo record.
Lead single and opener “Here We Go Crazy” is a scene-setting piece of fuzzy ’90s alt-rock, bookended by the fierce pounding of “Neanderthal.” “When Your Heart is Broken” is a standout, with its bubblegum chorus melody and rumbling, tense, Who-style holding pattern before one of the album’s only solos. Ditto “Sharp Little Pieces,” with perhaps the record’s chewiest, darkest guitar sounds.
“It’s a very familiar-sounding record,” he continues. “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould,’ and a lot of that was [influenced by] spending time with the audience again, putting new stuff into the set alongside the songbook material, going out to the table after the show and getting reactions from people. That sort of steered me towards a very simple, energetic, guitar-driven pop record.”
Of his new album, Mould says, “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould.’”
Mould recorded the LP in Chicago with longtime bandmates Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster at the late, great Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio. Then Mould retreated to San Francisco to finish the record, chipping away at vocals and extra guitar pieces. He mostly resisted the pull of “non-guitar ornamentation”: “It’s a rhythm guitar record with a couple leads and a Minimoog,” he says. “It’s sort of cool to not have a 64-crayon set every time.”
Mould relied on his favorite, now-signature late-’80s Fender Strat Plus, which sat out on a runway at O’Hare in 20-below cold for three hours and needed a few days to get back in fighting shape. In the studio, he ran the Strat into his signature Tym Guitars Sky Patch, a take on the MXR Distortion+, then onto a Radial JD7. The Radial split his signal and sent it to three combo amps: a Fender Hot Rod DeVille, a Fender ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb reissue, and a Blackstar Artisan 30, each with a mic on it. The result is a brighter record that Mould says leaves more room for the bass and kick drum. “If you listen to this record against Patch the Sky, for instance, it’s night and day,” he says. “It’s snug.”
Mould explains that the record unfolds over three acts. Tracks one through five comprise the first episode, crackling with uncertainty and conflict. The second, spread over songs six to eight, contrasts feelings of openness with tight, claustrophobic tension. Here, there are dead ends, addictions, and frigid realities. But after “Sharp Little Pieces,” the album turns its corner, barreling toward the home stretch in a fury of optimism and determination. “These last three [songs] should give us more hope,” says Mould. “They should talk about unconditional love.”
The record closes on the ballad “Your Side,” which starts gentle and ends in a rush of smashed chords and cymbals, undoubtedly one of the most invigorating segments. “The world is going down in flames, I wanna be by your side/We can find a quiet place, it doesn’t need to be the Albert Hall,” Mould starts. It’s a beautiful portrait of love, aging, and the passage of time.
Bob Mould's Gear
Mould paired his trusty Fender Strat Plus with a trio of smaller combo amps to carve out a more mid-focused rhythm-guitar sound in the studio.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- Late 1980s Fender American Standard Strat Plus (multiple)
Amps
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille
- Blackstar Artisan Series amps
- Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- Tym Guitars Sky Patch
- TC Electronic Flashback
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze
- Wampler Ego
- Universal Audio 1176
- Radial JD7
Strings, Picks, & Power Supply
- D'Addario NYXLs (.011-.046)
- Dunlop .46 mm and .60 mm picks
- Voodoo Labs power supply
And though the record ends on this palette of tenderness and connection, the cycle is likely to start all over again. Mould understands this; even though he knows he’s basking in act three at the moment, acts one and two will come along again, and again. Thankfully, he’s figured out how to weather the changes.
“When things are good, enjoy them,” he says. “When things are tough, do the work and get out of it, somehow.”
- YouTube
Many of the tracks on Here We Go Crazy were road-tested by Mould during solo sets. Here, accompanied only by his trusty Fender Strat, he belts “Breathing Room.”
Reader: Federico Novelli
Hometown: Genoa, Italy
Guitar: The Italian Hybrid
Reader Federico Novelli constructed this hybrid guitar from three layers of pine, courtesy of some old shelves he had laying around.
A few years ago, at the beginning of Covid, an idea for a new guitar flashed through my mind. It was a semi-acoustic model with both magnetic and piezo pickups that were mounted on a soundboard that could resonate. It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many power tools and using old solid-wood shelves I had available.
I have been playing guitar for 50 years, and I also dabble in luthiery for fun. I have owned a classical guitar, an acoustic guitar, and a Stratocaster, but a jazz guitar was missing from the list. I wanted something that would have more versatility, so the idea of a hybrid semi-acoustic guitar was born.
I started to sketch something on computer-aided design (CAD) software, thinking of a hollowbody design without a center block or sides that needed to be hot-worked with a bending machine. I thought of a construction made of three layers of solid pine wood, individually worked and then glued together in layers, with a single-cutaway body and a glued-in neck.
For the soundboard and back, I used a piece of ash and hand-cut it with a Japanese saw to the proper thickness, so I had two sheets to fit together. Next, I sanded the soundboard and bottom using two striker profiles as sleds and an aluminum box covered in sandpaper to achieve a uniform 3 mm thickness. A huge amount of work, but it didn't cost anything.
“It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many electric tools and out of old solid-wood shelves I had available.”
The soundboard has simplified X-bracing, a soundhole with a rosewood edge profile, and an acoustic-style rosewood bridge. For the neck, I used a piece of old furniture with straight grain, shaped it to a Les Paul profile, and added a single-action truss rod. The only new purchase: a cheap Chinese rosewood fretboard.
Then, there was lots of sanding. I worked up to 400-grit, added filler, primer, and transparent nitro varnish, worked the sandpaper up to 1,500-grit, and finally polished.
Our reader and his “Italian job.”
For electronics, I used a Tonerider alnico 2 humbucker pickup and a piezo undersaddle pickup, combined with a modified Shadow preamp that also includes a magnetic pickup input, so you can mix the two sources on a single output. I also installed a bypass switch for power on/off and a direct passive output.
I have to say that I am proud and moderately satisfied both aesthetically and with the sounds it produces, which range from jazz to acoustic and even gypsy jazz. However, I think I will replace the electronics and piezo with Fishman hardware in the future.
