Though it feels sacrilegious to say, sometimes you need a break from fuzz—a chance to rest the ears, to bathe in the overtones of a little reverb, or just listen to the birds sing. That’s the place I was in when the Pigtronix Star Eater arrived. An hour later I wasn’t nearly as interested in the birds anymore.
It’s hard to pinpoint a classic fuzz touchstone that’s useful to describe the Star Eater. At many settings it has a lot of the chainsaw grind and piercing focus of a Shin-Ei Super Fuzz, but it’s thicker. At other settings it has some of the mass and wallop of a Rams Head Big Muff, but it’s less woofy and thick. Elsewhere you hear echoes of the Foxx Tone Machine and ZVex Fuzz Factory. But generally, such comparisons are pretty futile: The Star Eater shines in a galaxy all its own.
Fuzz Maze
One reason the Star Eater’s personality is hard to pigeonhole is that it has a few. This multi-faceted character is attributable to the Star Eater’s big and snarly but malleable fundamental voice, which is controlled by a simple set of three knobs and two rocker switches. When the contour filter is off, the fuzz is shaped by the volume and gain knobs and the germanium/silicon clipping switch. That’s a simple set of controls, but there are many sounds to find within their respective ranges. Winding up the output volume and gain (called hunger) produces hot, trashy, and saturated tones that are killer for super-focused punk power chords and leads that rip and splatter. Sustain is impressive, too. But it’s not the vocal- or violin-like sustain you hear in a Big Muff. Instead, it’s reedy, cracked and fractured, particularly when holding deep pitch bends.
Sustain is not the vocal- or violin-like sustain you hear in a Big Muff. Instead, it’s reedy, cracked and fractured.
Low gain/high volume settings produce sounds that range from ’66-style germanium fuzz voices at full guitar volume to almost ring-modulated and electric-sitar-like voices at attenuated guitar volumes. These glitchier, messier fuzz sounds are some of the pedal’s coolest colors. The fuzz is plenty loud at these lower gain levels, too, which means you can explore these sounds in a live band without the fear of being rendered silent.
Filtered Fatness and Contoured Screech
The contour filter, controllable via the footswitch, rocker switch, and knob on the left side of the pedal, generates versions of the Star Eater voice that run from scooped and fat to raspy and cutting. Parking the sweep knob somewhere around noon and switching in the contour filter makes a given sound from the fuzz side fatter and fuller. You can also further shape the response and tonality with the contour rocker switch, which moves between a scooped and bumped midrange profile.
When you move the sweep knob a little in either direction, the sustain becomes more unstable and EQ emphasis shifts—usually with deliciously perverse results. The best of these sounds, at least in my demented estimation, are in the clockwise range with the mid-contour switch in scooped mode. Here, screaming notes quickly turn to shards of cracked octave overtones and harmonics that sound especially freaked-out and full of fangs when you move the rocker switch to the scooped setting.
The Verdict
While it was hard to determine any direct lineage between the Star Eater and any other classic fuzz (and what a treat that is), the Star Eater evoked many thrilling musical spaces: Mudhoney, Ghost’s Michio Kurihara, the manic buzz of a thousand aggro psych-punk bands, and the meaty, trucking riffage of 100 Sabbathoid sojourners.
What really sets the Star Eater apart for me, though, is attitude. It’s not the burliest fuzz or the weirdest. But by inhabiting a world between those poles, the Star Eater manages to be articulate and nasty—a poet assassin and a civilized brute. These are the kinds of tones that make a solo or driving rhythm part explode in a recorded mix or onstage. And if you like your guitar parts with a touch of chaos and the confrontational, you’ll find this stompbox beautiful.
Star Eater Analog Fuzz
- All-analog design delivers authentic old-school fuzz tones
- Dual footswitch setup, sporting a powerful fuzz side and a versatile Boost/Filter side to cover all of your fuzz needs
- Precision matched transistor pairs allow you to effortlessly dial in the “sweet spot”
- Voice rocker switch offers both smooth germanium sounds and wild silicon tones
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On That’s the Price of Loving Me, “We’re Not Finished Yet” is a love letter to Wareham’s 1968 Gibson ES-335.
The singer-songwriter, 61, has crafted many such moments—most famously during the late ’80s and early ’90s, helping cement the dream-pop genre with cult-favorites Galaxie 500. Take the tenor saxophone, by Ralph Carney, that elevates the back half of “Decomposing Trees” from 1989’s On Fire, or the Mellotron-like atmosphere that bubbles up during “Spook” on This Is Our Music from 1990—both of which, notably, were recorded with journeyman producer Kramer, who’s part of Wareham’s rich sonic universe once again with the songwriter’s new solo album, That’s the Price of Loving Me.
Following This Is Our Music, the final Galaxie 500 album, Wareham and Kramer went their separate ways. The former founded the long-running indie-rock band Luna, formed the duo Dean & Britta with now-wife Britta Phillips, worked on film scores, and released a handful of solo projects. Kramer, meanwhile, grew into a hero of experimental music, playing with and producing everyone from John Zorn to Daniel Johnston. They stayed in touch, even as they drifted apart geographically, and always talked about working together again—but it took the weight of mortality to make it happen.
“[Kramer has] been saying for years, ‘It’s crazy we haven’t made a record together,’” says Wareham over Zoom, his shimmering silver hair flanked in the frame by a wall-hung cherry red Gibson SG and a poster of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1975 drama Faustrecht der Freiheit. “He was living in Florida, and I was living elsewhere and doing other things. But I did lose a couple of friends over the pandemic, and it did occur to me, you can’t just say, ‘I’ll get to it’ forever. Not to be morbid, but we’re not gonna be here forever. We’re not getting any younger, are we?”
Dean Wareham's Gear
Wareham was a member of the early indie dream-pop trio Galaxie 500. After their split, he formed indie rock stalwarts Luna as well as Dean & Britta, with wife and Luna bandmate Britta Phillips.
Photo by Laura Moreau
Guitars
Amps
- Lazy J 20
- Mesa/Boogie California Tweed
Effects
- EAE Hypersleep reverb
- EAE Sending analog delay
- Dr Scientist Frazz Dazzler fuzz
- Danelectro Back Talk
- Joe Parker Raydeen overdrive
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
- Curtis Mangan nickel wounds (.010–.046)
- Dunlop Nylon .88 mm picks
- Truetone 1 Spot Pro CS12
In 2020, Dean & Britta recorded a covers album, Quarantine Tapes—the perfect opportunity, amid the agony of lockdown, to finally get Kramer involved. The producer mixed their hazy version of the Seekers’ “The Carnival Is Over,” which planted the seeds for a bigger collaboration on That’s the Price of Loving Me. At first, though, Wareham didn’t have any songs, so he gave himself a hard deadline by booking some time at L.A. studio Lucy’s Meat Market.
“What is it in a song that makes people cry? What is it that moves you? It’s something unexpected.”
“I don’t write songs every day—sometimes I don’t write songs for a whole year or something,” he says with a laugh. “The only thing that gets me to do it is booking studio time. Then I have to write some songs because it’ll be embarrassing if I show up with nothing.”
The space itself—decked out with a jaw-dropping amount of vintage guitars and amplifiers and keyboards—helped animate his sleepy-eyed and gently psychedelic songs. “I thought I had a few nice instruments,” Wareham says, “but I showed up, like, ‘Oh, your Les Paul’s from 1955? I think I’ll play this one. Your Martin is from the ’40s?’” Speed and spontaneity were essential: They worked six full days, with Kramer guiding him to capture every performance without overthinking it.
Wareham’s latest was produced by Kramer, a former member of Shockabilly, Bongwater, and the Butthole Surfers who owns the legendary underground label Shimmy-Disc. He produced all three Galaxie 500 LPs.
“[That’s] how I worked with Kramer back in the day too,” he recalls. “Maybe it kinda spoiled me—he was always like, ‘Yep, that’s it. Next!’ I got lazy about going back and redoing things. We’d make the decision and move on: keep that drum track and bass track. Maybe Britta [bass, backing vocals] would change a few things. Sometimes you’re with people who think every single thing should be replaced and made perfect, and you don’t actually have to do that. When it came time for me to overdub a guitar solo or something, Kramer would just allow me two takes generally: ‘Do it again a little differently. That’s it. That’s good.’”
“I thought I had a few nice instruments, but I showed up, like, ‘Oh, your Les Paul’s from 1955? I think I’ll play this one.’”
The material itself allowed for such malleability, with ringing chord progressions and gentle melodies often influenced by the musicians who happened to be gathered around him that day. “You Were the Ones I Had to Betray” has the baroque-pop sweetness of late-’60s Beatles, partly due to the sawing cellos of L.A. session player Gabe Noel, who also added some boomy bass harmonica to the climax. “It’s an instrument you’d mostly associate with the Beach Boys, I guess,” Wareham says. “It kinda sounds like a saxophone or something.”
Wareham, his 335, and Mesa/Boogie California Tweed at a recent Luna show, with bassist Britta Phillips in the background.
Photo by Mario Heller
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the warm hug of these arrangements, but it’s also worth highlighting Wareham’s lyrics—whether it’s the clever but subtle acrostic poetry of “The Mystery Guest” (“I’d never done that before, and it’s not that hard to do actually. Sometimes it’s just to give yourself a strange assignment to get yourself thinking in a different way”) or the hilarity of “We’re Not Finished Yet,” which scans as carnal but is actually a love letter to his semi-recently acquired 1968 Gibson ES-335.
“Sometimes it’s just to give yourself a strange assignment to get yourself thinking in a different way.”
“I read this poem about a guy polishing an antique wooden cabinet or something,” Wareham explains. “I thought, ‘That’s funny—it’s vaguely sexual, how he’s like rubbing this thing.’ I thought it would be funny if I wrote a song not about a piece of furniture but about the guitar—the experience of buying this. The lyrics in there: ‘I waxed you; I rubbed you; I reamed you.’ It all sounds like a dirty song, but it’s like, ‘No, I had to get the peg holes reamed!’ It works kind of as a love song, but that’s what it’s really about.”
Which brings us back to that idea of the unexpected. The most beautiful touches on Loving Me, crafted with his ol’ producer pal, are the ones that appear out of nowhere—like the blossoming guitar overdubs of “New World Julie” and “Dear Pretty Baby.” Kramer, he says, liked to “run two or three guitar tracks at once, where it becomes a symphony of guitars.”
These surprises, indeed, are the moments that stick with you.
YouTube It
Luna’s four-song performance on KEXP showcases Dean Wareham’s sparse, low-key indie rock vibe as well as his simple and sweet guitar embellishments.
In the ’80s, Peter Buck’s clean, chime-y arpeggios defined the sound of alt-rock to come. From R.E.M's start, his post-Roger McGuinn 12-string style served as the foundation for the band’s simple, plain-spoken approach, offering a fresh take on what an independent band could be and inspiring generations of artists to come. Buck not only found his sound quickly, he evolved throughout the band’s career. By the ’90s, R.E.M.’s sound had evolved to incorporate organic, acoustic textures, and eventually leaning into a glam- and grunge-inspired, distorted-guitar-focused sound on 1994’s Monster.
