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Rig Rundown: 311 [2017]

Spend an hour with the funk-punk rockers as they go over all the PRS and Gibson 6-strings, Warwick bass gear, and piles of pedals that stir up their tone.

During our last Rig Rundown with Mahoney he had two boards that totaled over 20 pedals, and since then he even talked to us about his five favorite oddball pedals, so you know the dude is a pedal junkie. As you can see, he’s still rocking two stomp stations that are home to two dozen effects including a Boss FV-300L, a Dunlop MC404 CAE Wah, Skreddy Pedals Little Miss Sunshine, XTS Custom The Pusher, Way Huge Blue Hippo, Maxon AD-9 Analog Delay, Free the Tone FT-1Y Flight Time Digital Delay, Strymon El Capistan, XTS Precision Overdrive, Paul Cochrane Timmy Overdrive, two on/off boxes for his rack-mounted Lexicon PCM42 delays, Boss OC-2 Octave (Tim’s favorite pedal), Mu-Fx Micro-Tron III, and a TC Electronic PolyTune 2 Noir round out the main board. Everything is powered by three Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus units. The “party” board holds a Boogie Mark V switcher, a DigiTech Whammy, an Electro-Harmonix 720 Stereo Looper, a Strymon Blue Sky, a DigiTech Synth Wah, and a Boss PN-2 Tremolo/Pan. Everything is juiced by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus.

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Company
 

Dunlop MC404 CAE Wah

CheckItOut

Loud, evil, searing hot, and unexpectedly versatile, the Fuzz War’s demented bass cousin has a bold and more-complex personality all its own that sounds radical with guitar, too.

Evil. Just plain evil. Unexpected and vast variation. Responds interestingly to bass volume and tone attenuation. Wet/dry mix control. Sounds amazing (and extra evil) with guitar.

None.

$195

Death By Audio Bass War
deathbyaudio.com

5
5
4.5
4.5

If you like your fuzz measured in megatonnage, the Death By AudioFuzz War is one of life’s great joys. And if you’re a bass player with similar predilections and accustomed to watching guitar players have all the fun, the new DBA Bass War will be sweet revenge.

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This unusual bass instrument is strung with just two flatwound strings, each with its own fretting surface that’s bent 135 degrees away from one another.

All photos by Madison Thorn

While this forgotten, oddball instrument was designed with multidextrous guitarists in mind, it never quite took off—making it a rare, vintage treasure.

At Fanny’s House of Music, you never know what strange or fascinating relics you might find. Guitorgan? Been there, sold that. A Hawaiian tremoloa fretless zither? We’ve had two.

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Fuzz, octave, and odd intervals co-mingle and clash with bizarre, mangled, musical, pretty, and often shockingly unpredictable results.

Scores of tones that span the musical and the ridiculous. Fun and ferocious fuzz. Octave can be used independently. Often intuitive in spite of its complexity. Tracks pitch shifts without glitches

Easy to get lost in the weeds if you don’t do your homework.

$249

Keeley Octa Psi
robertkeeley.com

4.5
4.5
3.5
4.5

I’d venture that most guitarists instinctively regard fuzz as a brutish, brainless effect (which is funny given how much energy in our community is dedicated to dissecting the nuances and merits of different fuzz types). Keeley’s Octa Psi, however, transcends mere troglodyte status by combining a fundamentally nasty fuzz voice in three switchable variations, and a web of octave and interval tones that transform the Octa Psi into a synthesizer capable of textures ranging from soaring to demented to downright evil.

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Keeley Octa Psi Demo | First Look
- YouTube

Ferocious fuzz forces, a +/- 2-octave range, and the capacity for odd intervals make this menacing machine almost as much synth as dirt device.

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