RatingsPros:A very flexible, user-friendly octave fuzz with plenty of aggression and the ability to handle both single-note runs and chords. High-quality build. Cons: Not always as dramatically snarly as some old-school octave-fuzz pedals. Street: $200 Dusky Electronics Augustus duskyamp.com | Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value: |
British pedal pioneer Roger Mayer once explained to me, over pints in a London pub, how his seminal Octavia worked. Employing a visual analogy—using the large mirror on the wall behind us and the reflection of an upheld cardboard beer mat— he said: “You see two of them, but there’s still only one.” Simple, right?
The Augustus octave fuzz pedal from North Carolina maker Dusky Electronics follows Mayer’s principle for an octave effect of “folding” the input frequency into two, to create an octave-up sound at the output. Dusky uses a different circuit to achieve the same effect, but it generates a very flexible and gnarly octave fuzz that’s great for everything from emotive leads to massive, mechanical-sounding power chords and more.
Eight Legs Good
The Augustus (which is presumably named after the Roman emperor Octavian Caesar Augustus—get it?) is a pretty straight-ahead pedal. But it offers extra flexibility in the EQ structure that pays big sonic dividends. The big aluminum “heat” knob at the top-right controls gain and the and “more” knob controls output volume. The other two small, clear, plastic knobs labeled “meat” and “light” control bass and treble, respectively. Inside, the circuit features MOSFET input and output amplifiers, with a high-impedance input buffer to help the pedal perform at any position within your signal chain.
Long Division
The Augustus’ expanded EQ control capabilities (many vintage-flavored octave pedals including the Octavia have just a single tone knob, if they have any tone control at all) and wider frequency response enable the pedal to be used effectively with bass, baritone, and keyboards. But for our evaluation, I stuck with a few classic guitar recipes: a Les Paul and a Stratocaster into a Carr Super Bee 1x12 combo and a Friedman Small Box head and 2x12 cab. And I didn’t have to play for long to get a sense of its abundant creative potential and flexibility.
Many octave-fuzz pedals built on traditional circuit templates tend to freak out (though often in very cool ways) when you try to play more than a single note—or, heaven forbid, play a slow unison bend. But the Augustus happily eats up chords, bends, and dyads, spitting out aggressively effected but representative renderings of the notes that you put in. That makes it very effective for spicing up more complex leads, but it’s mean and monstrous in rhythm guitar applications, too.
Since the octave content is set, the real tone variation comes via the gain and EQ controls. The heat knob alone can take the sound from almost relatively sedate settings, where notes sing distinctly, to thick and jagged or grungy and nasty tones. In most instances, I preferred the character of the sound with heat between 10 and 2 o’clock, where the pedal issued trippy, zippery, synth-like snarl along with impressive sustain. The EQ knobs, meanwhile, provide a lot of flexibility for matching different guitars and amps, and the extra layer of control definitely sets the Dusky apart. The extra EQ power also widens the range of guitars that can be used effectively with the pedal. I find many octave pedals to be a less-than-ideal match for humbuckers, but I was particularly impressed with how Augustus handled the signal from a Les Paul, and the pairing yielded thick, beefy versions of even the freakiest sounds.
The Verdict
The Augustus is enticingly full of tone possibilities, and really grew on me the more I played it. It might not be as jaggedly surreal and extreme as some more traditional octave-fuzz designs, but it feels less chaotic, more controlled, and certainly more versatile than most. You can unleash dramatic leads just as easily as fat rhythm chords, which is no small feat for an octave pedal. And while it might seem just a touch costly for an octave fuzz, the price is very reasonable for a well-built, U.S.-made pedal that offers a genuinely enhanced take on the time-tested octave-fuzz effect.
Watch our demo of the Dusky Augustus Octave Fuzz:
The Rickenbacker 481’s body style was based on the 4001 bass, popularly played by Paul McCartney. Even with that, the guitar was too experimental to reach its full potential.
By the early 1970s, the great interest the lads had sparked in 6- and 12-string Ricks had waned. But thankfully for the company, there was still high demand for yet another Beatles-played instrument: the 4001 bass.
Paul McCartney was gifted a 4001 by Rickenbacker in 1965, which he then used prominently throughout the group’s late-’60s recordings and while leading Wings all through the ’70s. Other rising stars of rock also donned 4000 series models, like Yes’Chris Squire, Pink Floyd’sRoger Waters, the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Stu Cook, and more.
And like that, a new star was born.
So, what’s a guitar company to do when its basses are selling better than its guitars? Voilà: The Rickenbacker 480. Introduced in 1972, it took the 4000-series body shape and created a standard 6-string out of it, using a bolt-on neck for the first time in the brand’s history.
The 481’s slanted frets predate the modern multi-scale phenomenon by decades. The eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
“It was like a yo-yo at Rickenbacker sometimes,” factory manager Dick Burke says in Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo. “We got quiet in the late ’60s, but when the bass started taking off in the ’70s, we got real busy again, so making a 6-string version of that was logical, I guess.”
The gambit worked, for a time. Sales of the 480 were strong enough at first that, in 1973, a deluxe model was introduced—the 481—and it’s one of these deluxe versions that we’re showcasing here.
“The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.”
Take a close look and you’ll notice that the body shape isn’t the only remarkable feature. The 481 was Rickenbacker’s first production run to feature humbucker pickups. Here, you can see each humbucker’s 12 pole pieces dotting through the chrome cover, a variant casing only available from 1975 to 1976. (Interestingly enough, the pickups had first been developed for the 490, a prototype that never made it to public release, which would’ve allowed players to substitute different pickups by swapping loaded pickguards in and out of the body.)
The new pickups were also treated with novel electronics. The standard 3-way pickup-selector switch is here, but so is a second small switch that reverses the pickups’ phase when engaged.
The inventive minds at Rickenbacker didn’t stop there: The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
Long before the fanned fret phenomenon caught on in the modern, progressive guitar landscape, Rickenbacker had been toying around with the slant-fret concept. Originally available from 1970 forward as a custom order on other models, slant frets were all but standard on the 481 (only a small minority of straight-fret 481s were built).
The 481 was the deluxe version of the 480, which preceded it and marked the first time the company used a bolt-on neck.
Dick Burke, speaking separately to writer Tony Bacon in an interview published on Reverb, only half-recalls the genesis and doesn’t remember them selling particularly well: “Some musicians said that’s the way when you hold the neck in your left hand—your hand is slanted. So, we put the slanted frets in a few guitars. I don’t know how many, maybe a hundred or two—I don’t recall.”
Even proponents of the 481 do not necessarily sing the praises of the slanted fretboard. Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, a 481 superfan, told Rickenbacker Guitars author Martin Kelly, “I don’t just love the 481, it’s part of me.... The 481’s slanted frets have made my fingers crooked for life, but I don’t care, I’ll take that for it’s given me riff after riff after riff."
Initial 480-series sales were promising, but the models never really took off. Though they were built as late as 1984, the slant-fret experiment of the 481 was called off by 1979. And these slanted models have not, in the minds of most players or collectors, become anywhere near as sought-after as the classic 330s and 360s, or, for that matter, the 4001s.
For that reason, 481s—despite their novelty and their lists of firsts for Rickenbacker—can still be found for relatively cheap. Our Vintage Vault pick, which is being sold by the Leicester, England-based Jordan Guitars Ltd, has an asking price of 3,350 British pounds (or about 4,300 U.S. dollars), which is still well under half the going-rate of early 360s, 660s, and other more famous Ricks. Some lucky buyers have even found 481s on Reverb for less than $2,000, which is unheard of for other vintage models.
With its idiosyncratic charms, the 481 remains more within reach than many other guitars of a similar vintage.
Sources: Martin Kelly’s Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo, Tony Bacon’s"Interview: Dick Burke on the Creation of the Rickenbacker 12-String | Bacon’s Archive" on Reverb, Reverb Price Guide sales data.
